elearning2.0

First, let me say that I'm in favour of conserving Joshua's bandwidth and cycles, so I am not recommending this as a permanent solution or for high-traffic sites. What follows is in the spirit of experimenting with these great service-oriented functionalities to see how we can make it easy for real authors to effectively mash up their own links and content.

OK. We've been planning to do some work, starting with simple Plone content types, to help editors, authors and site-managers to pull social bookmarks into their content. Since del.icio.us, for instance, delivers wonderfully flexible RSS, it is pretty easy to bring bookmarked links into portlets or RSS-feed objects. In other words, it is easy to include delicious RSS wherever a separate content object might be expected.

But real-world authors want to be able to include links within their content, not in separate objects. So much so that they will hand-edit links into their page content even when those links have already been collected into tags or containers. We here at KnowNet developed our 'indexFolder' Plone container/content-type to help authors with similar issues, but it is a tad demanding of their awareness of containment (see the NGRF site for plentiful examples of bringing listings into page content). We're well-aware that this style of 'object-wise' editing does not appeal to people without computer science or engineering degrees. Developers must find ways to make it easier for ordinary editors and authors to create the content they want and benefit from the goodness of logical links-objects.

The editors of the NGRF site have been 'getting' the power of social-bookmarking lately, and have started to assemble a useful resource at their del.icio.us account. While drafting an email to them about options for leveraging that resource within the NGRF site, it occurred to me that a very easy technique already exists for bringing 'live' links lists into discursive site content, using the del.icio.us javascript linkroll feature. This post explains how to do that.

Two more caveats before explaining the technique:

• It depends on javascripts which fetch content from del.icio.us before the rest of the page loads. Thus it can sometimes be a bit slow, and sometimes appears a bit wonky, and will only display if javascript is available and enabled ( fallback is to link to delicious/tag etc )
• It requires editing "raw html". If you are used to a WYSIWYG editor like kupu, you'll have to go into 'raw' editing mode briefly to paste the special code. In kupu and ecto the link for 'raw editing mode' looks like "<>".

In its favour though, the technique is completely independent of your content-publishing system - you can use it anywhere you can edit web content - and very easy to place in a particular context within your own words and pictures - just choose where you paste the special code. It also has the great merit of working now, with absolutely no further work needed to get some useful content brewing. Read the rest of this entry for a full explanation and to see some rather arbitrary examples.

Technorati Tags: social-bookmarking del.icio.us structured-blogging elearning2.0 elearning web2.0 content2.0 authoring how-to

Graham Attwell has just asked for some help sorting out 'repositories' in his head, from the point of view of project-funded researchers who want to publicly share the work which they post on project sites.

I have sort of tracked the repositories debate over the last couple of years but have lost sense of where it is going. Now i need to sort out a couple of questions in my head. It seems to me one of the problems is that repositories have always been envisaged as institution wide or cross institution things.

I'm not completely sure where Graham is going with this, since I know him to be aware of lightweight social software tools as well as heavier-weight educational materials repositories, digital libraries and content management systems. I am going to interpret that Graham's line of pondering went something like :

1. Is there an easy way for ordinary researchers to share their documents with - and make them discoverable by - the wider world?
2. Is there a 'best way' to do that, different from the 'easy way'?
3. Where is the development of educational or research 'repositories' going, and if it is not dead, is this the way to do [1]?
4. What is the relationship between the lightweight 'social bookmarking' services and the more controlled and featureful repositories and digital libraries?
5. Is there a middle way between ad-hoc tagging and controlled metadata vocabularies, so that us mortals can tag our materials to make them discoverable?
6. What about content management systems and tools such as Plone and KNotes?

I'll try to say a bit about each of those questions below, but my main reasons for replying are to point out just two things: (a) a way to approximate [1] now using very simple and widely available tools, and (b) work that I've started planning which should make more sense of [4, 5 and 6] above.

I've posted this because I think it is an excellent illustration of the way people are using ICT for learning. It is a message posted to the UK based, BECTA ICT Research Network which operates through a list server.

I was wondering if anyone had any experience or references as to how to set up moblogs for young learners. Is there any way that you can have e.g. a class run their own private moblogs that are not available to the public but at the same time have them be able to respond to one another's blogs?

Hi

Graham Attwell asked if I could assemble some information to help answer Mette's question about how to set up moblogs for young students.

One option in the medium-term would be to use an open-source weblog-publishing solution such as KNotes - which we here at KnowNet are about to release ( http://www.knownet.com/products/product-info/knotes ). An advantage of using KNotes in particular is that we built it specifically to integrate into easy-to-manage general-purpose community web sites based on Zope and Plone, and especially concentrated on making it customisable so that educators could experiment with innovative features. We do not yet have a moblogging plugin for email-to-weblog, but could easily do so. The disadvantage of KNotes - or any blog publishing software in itself, is that you need access to a server to install and run it on, and some server-admin expertise.

If you cannot run your own server, you'll need to create account(s) on a moblog-hosting service provider. There are many providers which publicise such a service, and probably many others who might host your students' moblogs for you but are not 'in the moblog business'. For instance, we ourselves intend to provide server space for interesting edu-blogging experiments next year. Most weblog-publishing solutions can be easily adapted to allow blog entries with photo etc attachments to be created from email messages, so there is really nothing all that special about the 'mob' in moblog if posting is going to be based on emails.

Assuming that you want access to a *free* and hosted service, I've assembled a set of shared bookmarks on the subject in my del.icio.us account. See the links below for the tags 'moblogging' and 'services/moblogging' at my del.icio.us/mike_malloch account. You can probable find many other links by browsing from the 'who else bookmarked this' links ( eg 'and 4 others') for each del.icio.us bookmark - these lead to lists of other people who bookmarked that link.

First let me note a few particularly important links:

1 :: the wikipedia entry for moblogging has some good links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moblog

2:: flickr, the extremely popular photo-sharing service, hosts free photo/web logs

http://www.flickr.com
Show off your favorite photos to the world. Blog the photos you take with a cameraphone. Securely and privately show photos to your friends and family across the country. Basic accounts are free and are ad-supported.

3 :: photoblogs.org has a useful collection of links

http://wiki.photoblogs.org/wiki/Photoblog_Hosting

4 ::websoup.org also has some good links

http://www.websoup.org/resources/links.php?cat=83

5 :: the tag ' moblogging' in my shared bookmarks

http://del.icio.us/Mike_Malloch/moblogging

6:: the tag ' services/moblogging' in my shared bookmarks - these are services. mostly free

http://del.icio.us/Mike_Malloch/services/moblogging

Finally, let me note that if you truly want the moblogs to be free of cost, you'll have to come up with a workflow for posting from the cameraphones without incurring phone charges. From a desktop email client, it should cost absolutely nothing to post to a weblog, but from a mobile phone there will usually be quite costly charges. If the phones are bluetooth-enabled, I would recommend that - instead of posting directly from their phones to the weblogs - the students first transfer their photos to a desktop computer by bluetooth and then post them from that computer using free, internet-based email. In fact, once their photos are on a desktop computer with an internet connection, they can be posted to any standards-compliant weblog without any special 'moblogging' software or service, using 'weblog editing API' clients such as ecto [ http://ecto.kung-foo.tv ]. For instance, I grab photos from my ericsson K750i over bluetooth to my apple powerbook, then upload them to flickr using one of several 'flickr API' tools for mac OS-X [ http://del.icio.us/Mike_Malloch/APIs/Flickr ], or attach them to posts I write using ecto.

If you can strike a deal with a mobile telephony service provider, or if you are willin to pay for phone charges, some of the services listed in my shared bookmarks use special software loaded into the telephones ( these are tagged as http://del.icio.us/Mike_Malloch/client-tech/mobile ). Some of them do not require special software on the mobile phone itself, and use the phone's ability to send email.

I hope these links are useful. If you decide that you're interested in KNotes, please let me know. Over the next 6 months or so, we hope to be able to free some time to get involved with some educators with hosted experiments using/adapting KNotes for educational weblogging / photoblogging / videoblogging / podcasting etc.

regards

Mike Malloch

Begin forwarded message:

> From: ictrn 
> Date: 30 August 2005 15:13:22 GMT+02:00
> To: research /at/ lists.becta.org.uk
> Subject: [ICT Research Network] moblogs
> Reply-To: Becta's ICT Research Network 
>
>
> Hello all!
>
> I was wondering if anyone had any experience or references as to  
> how to
> set up moblogs for young learners. Is there any way that you can have
> e.g. a class run their own private moblogs that are not available  
> to the
> public but at the same time have them be able to respond to one
> another's blogs?
>
> My wish is to set up an experiment where students aged ca. 16 are  
> given
> free reign to make their own blog using texting and pictures from  
> camera
> phones and thereby creating a kind of community around the blogs. My
> problem is that my funding is pretty much nonexistent  
> (surprise...). Any
> ideas on how this can be done on free software?
>
> Regards,
>
> Mette Berth
>
> PhD, Department of Communication
>
> Roskilde University, Denmark
>
> mett@ruc.dk
>

--------------

Mike Malloch, Software Architect, KnowNet Ltd

post:	6 Menai View Terrace, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2HF, WALES
web:	http://www.knownet.com
email:	mike /at/ theknownet.com
phone: +44 (0) 1248 360254
fax: +44 (0) 870 755 9849
weblogs:
      c-Learning:  http://knownet.com/writing/weblogs/Mike_Malloch
      KNotations (technical): http://knownet.com/Members/mmalloch/blog
bookmarks:
      http://del.icio.us/mike_malloch
      http://www.connotea.org/user/MikeMalloch
photos:
      http://www.flickr.com/photos/mike_malloch

I've been meaning to dig into wikisource more closely for a while. Inspired to have a look by seeing this noted in the de.lirio.us: entries RSS feed. Ahhh... the Levellers. For some reason this resonates like DADGAD tuning for me, I guess thanks to the punkfolkistas of the same name, and of course to the sublime World Turned Upside Down (by Leon Rosselson) so powerfully rendered by the great Dick Gaughan.

It seems appropriate. Wikipedia, wikisource and similar efforts are modern examples of mass democratic movements, 'great levellers'. And they work! Amazed and delighted, me...

The Agreement Of The People. The Levellers' Manifesto, printed 30 April 1649

Oh - and it turns out I've been wrong all these years trying to play TWTUD in DADGAD :o) Dick comments on all the tracks in Handful of Earth at footstompin.com, including notes of tuning and capo. His remarks about peaceful revolutions and violent counter-revolution are worth reading as well!

So much has been written in recent years about this period of English history that there's not much I could add here.

The English Civil War, which was in fact simply a Bourgeois Revolution, left many of its early supporters feeling cheated and betrayed.The Diggers were Christian, pacifist and could be described as primitive communists.

The conclusion of the song, in my interpretation, is that, as they were not prepared to defend themselves, they were annihilated. The evidence of history is that revolutions are usually peaceful - but the resulting counter-revolution is usually extremely bloody and ruthless. Anyone who believes that any ruling class will give up power without extreme resistance is living in a different dimension.

The guitar tuning used here was DADDAE with a capo at the 2nd fret

Technorati Tags: political folk music, social software

I am just noting here a reference I found to a recent book similar to the paper by De Cort which Graham cites in his recent entry...

I stumbled on this one the other day in a book I helped edit (can't find the book on line - must put it there but related papers can be found here) . Interestingly it was developed for work based learning - and pre-dates the advent of e-learning. Nevertheless I think it stands up pretty well in the e-learning age.

Aha! I have also just added a connotea shared bookmark for De Corte et al 2003. I had been frustrated trying to use the connotea bookmarklet from the Elsevier entry, but there must be a connotea plugin for Amazon - I got a nice citation from there. I'll try to remember that Amazon is the place to go to 'connotea-ise' any book. I may alter my ecto plugins to reflect this... what a rich and wonderful world this web is becoming :o).

Amazon link for Powerful Learning Environments

POWERFUL LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

Unravelling Basic Components and Dimensions

Elsevier link for Powerful Learning Environments

Buy online with a credit card in the Elsevier Science & Technology Bookstore: http://books.elsevier.com/elsevier/?isbn=0080442757

Edited by E. De Corte, Department of Educational Sciences, University of Leuven, Belgium, Email: erik.decorte@ped.kuleuven.ac.be L. Verschaffel, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Belgium, Email: lieven.verschaffel@ped.kuleuven.ac.be N. Entwistle, Moray House, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, Email: noel_entwistle@education.ed.ac.uk J. van Merriënboer, Open University, Heerlen, The Netherlands, Email: jeroen.vanmerrienboer@ou.nl

Included in series Advances in Learning and Instruction,

Description Over the past ten to fifteen years the international scene of research on learning and instruction has witnessed the emergence of important and promising developments. New theoretical frameworks, design principles, and research methodologies focusing on the construction, implementation, and evaluation of powerful learning environments have been put forward, coming from three intersecting subdomains within the broader field of research on learning and instruction - namely instructional psychology, instructional technology, and instructional design. Although it is obvious that the developments in those three subdomains are characterized by similarities and convergencies, there are still important differences. Therefore, there is a great need for scientific debate and attempts to integrate, or justify, the contrasting theoretical frameworks, methodological approaches, and empirical outcomes.

A European research network, coordinated by the Center for Instructional Psychology and Technology of the University of Leuven, has been set up to work towards this end. The present volume is the first collective output of this European research network, and focuses on unravelling and identifying basic component and dimensions of powerful learning environments. It is based on the presentations and discussions that constituted the "piece de resistance" of a first meeting of the research network.

Contents General Perspectives on Components and Dimensions of Powerful Learning Environments. Identifying and Measuring Components and Dimensions of Powerful Learning Environments: Experiences and Reflections. Design and Application of Technological Tools to Support Learning in Powerful Learning Environments. The Role of Peer Tutoring and Collaboration for Promoting Conceptual Change and Intentional Learning in Different Content Domains.

Bibliographic & ordering Information Hardbound, ISBN: 0-08-044275-7, 266 pages, publication date: 2003 Imprint: PERGAMON Price: Order form USD 85 EUR 85 GBP 56.50