MEDEV

School of Medical Sciences Education Development

Justin Ball from Tatemae and project partner in the JISC RI SupOERGlue, recently posted on the Open Tapestry blog about APIs/LTI and open content. Reposted below with permission.

Open Content, APIs and LTI. (October 2, 2012 by jbasdf)

The clip and remix capabilities offered by Open Tapestry naturally cause our users to ask, “Where do I get content?”. Part of what we offer users at Open Tapestry is simplified search and recommendations over millions of Open Resources. Our mission is to integrate with everyone and which helps us to build out index of Open Content. To do this we partner with open content producers around the world. Back when Open Tapestry was still OER Glue with partnered with Newcastle University in the United Kingdom to integrate with their dynamic learning maps. This has been a great opportunity to work with an incredible international team to bring content from Newcastle’s Dynamic Learning Maps project into Open Tapestry as well as provide users with Newcastle’s users with a simplified content creation process via Open Tapestry’s tools.

The result of this collaboration has been the development of an Open Tapestry API that we plan to make available for anyone to use. Documentation is coming but here’s some of the highlights:

1. Getting content into Open Tapestry

Adding content to Open Tapestry is simple assuming your content has an RSS or OAI interface. Just visit http://www.opentapestry.com/ and sign up for an account. Then click ‘My Tapestries’ to create a new Tapestry. Once the new Tapestry has been created click the ‘Weave’ button that shows up under the name of the Tapestry. A dialog will appear with the title ‘Weave Content Into’. Click on the ‘Harvest Content’ button on the right. Next select the type of data feed or content provider and enter the url and hit ‘Verify Address’. We’ll find the right urls and then begin indexing the data from the url or urls provided.

2. Getting content out of Open Tapestry via the API:

Get all tapestries for a given user:

If my user id is 182 then I can retrieve all my tapestries via the call:

http://www.opentapestry.com/api/users/182/tapestries.json

Get a given tapestry:

http://www.opentapestry.com/api/tapestries/1000.json

Get all items from a given tapestry:

http://www.opentapestry.com/api/tapestries/1000/items.json

Get all items for a given user:

http://www.opentapestry.com/api/users/182/items.json3

3. Integrate with Open Tapestry

Open Tapestry supports LTI integration which is supported by most of the major Learning Management Systems (LMS). Integration with the popular Canvas LMS is especially easy with a one button install available. Just visit http://www.opentapestry.com/canvas, enter the url of your Canvas installation and click ‘Click to Configure Instructure Canvas’.

If you are using a different LMS or other tool that supports LTI click on the link ‘Or View the Manual Canvas LTI Setup’ to view manual setup information.

Original post available at: http://blog.opentapestry.com/2012/10/02/open-content-apis-and-lti/