ILabs
From GSLISWiki
A project conducted by the Inquiry Group which explores the idea of Inquiry Based Design, started by Chip Bruce.
iLabs is a collaborative endeavor of a community of people interested in inquiry pedagogy and philosophy that was begun in 1995. It is a publicly available web-based suite of software tools that is provided free of cost to all users. iLabs consist of different "bricks" that together form an interactive website. iLabs are created by filling out a simple web form that includes checking off which bricks or tools you want to include in your website.
iLabs development is carried out by an ever-changing and growing group of participants, whose members include university researchers, students, community activists, and educators representing a variety of settings and grade levels. Development work is supported through volunteer work, in-kind institutional commitments, and grant funds. Primary support is provided by the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) Center for Advanced Materials for the Purification of Water with Systems (CAMPWS). Organizations we have partnered with include Ethnography of the University (EOTU), Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), Graduate Teaching Fellows in K-12 Education Program (GK-12), Life on the Prairie (UI), SisterNet, Puerto Rican Cultural Center.
The latest version of iLabs is Version 3, which is located at: http://ilabs.inquiry.uiuc.edu/
Contents |
[edit] Members
[edit] Faculty
[edit] Students
[edit] Links to Members
Also check out:
- The current iLabs Team:
[edit] Inquiry Units
[edit] Bugs/Urgent wishes
- PHP security audit
- Given the problems we've been having with PHP hacks lately, this is a pretty high priority. PHP hacks are becoming more widespread. Ted can work on this. -Karen
- Although this is important, it can wait 11/16/05 -Karen
- Mailman to iLabs
- this is to connect to the Pnet Mailman; involves having "mailing list" as a brick, which takes you to a page asking for simple info that's passed to Mailman; then basic list controls would be displayable in "arrange bricks" -Chip
- At this point, it's going to have to be a simple link to the list application form. Ideally, it will pass the referrer page as a variable so we can verify that someone is arriving from an existing iLab, put that's not urgent. Ted will be able to tie the two together. We will revise the application form to include iLab info. -Karen
- Once the list is live, we can display info with an include of the listinfo page and the list archives. We've done this on the NDIIPP Mambo site. Again, Ted will know how to do this part of it. -Karen
- good plan. -Chip
- unified search/browse find v2 and v3 iLabs from either site
- forgot password? feature
- This exists on the Inquiry Page and iLabs 2, but not on iLabs 3. Actually, the login interface and process for all three sites should be the same, which would take us one step closer to merging these.
[edit] Development management
- assessment of users and use patterns who are the users? where? how active are they? how dependent upon which features?
- usage tracking for individual iLabs [Does this exist? If not, we need this as basis for future decisions - Karen]
- data is gathered... could start reporting it to iLab admins. basically would require someone to figure out what stats they want and how they should be presented. - Cameron
- If I can take a look at the data, I can start working on this. -- Karen
- tool inventory which tools are most useful for which purposes? which could be replaced by other open source tools?
[edit] Text/Content
- integration with Prairienet (continuing Karen's intro page)
- FAQs/help
- how to move content from iLabs 2 to iLabs 3
- how to delete an iLab
- how to add languages
- guide to style sheets for control over columns, logo, etc
- better error messages
- when you post to a bboard w/o permission, you get "Warning: Smarty error: unable to read resource: "error_message" in content/web/users/inquiry/ilabs/includes/smarty/Smarty.class.php on line 1088"
- intellectual property/acceptable-use/privacy/liability statement more accessible from Inquiry Page, iLabs 2, iLabs 3, pnet; use UIUC template for this
- GSLIS branding?
- iLabs/LEEP guide (with Matt?)
[edit] Wish list
- templates
- e.g., for a committee, set up an ilab with a forum, document center, and events calendar
- for a beginner, provide a simple iLab
- alternatively, have a way to clone an ilab without its content
- add/move a brick from one iLab to another Perhaps this could be just a special kind of "add brick" in which you specify an existing brick in another iLab. If permissions are valid then it shows up in the first iLab as well.
- Inquiry in Action
- template to accommodate better existing Inquiry in Action content
- move Inquiry in Action content from Inquiry Page to CII
- rotating photos as on Inquiry Page
- database features
- for sort & display (current lists can be displayed in standard or reverse order, but there's no way to search for items meeting certain criteria, or to search across lists)
- Paseo Boricua Community Library Project. The cataloguing tool exists and works, but needs several improvements. It also needs to be integrated as an iLabs brick.
- plug-ins (or new bricks)
- wrapper brick
- wiki plug-in
- connotea plug-in
- bib tool: Greenstone? catalog tool? refworks? eprints?
- lab-notebook
- image-gallery-tools, such as slide show
- IKnow
- living-textbook, or other path manager
- syllabus support in iLabs3(assignment submission, etc; import from iLabs2?)
- html editor There are bugs making it difficult to control font and format. There's also a problem with html anchors. Find an update for TinyMCE or another editor that works better.
- new inquiry units
- a way to import data from the standard Inquiry Page units
- spin-off feature
- a way to import content, e.g, grab all the "create" sections from a list of units, because they are the assignments for a course
- search mechanism
- including spin-offs to other iLabs (with permissions)
- in addition, or instead of: a way to link to inquiry units created in other iLabs, so they appear in the show-all list
- style
- basic style sheet commands on 'create' screen to allow users to set color, logo, etc.
- guide to existing style sheet variables
- activity structures (tools to specify work flow)
- Create structure—specify a sequence of activities, roles, deadlines, interdependencies, etc in an easy, high-level fashion (e.g., inquiry units in relation to document center, forums, list tools,...)
- Visualize—See the structure at a glance and at various levels of detail
- Semantics—have the system understand the structure so that it can be interrogated, e.g., who has not completed their work in this phase; is C-BASE an example?
[edit] Related Links
[edit] Help
ilabs help, tutorials, and documentation are avaialble at Help System for iLabs v. 3.
Categories: Groups | Research Groups | CSCW | Research
