journal_univ

The Journal plugin and related issues

Background

Long ago, in the oughts, Tim had a project to create a set of simulations, all written in php with mySQL, to teach about the nature of science (nos).

Students, working in groups, would study some virtual phenomenon. Each group would represent a research center, so the class as a whole was a scientific community, a community of learners. And how would they communicate with one another? They could hold symposia, but better (and here is the main innovation in that project), they would publish tiny papers in a shared online journal.

Journal, then, is an effort to make part of this happen for students using CODAP. As a first step, we'll re-implement the four-color universe (called univ here).

To make it work, there are several modules:

• univ itself is a CODAP plugin; it's where students make observations and collect data.
• writer is a separate web app where students write papers and submit them for publication. This is not in CODAP.
• editor is another app where the journal editor (the teacher, usually) evaluates the manuscripts and decided whether to publish them.
• admin is yet another app where a teacher creates a new world and the student teams.