< ECAI Bangkok Schedule

Collaborative Learning and the ECAI TimeMap Interface: A wish list

John McRae
University of Indiana

The Collaborative Learning Archive Initiative (CLAI; www.indiana.edu/~clai/), which was directly inspired by the example of ECAI, is designed to facilitate the creation of archives of knowledge by communities of writers working under the editorial direction of specialists. These collaborative communities may be classrooms of students and their instructors, or groups of scholars dedicated to the study of common subjects. The TimeMap Interface is an excellent resource for the dynamic display of georeferenced data, but it could be made even more useful by software enhancements that would allow (a) training and learning exercises for students working in a controlled Interface feature set and (b) the collaborative compilation of datasets and associated explanatory material. In my remarks I will describe enhancements to the TimeMap Interface that would make it useful in these different contexts. Hopefully, the ensuing discussion will reveal other ways in which this wonderful resource might be enriched to the advantage of other students and scholars.