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<DIV id=idOWAReplyText97942 dir=ltr>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT color=#000000>While I agree that in a perfect world, instructors would provide raw content and expertise to instructional technologists/media developers who would then use high-powered authoring tools to generate audiovisually rich, interactive learning objects.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV dir=ltr><FONT face=Verdana size=2>In my own world, the academics use the great tools that the developers build. The developers are too rare a talent to waste on building the actual content: they need to build the tools that build the content, that way they can hugely increase their output and empower a great many people. An even better world is the one where the developers build tools that build tools, so they can build lots of really good tools really quickly. In the xerte world, this is a tool that takes an .xml file, processes it and gets lots of user input to automate the production of an .xwd. The real power in Xerte is the generic wizard, that can edit any .xml using controls defined in the .xwd. Templates then consume that .xml to create the content. </FONT></DIV>
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<DIV dir=ltr><FONT face=Verdana size=2>A tool that can create the editor (i.e. an .xwd) for the .xml is an idea I've had for a while. </FONT><FONT face=Verdana size=2>Remember the .xwd is the file that defines the actual controls in the wizard. So it is possible to create some .xml for a template, then get some other wizard to ask you how you want to edit the xml data as it dives through the nodes and their attributes. That tool creates the .xwd for you. That's a very poweful workflow.</FONT></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>