dotfolio_4

Originally uploaded by ncarroll.

One of the default applications installed in dotFOLIO is a blogger. The blogger is a tool that you can use for your reflective writing.

Another useful feature is the Clipper tool to the left of the screen shot. The Clipper is used for “clipping” dotFOLIO objects together. As shown you can clip a number of dotFOLIO objects together. I’ve clipped a previous blog entry and an image to the blog entry shown at the top of the screen shot. The last item shown in the related items list is a blog entry written by another dotFOLIO user in their own space, and has been clipped to my blog entry. The other dotFOLIO user had found my blog entry to be interesting, and decided to contribute her own views on the topic. This is so much more powerful than commenting, as you can clip a bunch of files, URLs and blog entries together.

dotfolio_3

Originally uploaded by ncarroll.

This screen shot shows dotFOLIO’s file storage capabilities. You can upload your files or add URLs to archive and share with others.

The clipper tool to the left of the screen shot is a nifty way of connecting dotFOLIO objects with other dotFOLIO objects. dotFOLIO objects include files, URLs, blog entries, calendar items, and many more. So you could upload a report, blog about it, then clip the two together.

dotfolio_2

Originally uploaded by ncarroll.

Here is another screen shot of dotFOLIO. This one shows the front page for a user’s e-portfolio space with some information about the user.

dotfolio_1

Originally uploaded by ncarroll.

This is a screen shot of dotFOLIO showing the user space for the e-portfolio owner. The e-portfolio owner is able to upload their portrait, create a personalised welcome note, add information about themselves, and display a list of their latest blog entries.

The tabs show applications that are core to dotFOLIO, such as the blogger for reflective writing, and a file storage application for archiving your documents.

dotFOLIO has been designed to be extensible so that additional OpenACS applications can simply plug-in to dotFOLIO. There are many applications from OpenACS to choose from, such as forums, surveys, calendar and presentation slides.

dotFOLIO is expected to be released in July, but a pre-release will be made available very shortly from OpenACS.

Ash’s Mexican farewell dinner

Originally uploaded by ncarroll.

Congratulations to my mate Bennett (pictured eating what looks like a Chimichanga)! He was co-author of “BAFF Augments Certain Th1-Associated Inflammatory Responses“, which was recently accepted to be published in the Journal of Immunology.

Abstract: B cell-activating factor belonging to the TNF family (BAFF; BLyS) is a critical regulator of B cell maturation and survival, and its overexpression in BAFF transgenic (Tg) mice results in the development of autoimmune disorders. BAFF also affects T cell function through binding to one of the BAFF receptors, BAFF-R. Using BAFF Tg mice, we examined a typical Th1-mediated response, the cutaneous delayed-type hypersensitivity reaction, and found a much greater degree of paw swelling and inflammation than in control mice. Importantly, delayed-type hypersensitivity scores correlated directly with BAFF levels in serum. Conversely, in a Th2-mediated model of allergic airway inflammation, BAFF Tg mice were largely protected and showed markedly reduced Ag-specific T cell proliferation and eosinophil infiltration associated with the airways. Thus, local and/or systemically distributed BAFF affects Th1 and Th2 responses and impacts on the course of some T cell-mediated inflammatory reactions. Our results are consistent with the idea that BAFF augments T cell as well as B cell responses, particularly Th1-type responses. Results in BAFF Tg mice may reflect the situation in certain autoimmune patients or virally infected individuals, because BAFF levels in blood are comparable.

Just a thought from looking at IMS LIP and some previous work that I did on data warehousing… it might be worth looking at the similarities between data warehouses and ePortfolios. Data warehouses are designed to store large amounts of information and have fast query response times. Perhaps the star schema used in data warehouses can also be applied to ePortfolios. Over time, especially when considering life long learning, an ePortfolio will store enormous amounts of information. The techniques developed for data warehouses could very well apply to ePortfolios for data mining and information retrieval.

Sans Souci

Originally uploaded by ncarroll.

Here I am with my girlfriend Kimmy. This photo was taken at Sans Souci, Sydney, just before Clout’s wedding reception dinner at the Sailing club.

Abstract: ePortfolios and the learning artifacts they contain must be portable and accessible for the purpose of supporting life-long learning experiences. In this paper, we identify that ePortfolios must also maintain the credibility of the learning artifacts, especially assessment artifacts that are used as evidence by the learner for demonstrating a particular competency. These assessment artifacts are vulnerable to modification or alteration during transfer between distributed ePortfolio systems. As a result, we propose the use of certified assessment artifacts to detect these vulnerabilities. We also present a distributed architecture for a virtual learning environment that incorporates the sharing of certified assessment artifacts between a learning management system, and an ePortfolio system called dotFOLIO that we are currently developing.

Citation: Nicholas L. Carroll and Rafael A. Calvo. “Certified Assessment Artifacts for ePortfolios”. To be published in, Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Technology and Applications (ICITA’05), July 2005, IEEE Computer Society.

Abstract: Database systems are an essential component in multi-tiered web applications. These applications increasingly interact with others using web services. In this paper, we describe and compare two architectures for integrating web services into web applications, and perform performance benchmarks using the Google web service. For one of the architectures we contribute a SOAP interface to the PostgreSQL Relational Database Management System, implemented as a user-defined function that allows developers to make service calls from within the database. We show that SQL can be used to easily query data provided by web services, and therefore as a way of accessing and using web services in a database-driven web application.

Citation: Nicholas L. Carroll and Rafael A. Calvo. “Integrating Web Applications and Web Services”. To be published in, Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Web Engineering (ICWE ‘05), July 2005.

Abstract: In this paper we study the integration of Web services in an object-relational database system. This allows a database to import data from live data feeds or remote heterogeneous database systems on demand. We first describe how we have added a SOAP interface to the PostgreSQL database system, implemented as a user-defined function that allows developers to make service calls from within the database. Secondly, we show that SQL can also be used to query data provided by Web services, which introduces a novel way of accessing and using Web services in a database-driven web application. Finally, we compare the performance of two architectures for consuming Web services with a benchmarking procedure using the Google Web service API.

Citation: Nicholas L. Carroll, Rafael A. Calvo. “Querying Data from Distributed Heterogeneous Database Systems through Web Services“. In Proceedings of The Tenth Australian World Wide Web Conference (AUSWEB’04), July 2004.