AlgoViz : An Online Educational Community for Algorithm Visualizations

1. AlgoViz.org : An Online Educational Community for Algorithm Visualizations Jonathan Park : Carnegie Mellon University Clifford A. Shaffer Stephen H. Edwards Alexander Joel D. Alon Monika Akbar The goal of AlgoViz.org is to increase algorithm visualization (AV) use in classrooms through the support of an active online education community. We are studying ways to go beyond the Digital Library model of providing content, instead focusing on how user-driven content (ratings of AVs, forum discussions of AV uses and needs) can build more active community participation. Methodology The website was created using the content management system Drupal. Using community contributed modules and custom PHP code, the following features were implemented into our website: • AV of the Day1 The AV of the Day showcases high-quality AVs. This includes an automated twitter update to the AlgoViz twitter account. A cron job is used to reset the AV everyday at midnight. • RPX Sign-In2 • A login method similar to OpenID, but includes a larger range of login providers. For more information, visit http://rpxnow.com • Wiki Migration3 • In an attempt to make our site more centralized, we are migrating all the content on our wiki site (wiki.algoviz.org) onto the Drupal site. The catalog menu and annotated bibliography is complete but this is still an ongoing project. Ongoing Work This website is a work in progress. Several features are still being implemented. Single-Sign On (SSO)4 SSO is a login method with the concept “Sign on once, logged in everywhere.” We tried to implement SSO in two different ways: SSO module: An in-house module developed for the purpose of allowing any Drupal site to support login via SSO. Central Authentication Service (CAS): A single-sign on protocol for the web developed at Yale University. Catalog Entries5 We would like to store all AV catalog entries from the wiki site on the Drupal site. New Features 1 2 3 Upcoming Features 4 5 OR Contacts Cliff Shaffer: shaffer@cs.vt.edu Steve Edwards: edwards@cs.vt.edu A.J. Alon: alon@vt.edu Jonathan Park: parkjo@cs.vt.edu Monika Akbar: amonika@cs.vt.edu http://algoviz.org