April 13, 2006
CSCI E-259 final project proposal
Allen Crockett arcrock@fas.harvard.edu

=======================================================================================

i. 	title: Lecture Demo Web 3.0

ii. 	author: Allen Crockett

iii.	abstract: Add features to the Harvard Natural Sciences Lecture Demonstrations
		Web site so that the process of (1) editing certain parts of the site
		are more transparent for Lecture Demo staff and (2) customizing views
		of lecture demos and sharing those views are more transparent for users. 

iv. 	what: Lecture Demo Web 3.0 will allow users to view the online catalog of
		science demonstrations offered by the Harvard Lecture Demo team. The
		site is primarily geared towards Harvard science instructors who want
		to incorporate live demonstrations into their lesson plans, although
		instructors and researchers around the world also find the site a
		useful educational resource. Currently there are about 300 available 
		lecture demos.
	
		To better aid lesson planning and collaboration among Harvard instructors
		and Lecture Demo staff, users of the catalog will be able to log in
		and collect subsets of the catalog in their account. Views of a user's
		preferred demos will be presented either as text, HTML, or PDF. Users will
		be able to view the preferred demos of other users, as well as the demos
		used in past Harvard science classes. 

		Lecture Demo staff will be able to edit parts of the catalog by logging
		in and entering data via HTML forms.

v. 	why: Currently, the Lecture Demo Web site (http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~scidemos)
		provides two views of the demos they offer: a short "white pages" view,
		and a more detailed "yellow pages" view. The white pages are organized
		by general subject (i.e. Newtonain Mechanics), and each view of a 
		subject is dynamically generated from a corresponding XML file (i.e.
		Newtonian Mechanics corresponds to nm.xml). From time to time Lecture
		Demo staff need to edit the content of the white pages, which means
		editing the appropriate XML file by hand. Worse, if the HTML structure
		of the white pages needs adjustment, a staff member has to edit the 
		Perl CGI script that handles the parsing and transforming of the XML
		(the script does not use XSLT to produce the HTML; rather, the XML
		is read into a DOM tree and then the script traverses the DOM data 
		structure to format the output). The Lecture Demo Web 3.0 project will
		make the editing of white pages content more transparent to staff by 
		allowing them to log in to the site and edit the content via HTML forms. 

		Another problem with the current site is its limited ability to create
		customized user views of demos. A view can only consist of demos from
		a single subject area at a time, which is inconvenient for instructors
		whose lesson plans may cross different subject areas. Once a view is
		created, it is up to the user to save it somehow, either by bookmarking
		it, printing it, or saving the HTML to their personal computer. Harvard
		science instructors often do not teach the same course more than once
		every few years, rotating the different faculty in a department among
		courses, so it is useful for instructors to research the demos
		presented to a given class in past offerings. By allowing instructors to
		customize their own accounts and to view the accounts of other users,
		Lecture Demo Web 3.0 will become a more practical educational tool. 

		Lastly, I think it deserves mentioning that the current site runs a little
		slow, perhaps as a result of the Perl CGI scripts mentioned above. This
		peoject hopes to produce a site with better computational performance.

vi.	how: Lecture Demo Web 3.0 will consist of Servlets and JSPs running under Tomcat,
		in a similar manner as the !Wahoo! project. A shopping cart may be used 
		for compiling user demos. XSL-FO will be used to produce PDFs for users. 
		Perhaps some sort of authentication for Harvard instructors will be needed,
		such as sending an email to the instructor with a hyperlink to an
		authentication servlet. 

vii.	questions: Aside from concerns about wether this proposed project will be
		substantial enough, the biggest question I have right now regards how
		Lecture Demo staff can alter the HTML structure of the "white pages"
		view of demos. What if the XML needs to be extended? What if they want
		to be able to upload thumbnail images? Can or should Demo staff edit the
		XSLT via a Web form?