Newsletter 31/07/2024

It’s been a while since our last update, and we’ve been busy attending conferences and gathering inspiring ideas to share with you.

eLearning Africa Conference 2024

We had an amazing time at the eLearning Africa Conference 2024! You can check out our entire workshop here:

https://liascript.github.io/blog/elearning-africa-2024/

The discussions and meetings were incredibly inspiring. One major issue highlighted was the challenge of language barriers in education. After much thought, we found a solution that combines animations with audio and video outputs to minimize these barriers. It’s surprising we didn’t think of this sooner, but now we’re confident this will revolutionize how courses are delivered.

A Quick Recap

We implemented the audio output feature on our flight back from Africa, while the video feature took a bit longer to finalize. André even presented a virtual contribution at the WeAreDevelopers Conference in Berlin, which summarizes our current work. The circular video cutout was the inspiration behind it! Check out the original pre-contribution here on YouTube:

Feel free to test the classrooms and let us know your thoughts!

To enhance the quick recording of videos and audio, we’ve integrated special functions into the Live-Editor.

https://liascript.github.io/LiveEditor/

We aim to develop this into a full-fledged alternative with a file tree and the ability to upload any files.

New Features and Enhancements

• Audio Links: Now supporting Spotify, SoundCloud, and Deezer.
• Feature Phone Support: Improved compatibility with phones like Nokia.
• WebTorrent Sharing: Courses can now be shared via WebTorrent. Learn More at https://liascript.github.io/blog/sharing-content-via-webtorrent/
• CPU-Intensive Scripts: Scripts requiring high CPU can be executed in a separate thread using <script worker="true" ....

Open Textbooks Project

During our visit to Africa, we recognized a significant need for accessible educational materials and textbooks in some countries. To address this, we began porting open textbooks to LiaScript. Although this process can be automated with a crawler, we need co-authors to enhance the content, make it interactive, and translate it. Learn more about this initiative on our blog:

Title: What Do Poland and Arnold Schwarzenegger Have in Common?

https://liascript.github.io/blog/what-do-poland-and-arnold-schwarzenegger-have-in-common/

World Map of Projects

We’ve added a map on our website to showcase locations and projects, but it’s still a bit empty. If you have projects to list, please create a pull request or send us the information, and we’ll link them!

https://liascript.github.io/world-map/

Thank you for your continued support and enthusiasm. Stay tuned for more updates!

PS: University: Future Festival

We have tried to apply some ideas for LiaScript onto RemoteLabs, which can also be created as OER, stored on GitHub and be reused and modified. Here is a link to our presentation, where we open and share 4 different remote-labs only by using the browser.