USING MASHUP TO CREATE A NEW PLATFORM FOR TEACHING ENGLISH IN THE E-LEARNING ENVIRONMENT Bakhtiar SADEGHI, Mona YAZDANJOO Islamic Azad University Zanjan Branch, Islamic Azad University Maragheh Branch
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Abstract: In our electronic society, e-learning is one of the major part in learning language and professional scientific courses. One of the main challenges in nowadays exploded data especially in elearning domains is to find the highest quality resources that empower learners achieve long life learning in a short period of time. After web2, there will appear a Mashup tools to merging verity of data and services in the same semantic affairs in contrast to traditional portal. To build a better e-learning course we try to adopt Mashup to fuse data and create a new structure based on demands. So, visualization and combination is basic abilities in Mashup that promote designing successful learning process. Basic innovation of this paper is to customize Mashup online tools to develop a novel and unique software platform in e-learning environment, based on current online services to extend reliable and flexible learning courses. The issue of educational technology has played a main role in language learning. Built-in Mashup evaluate appropriate criteria in such platform for English language teaching, to improve performance and eliminate mentioned problems. Implementing such tools improve the learner’s performance in a way that they are certain of using a right activity. Keywords: Mashup, e-learning platform, ELT.
I.
INTRODUCTION
Invoking Mashup, in the recent software application, is a good point to obtain new and robustness service. It is made up by other services, that inherit what properties we like, merge them together to create a new and unique structure that provide a collection of heterogeneous services. Mashup originally emerged to mix and combine data and services in the large environment to apply in the verity of topics. It can be evolved to have a larger Web data environment which is much more useful than invoked services. Mashup introduces delicate type of service without designing new one, however; it doesn’t need a high professional knowledge of programming. It can be mentioned that Mashup tries to fetch new web services, like API (Application Programming Interface), and those uses widely in web 2.0 to reuse in different types of subjects that most of the time become better than using it solely. So, there are some Mashup frameworks that provide a combination of services to different proposes. For example, some of news services, such as weather forecasting are using Google map as main service for Mashup to be more applicable Figure 1. Nowadays there are numbers of Mashup in World Wide Web uses Google map. It is clear that there are different numbers of API used by Mashup, related to services that Mashup developer wants to produce. Figure 1 shows amount of API uses in 2007, the point is that increasing a number of services and API, RSS (Really Simple Syndication). Atom and other web based feed has a potential to improve and reach a high quality services in E-learning. So we propose a backplane to produce a Mashup script that is able to become an active online service in the E-learning. Combining services based on
technical matters and instructing skills in distant-learning standards, is applied in this study to prepare a script structure.
Figure 1. Number of API [5] A web page or application, fuse data and services from two or more online resources that lead to creating a new mixture of services, is a kind of formal definition for Mashup. In order to cover a wide variety of our requirements, it is essential to implement Mashup as online tools. In order to develop applicable Mashup we observe samples such as: Intel-mash maker, Google-Mashup editor and Microsoft-Pobfly. We finally prefer EMML (Enterprise Mashup Markup Language) language to create Mashup. Our selection is based on following reasons: first, EMML is a language that will be interpreted by web server and second, it is strongly use Xpath that structured as XML (Extensible Markup Language). EMML is very flexible toward fetching any kinds of data and information in order to combine and filter them. Interpreted EMML finally produces XML format for output. We try to find at least two valid web services that provide English language teaching in the field of Task-based approach to create appropriate platform regard to improving ELT. In fact by combining available online Task-based services, we suggest a new service that characterized as; combination of online Tasks to provide much better backplane based on new transaction and services. The next sections will be specified to Mashup structure based on mentioned features, following it, we analyse the output for feed application to present a web-based service helping English language learners and teachers. In this case to create outcome by Mashup, we involve the results in the user interface environment. By merging and combining data from the original services, our purpose in this study is to promote learning quality and extend more services for Language Learning, with regard to provide specified platform for TBLT (Task-Based Language Teaching). Based on such an aim our paper is organized in the following sections: In section II we will explain about EMML structure and necessities for running a script to take information over the web servers that create a result in XML format. Then, in the next sub-section the XML elements will be explained. In section III the ELT issues in TBLT based on Mashup will be proposed. Finally, in section IV we will discuss the application designed as a platform. Section V is specified to user guide explanation and the screenshot related to the platform.
II.
MASHUP SCRIPT PRODUCED BY EMML
OMA (Open Mashup Alliance) is a non-profit consortium try to develop and expand Mashup solution services with reusability property like EMML. It is a type of language that developer in any level of programming can create a script to fetch data and web services in order to gather them in special format. In fact this structure is derived from XML and you can arrange any data with userdefined elements to be interpreted. There are special elements and attributes to retrieve or mix data from different resources on the web. EMML language provides a rich set of high-level Mashup-domain vocabulary to consume and mash a variety of Web data-sources in flexible ways. EMML provides a uniform syntax to invoke heterogeneous service styles: REST, WSDL, RSS/Atom, RDBMS, and POJO. The EMML language also provides ability to mix diverse data formats: XML, JSON, JDBC, Java Objects, and primitive types [Wikipedia]. These characteristics are eligible to create a web-based training innovation. Some
tools required to run Mashup script to retrieve and collect data are: JDK (Java Development Kit) 1.5 or above, Linux, MAC or WINDOWS OS (operating system) and J2EE server. For the reason of compatibility and other successful sample we choose Apache tomcat 5.5 under windows OS as compatible application server. After that, we install EMML runtime engine to invoke it in Apache server that adopt it for windows successfully. Following these, configuration is ready to create a Mashup in e-learning as a platform. The goal is that the learners or teachers of English not only limited solely to one type of task but also, to exploit other available services at the same time. Due to this fact Mashup is able to create a highlighting platform for language learning in compare to other current online learning services. So, Mashup code runs in the Apache server and produces the output successfully to use as input for final phase of software implementation. Sample Code (1) listed below with .emml extension, has been used for creating Mashup. It invoked two web servers to query a word ‘letter’ and construct output elements in XML file. Code (1) Mashup code {$search} {$google} In the first phase we ran Code (1) script in the Apache server as primary code, querying resources on the internet to produce final output data in the XML format. It can be used by users in the software environment. The code has been shown, is a very simple example act as input for the second phase. We apply more elements and attributes like “join”, “merge” and “filter” in the EMML language to obtain more reliable, flexible data that resign the most refined output. More explanation about the construction of EMML and the essential roles like “namespaces” is available on http://www.openmashup.org/ 2.1
Producing XML result
Producing XML output plays a major role in improving performance layout in client side. The web services and resources invoked by Mashup have different output file formats which has been created with some elements and attributes. Of course this structure can be modified and outlined based on our demands, needs and goals and the authentic services we would like to apply. The output XML; Code (2) include multiple elements, provide presentation about yahoo outcome. As the code shows, element produces as a root for XML. It has forced to generate by Mashup script in EMML, Code (1). It is clear that other elements describe their own data, based on the query that has been sent to the server. Because, in this case of study fetched data is not necessary to explain real elements data is changed by dot. This well-formed XML contains data will be used by learners. But, certainly it is
difficult and more complicated to exploit such a structure by user, so we decided to implement a software application as a unique platform to improve the applicability of information. We try to present it as a client tier for user that will be explained in the IV section. Code (2) XML output code
