Oooooh ... Grava!

Global (developer) education is a subject dear to our hearts. So we were pleased and provoked to note that, at a UK educational technology trade event, about two weeks back, Microsoft quietly announced that it had entered Beta on its "Grava" project.

The product codenamed "Grava" is a meta-programming/courseware-authoring system based on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), the graphics model underlying Windows Vista. It lets educators without a great deal of programming knowledge create courseware, publications, surveys, graphical physics demos and similar neat stuff, using an "app-gen" style user interface and underlying simplified script language. Courseware authored this way can be played back on the Grava Player, presently a stand-alone application.

Grava meta-applications can be enhanced further by delving into the (actually not too intimidating) underlying mysteries of WPF -- a very elegant and self-consistent model for multimedia, 3D and 2D graphics and text handling, in which content, functionality, time-based animation scripting and other variables are largely specified and controlled via human-readable (or at least comprehensible) XML files.

WPF is extended into Internet space by WPF/E ('E' is apparently for 'Everywhere'), a model for doing 2D animation, media and text-handling in suitably-equipped browser environments (WPF/E plug-ins are presently available for IE7, IE6+, FireFox and other browsers, running on Vista and XP SP2). This given, it seems likely (to me, anyway) that the ultimate destination for the Grava player is on the desktop, and in the browser -- meaning that what Microsoft is tentatively presenting, here, may be the basis for a powerful, Internet-enabled courseware publishing and administration system.

Given the current status of courseware authoring (profusion of platforms, no uniform standards, variable Internet compatibility, lots of home-grown solutions, etc.), I'd hazard that Microsoft's providing what may become a de-facto standard is probably beneficial, and that making it fully Internet-deployable (which they haven't announced, but I'm surmising is in the playbook) may lead in some very interesting and healthy directions. Like ... towards creation of a vast body of easily-licensed and/or opensource standard courseware; towards creation of a global community of commercial and freelance educator/content providers; and perhaps even towards some level of national, or even global concensus on the value of computer-based education, and towards creation of numerous new business models in courseware publishing, aggregation, syndication, etc. (think: "Google Learn," "courseware bloggers," etc.).

Still early times, yet. But I'm thinking of trying to get into the Community Tech Preview group for Grava and seeing who's there. You can apply, too:

https://beta.microsoft.com/Grava

Posted by John Jainschigg at 11:58 AM  Permalink

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