[senit] Learning Platforms

hi can anyone clarify the differences between

On 29/04/2008, david fettes <davidfettes3 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> hi can anyone clarify the differences between
>  VLE
>  MLE
>  Learning Platform?

David, this often crops up,
They're pretty much interchangeable really.

VLE & Learning Platform are names for the classroom-facing environment
used by students and teachers.
MLE integrates this with the school admin or records systems or MIS.

>  secondly, where does local PC based software eg
>  special needs access & switch software fit into
>  any and all of these models?

As most VLEs are web applications then the answer is not very well as
they are local applications and so need installing on each PC. The
could be shared over Thin Client networks along side the web. We can
probably expect web versions of many titles to become available as the
web becomes more the platform of choice. This does have advantage that
you can access from any computer with just a web browser.

>  what about local access devices eg IWBs,touchscreens,
>  switches?

If they can work with the browser and the web applications are well
written then  such devices should work just fine. If they, or a
software driver, emulate keyboard and mouse they should work with some
configuration. More complex Assistive Technologies like screen readers
require much closer interaction and this requires collaboration
between the AT, browser and web applications. Technically this uses
something call the platform Accessibility API (MSAA, AT-SPI, IA2,
UIA).

A new standard from W3C called WAI-ARIA is going to be critical for
such dynamic web applications as web sites that use it can let the ATs
know about updates to the web page. So you will soon want to look on
all the 'boxes' to see if ARIA is supported. Mozilla Firefox fully
supports ARIA and the IE8 Beta has added some support.

That's the long answer but hopefully will give you a bit of a picture
of what's involved.

-- 
Steve Lee
--
Open Source Assistive Technology Software
web: fullmeasure.co.uk
blog: eduspaces.net/stevelee/weblog