PALO Educational Modelling Language Home Page

PALO language Home Page
DEMOS	.UNED University

Brief Description	PALO is a proposal of Educative Modelling Language to describe and design learning content and learning environments at a high level of abstraction using learning content ontologies and conceptual maps to search and retrieve small-granularity Learning Objects. PALO is based on a reference framework to design educative content based in levels of abstraction. Each level identifies a certain group of related components or elements of a learning resource. The language allows to define teaching strategies by mean of the definition of specific DTD's called *instructional templates* . This templates are a general type of PALO document that specially suits for a given instructional or teaching purpose. PALO has been designed to be a technology-independent representation of a learning reseource, thus allowing educative content interchange , interoperability, mantainability and reusability. A PALO description of a learning content (a .palo file) can be turned into a variety of learning scenarios (each one built using an specific delivery format) via a compiling* process. Educative content written in PALO has been tested since academic yesr 99/00 at the SENSEI educative web site of the Dept. of Languages and Computer Systems of UNED University. During current year, 2003/2004 open courses written in PALO are on use in SENSEI website.
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Examples & DEMOS	PALO has been in use sice 1998. Actually, more than 700 students access to a variety of Courses developed and written in PALO Language. Examples: Some PALO definition and their corresponding learning environment s can be browsed at the DIVILAB web page. DEMOS See the DEMO page with real applications of PALO Language at UNED University.
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Links & Papers	Some publications related to PALO language: Ph. D. Thesis (In Spanish!) [HTML] "Una Arquitectura Cognitiva para el Diseño de Entornos Telemáticos de Ensñanza y Aprendizaje" Director: M. Felisa Verdejo Sep 2000 Conference Papers Overview of the PALO EML (IEEE Frontiers In Education FIE '99 Conference paper) [HTML] [PDF] Uses of PALO to build Educational Web-sites (IFIP 99) [HTML] (Building Electronic Educational Environments, Kluwer Ac. Publishers, 1999) Ontologies for learning content modeling and their use with PALO Language [PDF] (TET '99 conference, Norway) PALO Language uses for Higher Education [PDF] (Computers and Ed. in the 21st Century. Kluwer Ac. publishers, 2000) Constructivism & PALO Language (IEEE Frontiers in Education FIE '01 Conference) [PDF] Journals Rodriguez-Artacho M. and Verdejo, M. F. "Modeling Educational Content: The Cognitive Approach of the PALO Language" in Journal of Educational Technology & Society (Vol. 7 # 3, 2004) Other UNED Research Group in Cooperative Systems and Learning Technologies Older publications are available in the STEED website Technical Reports: PALO Language Overview (Jan 2002) [Draft version] CEN/ISSS Survey on Educational Modelling Languages (Sept 2002) Presentations CEN/ISSS 9th Meeting in Torino (2001) --- Track on Educational ML's A view of Learning Content (1 slide, 2003): PPT Authoring Learning Content: Why Learning Objects and why Modelling Languages (2004): PPT Activities and uses of Educative Modelling Languages European Comission: Fifth Framework Program DiviLAB project uses of PALO language CEN activities related to Standardization of Learning Technologies SURVEY of Educational Modelling Languages CETIS Comments to the EML-PT Meeting at Torino (Italy) Oct 2001 Links to other proposals of Educative Modelling Languages EML (Educational Modelling Language) - Open Univ. Nederland (See Also IMS-LD) TML (Tutorial Markup Language) UML (Universal Learning Format) Targeteam PML (Procedural Mark-up Language) LMML (Learning Material Markup Language) -University of Passau TeachML -University of the Army Forces, Germany
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Tutorials	Basically a PALO compiler is a software tool that turns this file into this environment. A PALO overview can be found in the Technical Report mentioned above.
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Tools & SOFTWARE	PALO files are processed using a PALO Compiler called `paloc.` This tool was developed in PERL and based in the SGML parser developed by Earl Hood. The compiler is invoked and configured from an visual interface developed in Tk/Tcl. Software is available for academic and archeological purposes but take seriously into account that: 1st) It is NOT a formal distribution and it is not supported, 2nd) It is a complete mess!! No one has reported so far to get it installed. Please don't ask how! We are currently working on a freely available version of PALO compiler in Java. PALO compiler will have GPL copyright policy. Volunteers can join with an email to miguel.rodriguez AT ieee.org
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History	PALO Language has been developed thanks to the support of the Spanish Ministery of Science and Technology and the CICYT comission in the framework of the STEED Project. PALO is not an acronym. The name of the language is inspired by the name of the the small city of El Palo, located at the east of Malaga, in Spain.

Miguel R. Artacho LTCS Group