[OSGeo-Edu] Infrastructure and templates for training material

[Cameron Shorter]

OSGeo education list,
I'd like the LiveDVD documentation to adopt standard documentation 
templates and guidelines for all the projects installed on it, starting 
with Project Descriptions (which we have content for), then increasing 
to "Quick Start" project overviews, eventually growing into Tutorials, 
Workshops and Course material.

I'm hopeful that the documentation guidelines put in place for the 
LiveDVD will align with guidelines for the OSGeo education projects, 
hence the reason for starting by approaching this edu marketing list.

A few days back Tom Worthington (experienced in the business on Online 
Training), suggested making use of  Open Office and Word templates from 
Integrated Content Environment (ICE) http://ice.usq.edu.au/ , developed 
by the University of Southern Queensland, Australia, for the 
University's lecture creation.

Then use Moodle for collation and presentation of material.

ICE covers the key usability criteria of:
* Tools for creating documentation must be familiar to educators and 
developers, so it is easy for people to start writing. (ICE provides a 
plug in to word and open office)
* ICE templates allow documents to be created in standard templates, 
making it easy to apply consistent styling, and merge documents from 
multiple projects into one.
* ICE can produce HTML and PDF documents
* I think ICE docs can be stored in an XML format too, but I haven't 
worked out how to do that yet.

Another requirement we have is to be able to produce a standard 
PowerPoint (or Open Office Impress) and translate between the two 
formats without garbling styling. I'd also like to automatically merge 
slides from multiple powerpoint docs. I'm not sure if this is possible.

Does anyone on this list have experience with any of these tools and is 
able to offer advise or suggestions?
Or maybe suggest alternative tools, or alternative approaches?

-- 
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Solutions Manager
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254

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