I have been habitually behind in getting our open Source Maricopa Learning eXchange (MLX) into shape for others to use. As some have chided me, there is not much up at SourceForge but a place holder. We have an open demo version that will fold in the new changes as they continue to develop; but you can create accounts, create packages, and use all the features from our first generation Maricopa Learning eXchange in the open demo site:
http://zircon.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx247/
It is fairly alpha if that right now.
Last year, there was a lofty plan to have it ready for the June New Media Consortium, but I ended up waving my arms at the possibilities. I am rather intent in getting at least a beta available for this year’s NMC conference.
I did have an internal project that has asked for an MLX site- The National Association of Community College Teacher Education Programs, housed in our district office, wanted a “Members Learning eXchange” for their members to post shared resources. At first I thought I’d have it ready in December, than March, and finally, I cooked up a demo version for their meeting last week (nothing like a deadline to move a programmer). While I cannot share a link, a screen shot shows the first variant of an openMLX site:
Notes:
- Customized header created in CSS. The color scheme was shifted from our regular “browns” to their “blues”
- Customized tab navigation. A single configuration provides the navigation tabs (for this demo the “collections” and “feed” pages were not available, so they are hidden, and we can add a tab that links to the organizations web site.
- Colored callout boxes- a style sheet does the formatting, content is read from include files. An admin site will provide editing tools to update the “new” listings.
- A customized local footer can be used on all pages.
Well there is a lot more work to do, but I am hones on getting some source code to put online by June.
Mea Culpa In the mode of hasty blogging, I neglected to mention that Cheryl Colan did the CSS re-design that you see above, helping us move out of the 1000 vintage table-based HTML layouts. Still fine-tuning the details and trying to structure the CSS to make it easy for local edits.
What, no credit for helping with the CSS? 😉