Commentary about those things I find interesting.
Reading the comments on stories for the Athens Banner Herald, Atlanta Journal Constitution, or even the Chronicle of Higher Education very much disappoints me. For some reason I hope for suggested solution and messages of encouragement. Guess I ought to stop reading the comments sections.
Two vendors.
Both think the problem must be the other’s fault. Because you know… Their product is perfect. They never have design issues. Ever. So it must be someone else’s fault.
Problem 1:
Upon loading the zip package into the CE/Vista SCORM module, the end user saw:
The SCORM package is not compliant with SCORM Ver 1.2 Conformance Requirements. All supporting schemas must be at the root of the package; the following schemas were not found at the root: [adlcp_rootv1p2.xsd, imscp_rootv1p1p2.xsd, imsmd_rootv1p2p1.xsd] As a result, the package may not perform as desired. Are you sure you want to continue?
I actually feel bad for not immediately recognizing this meant these XSD files needed to be in the zip file. Blackboard ought to feel bad for having the response this means the imsmanifest.xml in the file was written for a more current version of SCORM than the rather ancient 1.2. I could understand that response if specific items in the file are only relevant in the current version. I don’t understand that response when the same file which works with Vista 3 (created about the same time as SCORM 1.2) works and Vista 8 doesn’t. Sounds more like something changed in Vista 8 to make it more strict.
Fixing the missing XSDs files resulted in a new error:
The SCORM package could not be imported because it does not comply with one or more specifications within the package. The following error was produced: **Parsing Error** Line: 7 Message: cvc-complex-type.2.4.c: The matching wildcard is strict, but no declaration can be found for element ‘lom’. Please inform the SCORM vendor and try again once the problem has been resolved.
Is it wrong to be excited about an error? Dropping the problematic items from the imsmanifest.xml file produces new errors. After five iterations, I don’t seem to be making much progress.
Problem 2:
This SCORM module simply passes to an HTML file with JavaScript some variables to send the user off to the QuestionMark site. It should not this big of a deal.
Somehow Vista 8 is calling the file where it doesn’t exist for the QuestionMark SCORM module but not other modules.
QuestionMark addres:
/webct/scorm/viewer/perceptionSCO.htm?call=scorm&
session=9999999999999999&
href=https://ondemand.questionmark.com/delivery/session.php&
lang=-&customerid=mcg
Known good SCORM module address:
/webct/RelativeResourceManager/999999999999/filename.html
The number after RelativeResourceManager typically can be found under “View File Information” in the file manager. The file name after the number is the name of a file in the zip. Copying the address for the known good let me view it. At this point it seemed logical I could just build the address to the QuestionMark zip manually and see it as a designer (maybe not as a student). Unfortunately, this gives me system exception errors.
Last Solutions:
In trying to solve two problems with one stone, I took the imsmanifest.xml for the known good SCORM module and just changed the href= for resource and file to use the perceptionSCO.html file name for QuestionMark. Still failed to find the file.
BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT…
I removed all the variables after the perceptionSCO.htm. Now Vista finds the file. It gives me errors about not having the values in those variables, but it found it.
This is stupid.
A friend pointed out this TED Talk by Bill Gates. Specifically he pointed out a group photograph of people serving at the Baha’i World Center is used in the talk to represent the people of the world. You can find it at 4 minutes 36 seconds.
One of the gems from the photos I took in Haifa. Having not taken my dSLR, I am rather pleased with the photos I managed to take on this trip with a little digital point-n-click. Guess that shows: 1) How beautiful were the surroundings, 2) Equipment only gets one so far.
Two weeks ago I met my mother at the airport to fly to Israel and make our way to Haifa, Israel to participate in the greatest bounty: Bahá’í pilgrimage.
Before making the trip, my life had settled into a funk. Back in 2005, Lacey invited me to her wedding in Chicago at the Bahá’í House of Worship. At the time, my life was mired in a similar funk and experiencing a whole morning praying there gave me both a warm calm and bubbling turmoil. It was the calm before the storm as during the next several months my grandmother lost two brothers sending me on driving trips to Arkansas twice, my gall bladder failed, and I landed a job prompting a move to Athens.
Returning from Chicago, I held no answers… just bouts of turmoil and using thoughts of my time in Chicago to produce serenity. Returning from Haifa, I feel more turmoil and serenity! Instead of a warm calm, I’m feeling like a stranger in my own home, driving my own car, chatting with my own friends. It’s like for a couple weeks I got to experience a different life and feel disappointment returning to my own.
Miscellaneous observations:
For a good description of the pilgrimage experience, see Myk’s pilgrimage blog postings.
If the aftermath of this pilgrimage is anything like my visit to Chicago in 2005, then I’ll experience some change. I don’t intend mistake attraction for Haifa as destiny to live there. My attraction to Chicago has never culminated in my living there, so I’m not holding on to imaginations I’ll miraculously move to Haifa. Something like serving at the Bahá’í World Center would be the kind of change I foresee. We’ll see. I’m not keen to completely disrupt my life at the moment. Hopefully events will not conspire against me to force my hand.
“The way to make better decisions is to make more of them” -Anthony Robbins
We do learn from retrospective analysis of effects. I question the need to make our own bad decisions in order to learn. We ought to be able to watch others make mistakes and avoid them.
You’ve read my previous posts on Dunbar’s Number, right?
Go on…. I’ll wait.
Remember the one on Scoble and Facebook? Good. For a while, I fastidiously ensured my number of friends stayed below 150 because I took the idea of Dunbar’s number as a life strategy. Then I let it slip to 200 which I pared back down to 150. My laziness let it hit 500.
It appears Robin Dunbar is now studying Facebook users to see ‘if the “Facebook effect” has stretched the size of social groupings.’ He says despite the large number of friends people only interact with about 150 of them. Maybe like most of psychology, the subjects are college students who supposedly are almost all on Facebook. In the real world, most of the people with which I have regular interaction, exactly those Dunbar’s number covers, are not my Facebook friends.
My Facebook friends instead are my information buffet. Social networks are how we keep in touch with what is happening in the world. My information technology friends provide me what is happening in my career field. My photography friends provide me with useful tips for a big hobby. Also, the bigger our social network, the more opportunities for help from or being consequential strangers. Social networks are a strategy not a replication of the brain.
The term “friends” used by Facebook, I think, is a brilliant marketing ploy. People would much rather show up as my friend than my contact.
Apparently designers are embedding video from external sources in our Vista 8 environment. Internet Explorer complains when elements of a secure page reference non-secure elements. In this case, CE/Vista has the secure page. The embedded video is a non-secure element. At best the IE complaint is to prompt the user to pick whether to view the non-secure element. At worst, it just refuses to show the page and shows “Navigation cancelled”.
The possibilities are:
The content is being put inside HTML files rather than using the Web Link tool to open a new window with the video. Even using a Web Link tool to show the content inside the same window causes the IE complaint.
All three will cause a ton of work to address the issues. In my opinion wrangling designers ought to require the least amount of work of the three. Though I guess that would depend on the popularity of IE and neediness of the users.
The CE/Vista error “Unable to locate the page you requested” is supposed to be a more user friendly error than the HTTP 404 Page Not Found. Okay, sure between the two, more users would understand the CE/Vista one than the generic HTTP one. The only suggestion for dealing with these is to contact the server administrator via a mailto link.
Say what? We had over 22,000 active sections last term? We have 40 institutions and dozens of professional designers and thousands of faculty designing their own classes. Cryptic emails about being frustrated with Vista means I have to contact the sender, find out what institution, class, problem happened and send that to an institution person who has to figure out which designer to direct it. I’m too far removed to be useful for these requests.
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