Remixing elearning Scott Wilson, Glasgow 16/3/06 Publisher’s Note: This presentation was given at the CETIS Educational Content SIG (Special Interest Group) Meeting at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow held 17 March 2006.
What this talk is about Web services Learning networks Connected systems Web 2.0 The e-Framework
1. Some background
Connected=better? People obtain benefits from being connected into networks and communities Systems connected into networks and meta-systems gain benefits not available to isolated systems Metcalfe’s Law
Connecting with pedagogy Six degrees - social networks - COPs Connectivism - the network is the learning PLE - placing the learner at the centre of the network
Connections The internet is all about connections Connections can be made that break out of hierarchies (trees) and enable overlapping semilattice structures Overlaps and fuzzy boundaries are characteristic of ‘natural’ or ‘open’ systems
1+1=3? When you combine the features of two systems, you can get unexpected synergies
2. examples
http://www.scipionus.com/katrina.html
http://www.chicagocrime.org/types/theft/58/
http://www.marumushi.com/apps/flickrgraph
More Postgenomic - mixing weblogs and folksonomies with traditional research papers http://www.postgenomic.com Delicious library - mixing the desktop library and the online book store 43Things, 43Places, 43People…
3. technology
Where does the magic happen? As well as the web for humans, there is an increasingly large web for machines, too It talks the same protocol (HTTP) as the more visible web, but uses dialects of XML (or RDF) instead of HTML
Web Services A web service is when someone provides a service on the web for machines as well as (or instead of) for people The most common type is a feed - an XML representation of a list of posts, media (podcast), or news
Apple desktop widgets using web service APIs
Feeds Feeds are useful educationally as they are an attenuation device: they reduce the variety of the network to a selection of important sources We can then mix, sort, group, rate and annotate the resources Feeds aren’t just for resources, the same basic technology is also used for people (FOAF) and events (iCalendar)
Other types of services Other services enable the creation or modification of resources rather than just getting alternative representations These we (in the PLE project) tend to call “conduits” For example, there is a standard protocol for posting a new entry in a weblog
Conduits Conduits are extremely useful as they provide a feed-forward mechanism - we can share our mixes with others It also means we can separate hosting from authoring, something taken advantage of by a huge range of desktop weblog clients
Discovery Feeds tend to be advertised on sites using common icons There are also tags in HTML that can be used to automatically find associated feeds Complete sets of services (APIs) often have their own page on a site with descriptions of how to use them
4. education
Educational Web Services Feeds and conduits are increasingly common on the web, but are there any specific things we’d like in education? For example, what about being able to get feeds of courses rather than articles? Or post an essay for marking rather than a post?
There are quite a lot… Enrollment (who’s on what course) Reading lists Timetables Curriculum/prospectus Portfolios Learning designs/activities
Enter the e-Framework A collaborative effort by JISC, DEST, SURF, NZ MoE and others to make sense of web services in education Identifying the possible kinds of services, and try out solutions, help implementers, and agree specifications Also looking at identifying services in common with other domains in education, like research and administration
Reference models Envisaging how services can be combined to support an educational process or address an area of concern Assessment, portfolios, personal learning, learning activities, course validation, curriculum management…
More links http://www.elframework.org http://www.cetis.ac.uk/members/ple http://www.cetis.ac.uk/members/scott