Learning Technology Blog Aggregator

Scott Wilson's Workblog—Drag and drop with HTML 5 and Wookie

There are a lot of cool things about HTML 5, the standard for the next generation of the web, but drag and drop is one of those obvious ideas that makes you wonder why we've never had it before. So I've put together a quick demo to show how HTML 5 drag and drop works.

To see this demo you must be using Firefox 3.5, which is currently the only browser which has support for it - but expect others to follow suit over the next year or two. This demo also uses widgets served on a wookie server, but its not dependent on widgets at all - its just a handy thing to demonstrate drag and drop with.

Below is a Google Maps widget, and this is the drag source. The marker in the map widget has its draggable attribute set to "true", which switches on dragging. I've also attached a function to it that adds an image of the marker to the drag, and specifies the information the drag event should contain (in this case, the name of the city you searched for).

Next is a Weather widget, and this is the drop target. I've added an ondrop attribute to its main <div> element, with a function that changes the current location of the widget using a text value dropped on it.

To try this out now, search for one of the cities the weather widget supports (Manchester, London, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Leeds...). Then drag the map marker onto the weather widget to see it update.

Now, this isn't amazingly clever, as there are some tricks with JavaScript than can do something similar. So, right-click each Widget and choose This Frame -> Open Frame in New Window, and then try it again. Now, try to think of a way to do that without HTML 5!

Even better, this works across domains, so if you have your own site or widget with a drop target defined on it, you can drag a marker from the map widget onto it. This means there is now a way to enable cross-site communication within the browser - opening up all kinds of new possibilities.

For more information on the HTML 5 specification, the Wikipedia entry is a good starting point. There is also an overview at W3C.

Open Education News—Justice Department Conducting Inquiry into Google Book Settlement


Miguel Helft at the New York Times is reporting that the Justice department has confirmed that they are conducted an antitrust inquiry into the Google book settlement. The Internet Archive is pleased with decision, saying that the DOJ “is taking the concerns that we have expressed seriously.” From the article:

Antitrust experts said the letter was the latest indication that the Justice Department is seriously examining complaints that the agreement would grant Google the exclusive right to profit from millions of so-called “orphan works,” books that are out of print and whose authors or rights holders are unknown or cannot be found.

Open Education News—USU OCW Development Stalled


In a recent blog post David Wiley pays tribute to Marion Jensen, who has been the head of USU OpenCourseWare. Due to budget cuts, Jensen is moving to a different employer, and work on USU OCW has stalled. From the blog post:

It’s heartbreaking to see the project come to an end. Hopefully, as Justin’s dissertation demonstrates that universities can provide a significant public good AND generate revenue at the same time through OCW, USU will reconsider its decision to shutter the program.

Open Education News—OA Benefits Outweigh Costs in Some European Countries


Knowledge Exchange has issued a press release announcing the results of cost/benefit studies for open access in Denmark, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. The studies concluded that each country could save tens or hundreds of millions per year. From the press release:

The findings from this modelling suggest that open access alternatives are likely to be more cost-effective mechanisms for scholarly publishing in a wide range of countries (both large and small).
Given the potential benefits, it does seem worth while to ensure that there is a level playing field between alternative publishing models. This will reduce the barriers to innovation in scholarly publishing.

Thanks to Gavin Baker at Open Access News for the link.

Open Education News—Opportunities and Challenges in OER


Norm Friesen has a new article about the opportunities and challenges in OER in the July 2009 Open Business Resource. The article provides an overview of wiki-based OER efforts and OCW-oriented projects. From the article:

Both wiki-based resource sets and collections of courseware must find long-term support or revenue. They must develop their particular work from the status of a project to become a program, organization or consortium. It is disquieting to read in a recent report on OER that “the majority of OER development” are generally still being “undertaken on a project basis”.

Thanks to Twitter users “hitthebutton” and “glynmoody” for the tweets.

Open Education News—Co-Founder of Flickr on Sharing


Eric Steuer has interviewed Caterina Fake, one of the founders of Flickr, on sharing. More specifically, Fake talks about changing expectations around sharing media and why websites need to adapt to those changes. Audio is also available. From the blog post:

If you go online today you will see stories about Obama sharing his private Flickr photos. So this is how far the world has come: our president is sharing photos of his life and experiences with the rest of the world, online. Our acceptance of public sharing has evolved a lot over the course of the past 15 years. And as people became increasingly comfortable sharing with each other—and the world—that lead to things that we didn’t even anticipate: the smart mob phenomenon, people cracking crimes, participatory media, subverting oppressive governments.

Scott Wilson's Workblog—Microsoft adopting W3C Widgets for mobile platforms

Some more good news for fans of Widgets and open standards: Microsoft has announced it intends to support the W3C Widgets specification in version 6.5 its Windows Mobile operating system.

The announcement on the team blog at Microsoft is welcome news, and I think we'll see some other big players join is as the specification reaches Candidate status in June.

Currently the anticipated support for the W3C specification seems to be strongest in the mobile community; however I think the synergy possible when developers can create widgets that will work across mobile, desktop, and web applications will see adoption spread much more widely.

I think being able to access a Widget in a course using Wookie, then grabbing it and putting it onto a smartphone - complete with its original context - would be a really compelling demo, and a good way to show how the PLE-VLE connection can work in practice.

OLDaily—Are institutions really problematic?

My answer is "yes", but of course there's more depth to my response than that. Much of the harm that comes from institutions, in my view, comes from the way they are structured and governed. But the answer isn't simply to launch oneself at institutions, hoping to (say) "fix them from within," or whatever. Tom Haskins says, "We also keep institutions the same by the ways we perceive, describe, evaluate and think about changing institutions. We inadvertently play into the perpetuation of 'problematic institutions' by the ways we value, favor, contribute, care, get fascinated, and show concern." There's a subtle point here, though. The more we try to fix institutions, the more we reinforce their value, and the more this entrenches their current modus operandi. (This last isn't what he is saying, but it's what follows from what he is saying). Tom Haskins, growing changing learning creating, July 3, 2009 [Tags: none] [Link] [Comment]

OLDaily—Formally Learning Informally


This year's EduBloggerCom at NECC was a bit smaller than previous years, as evidenced by the team photograph. But do check out their blogs (links are provided in the article). Darren Draper, Drape's Takes, July 3, 2009 [Tags: , , ] [Link] [Comment]

OLDaily—The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teachers

I'm not sure I completely endorse this list (I would word some of the items very differently) but it's a fun read. Milton Ramirez, education &amp; tech, July 3, 2009 [Tags: none] [Link] [Comment]

OLDaily—Learning Leaders Fieldbook

I have had the same problem as George Siemens. "After the presentation, a VP (in charge of training and development) approached me and stated that simple messages are preferable. I assumed this to mean that I had delivered a presentation that was too complex." And I ask with him, "when did leading thinkers in corporate learning conclude that their audience can not handle complex subjects?" or, with even more concern: how is it that our institutions promote people who cannot understand complex concepts to positions of leadership? Isn't that tantamount to mismanagement? George Siemens, elearnspace, July 3, 2009 [Tags: , , ] [Link] [Comment]

OLDaily—Those Jerks At the Vegan Restaurant Wouldn't Serve Me a Simple Egg Cream!

Nice analogy from Tom Hoffman. "The GPL is a radical political statement, and as radical political statements go, a damned successful one. If you didn't figure that out immediately, you need to work on your reading comprehension. If you want to eat eggs, go eat eggs, griping at the hippies shouldn't impress anyone." Tom Hoffman, Tuttle SVC, July 3, 2009 [Tags: none] [Link] [Comment]

OLDaily—21st century science, geography

Joanne Jacobs - who writes the most consistently negative (and partisan) blog in the edublogosphere - identifies some science and geography road maps showing how to integrate new skills into old subjects, and then spends her post looking at Common Core blog complaints about the chart. The refrain of oft-stated by the Common Core crowd: "Common Core also wonders how students can learn from the suggested activities if they haven't acquired any information." Leaving aside the question of whether learning is about "acquiring information" (it's not) at all, one could ask, why isn't the activity an appropriate means of acquiring information? What is it about 'content' that requires some sort of rote memorization before you can start doing anything with it? The Common Core crowd reminds me of the type of person who insists that you must read the instructions and memorize them before you can even think of trying to assemble a bicycle or play a video game. But, of course, the opposite is not only true, it's more fun and more productive. Joanne Jacobs, Weblog, July 3, 2009 [Tags: , ] [Link] [Comment]

OLDaily—Open Library Aims to Create a Web Page About Every Book Ever Published

One would hope that this is a necessary first step to a library with a web page containing every book ever published. Related: Daniel Livingstone on the future of the textbook. Richard Nantel, Workplace Learning Today, July 3, 2009 [Tags: ] [Link] [Comment]

OLDaily—PDF's of my Textbook and my Manifesto!

Marc Canter figures out a way to make his Digital City and How to Build the Open Mesh manuscripts available in full as PDF downloads. Recommended reads. Marc Canter, Marc's Voice, July 3, 2009 [Tags: ] [Link] [Comment]

OLDaily—BNN Trying To Silence The Canadian Copyright Debate?

A good example of exactly why proposed copyright laws must be carefully considered as a Canadian television network issues selective takedown notices, focusing only on sites on one side of the contentious political issue. Unattributed, Canadian Coalition for Electronic Rights, July 3, 2009 [Tags: , , , , ] [Link] [Comment]

OLDaily—More thinking about blogs rather than Blackboard

Not surprisingly, the idea of using blogs instead of Blackboard is gaining traction. "Of course," responds Nancy McKeand, "people like the ease of use with Blackboard, the relatively easy learning curve. Some reported that there isn't time to set up a blog for a course." Meanwhile, Jim Groom responds to issues David Wiley is having setting up a directory structure for open courses in WordPress. Nancy McKeand, Random Thoughts, July 3, 2009 [Tags: , , ] [Link] [Comment]

Scott Wilson's Workblog—Using "Moodle Wave" - Live demo

It looks like its going to be a while yet before Google lets more people play with its own Wave implementation (and details on any open-sourcing remain vague at this point). However, we've put up our own implementation of the Wave Gadget API (not the complete Wave system by any means) for anyone interested to play with.

I've created a Moodle course that uses some widgets, all of which make use of the Wave Gadget API. Some of these are Google examples (converted to W3C format) and some are ones we've created.

To take a look, you need to head over to our Moodle sandbox and register yourself a profile (you'll need to confirm your email address to activate the login). After that, go and enrol yourself on this course.

Feel free to play Sudoku, mess with the poetry magnets, use the chat, and vote in the polls. All these tools are Widgets, written entirely in regular HTML and JavaScript, and don't use any PHP or any part of the Moodle platform they appear in other than using the context it supplies (the course ID in this case) and participant information (display name and avatar image); this means they can be embedded into any platform. Wave - the actual conversation engine - is the obvious one, but I think it makes sense to put live-updating collaborative applications into many different kinds of contexts - social networks, VLEs, blogs - anything with users and contexts.

In addition to the W3C Widgets API and Google Wave Gadgets API, the Wookie engine that renders the widgets also provides a moderator API, enabling admins to lock and unlock widgets. (However, test accounts are in the "student" role and so won't see these controls)

What is a "mashup VLE" really like?

One of the interesting things I've noticed with the test is that it feels very different to a typical course site. For one thing, it doesn't encourage clicking through to other pages - instead you just leave the page open, often in the background, and drift back over to it if anything interesting happens. More like a Twitter-type application than a regular VLE; I wonder how this would work in actual use - would you open a browser tab for each module and flip between them to see what's going on?

This certainly has the potential to mess up the "tracking" functions that VLEs use as these are based on clicking on internal links, rather than interacting within a set of Widgets all within a page. You could be online all day chatting, voting, playing, etc., and the VLE would think you just accessed one page in the morning. Oh well, I think the tracking model in VLEs was always broken anyway - but using this kind of functionality means it'll have to be revisited if VLEs are going to use external tools. The IMS LTIv2 spec defines an "Outcomes service" but its way too complicated to use for this - it seems designed for hooking up a fully-fledged exam system not a simple widget; something simpler would be far more appropriate.

Going further

If you've got a Moodle site, and want to use Widgets and Wave Gadgets in it, we'll get some documentation together soon to show you how. Basically you need to install a Moodle block, and either get an API for our test server, or deploy the Wookie Widget Server on your own network.

If you would like to integrate Wave Gadgets into another web application, send me an email or comment on this post and I'll talk you through what you have to do. Its not difficult - just a few calls to get Widgets and set participant info. (If you're using Sakai, then the Sakai 3 team at CARET in Cambridge have already done a lot of work in this area, and I suggest contacting them.)

If you're a developer and would like to have a go at writing your own Wave Gadgets and seeing them work, then again get in touch and I'll see what I can do to let them get tested on our platform.

(PS this is being hosted on a sandbox server used by our development team, so don't rely on it or get upset if its not available!)

Scott Wilson's Workblog—IMS's three-pronged strategy

Two weeks ago I attended the IMS Learning Impact conference in Barcelona; this was one of the first IMS events I'd attended in some time, and I've tried to put together some thoughts on the IMS technical strategy.

Now a lot of discussion around IMS is about its policies, politics, membership, processes and so on, but I'm not going into any of that here; for now I want to focus on specifications. (Note also this is a personal reflection, and doesn't necessarily represent the view of JISC or CETIS)

IMS currently sets out its stall as offering three key "products" in its specification portfolio; together they make up its "Digital Learning Services Standards" portfolio.

Common Cartridge

The first product is the IMS Common Cartridge. I remember this originating in discussions way back as to whether there should be a SCORM-like profile of standards (packaging, metadata, runtime and so on) that was better suited to Higher Education. Its come a long way since, and has gathered a lot of influential support. However, ultimately it is still a means of putting a bunch of web pages into a zip file to import into an LMS, which seems increasingly an odd thing to do.

CC does add some interesting capabilities - it adds the QTI (Question and Test Interoperability) specification to the profile, enabling automated assessments along with content (something ADL was considering for SCORM a few years back but never got around to), and it also adds a capability for adding "tools" using a version of the IMS Learning Tools Interoperability specification (more on which later). However it misses out things like SCORM's tracking functionality and CMI runtime, which have been a major selling point of SCORM.

Overall CC is an odd mix (one of my colleagues referred to it as the "curate's egg" specification) but is quite likely to gain some traction with publishers and commercial LMSs. But what will the impact be? I'm not convinced a market for common cartridges will open up in HE in the same manner as occurred in commercial training with SCORM; they really are quite different. However, IMS is putting a lot of effort into marketing CC to get adoption, so I remain open minded.

For the moment the key question is whether OER and CC are a natural fit - clearly the UK's Open University considers it an option.

Learner Information Services

IMS Learner Information Services is the latest revision of the IMS Enterprise specification, which was one of the first IMS specifications and the first I was personally involved in. IMS LIS, like its predecessor, is focussed on the connection between an LMS and a student record system; this means being able to provide groups and users to the LMS and to handle reporting back for things like final grades or tracking data. LIS extends Enterprise with new services for areas like course structures (a bit similar to XCRI, though not compatible with it) and continues the service-oriented approach that started with IMS Enterprise Services 1.0.

However, IMS LIS also plans to add batch-file bindings that would also enable REST services; this is important, as some of the most successful applications of IMS Enterprise have focussed on simple REST services and batch processing, and I'm glad to see IMS is recognising this and providing official support.

Learning Tools Interoperability

IMS LTI v2.0 is a specification for enabling LMS's to include external applications running in iFrames that can communicate with the host LMS for things like user information. (There isn't a page for v2.0 yet, but there is a description of LTI on this page)

If you've been following this blog you'll know that I've been contributing to the W3C Widgets familiy of specifications, and have been keen to point out that the IMS specification is rather similar, begging the question as to why IMS is bothering to reinvent this particular wheel. Part of the reason is historical - IMS LTI started earlier than W3C's activity (although that itself is based on earlier technologies, such as Apple Dashboard Widgets and Yahoo! Konfabulator) and so has had time to diverge from common practice. Its also harder to backtrack on the legacy of its "version 1.0" which was really an exploration of a possible common extension mechanism for (back then) WebCT and Blackboard (and later Sakai). Another part of the reason is that many IMS members are not really that well connected into web standards generally, and even though I personally prompted the IMS working group to look into Widgets they never really managed to connect it with what they were working on.

I think IMS is putting a lot of pressure on LTI to succeed, although I think its fundamentally misconceived. For example, the current IMS LTI 2.0 document set consists of 20 word documents covering everything from inter-widget messaging to APIs for passing "outcomes" from widgets to the LMS - most of it involving lots of SOAP and WSDL. Using the W3C Widgets specification I reckon this could be whittled down to one or two very basic documents for things like common education vocabularies and how to use Widgets with an open API on the LMS end (or more likely, just IMS LIS with a REST binding). Already I've seen a lot of European projects working with W3C Widgets and Google OpenSocial to deliver IMS-LTI-like functionality; we've also been working with Sakai 3 and Moodle to integrate both Widgets and OpenSocial applications. Perhaps the main value IMS could contribute would be to sort out the REST APIs that Widgets could call to enable tracking.

Its unlikely that IMS would embrace W3C for LTI for a number of reasons, mostly that the whole approach doesn't just invalidate most of the effort on IMS LTI 2.0, it also calls into question the whole "DIgital Learning Services" strategy: if we used web standards, plus a REST API for things like cohorts, would we even need IMS Common Cartridge or IMS LTI at all? From this perspective, the IMS strategy seems less about opening up education systems so much as supporting an education technology silo into which a few suppliers can offer services with limited external competition. After all, who apart from a few established players in the HE sector is going to implement those 20 IMS LTI documents?

The Missing Specifications

As well as what is IN the IMS strategy, its worth considering for a moment what's OUT of the strategy:

IMS Learning Design is one of the most widely discussed specifications in a European context (or certainly seems to be in the circles I move in) and yet is completely absent. It had some discussion in relation to a K-12 profile of Common Cartridge, but I don't think this progressed anywhere. Its especially unusual that IMS isn't promoting any further development or marketing for LD, given that quite a few of the entrants to its own Learning Impact awards were using LD.

IMS ePortfolio was a relatively recent specification, but was released with some fundamental problems. So far there has been insufficient interest from members to fix it, and CETIS has switched its efforts to looking into practical interoperability between ePortfolio applications using Atom feeds (see PIOP).

IMS QTI 2.x is largely completed, but was recently withdrawn by IMS and then reinstated after a number of complaints. I think its fair to say IMS doesn't really know what to do with it, given that IMS CC uses the older 1.x version of QTI.

Finally, IMS has a number of specifications that really should be retired - IMS LIP, IMS SSP, IMS RLI, IMS VDEX come to mind.

The Rub?

Overall the IMS specifications seem oddly out of step with the wider web. There is still an adherence to SOAP and WSDL doctrine that has slid rapidly into the Trough of Despond elsewhere. Where REST APIs are considered, they are a bit of an add-on rather than at the core - IMS specifications are not based on web architecture, irrespective of binding. And, most critically, there is a big gap between IMS and web standards, as evidenced by the disconnect between IMS LTI 2.0 and W3C Widgets (or even Google OpenSocial). This was pointed out at the plenary of the event by Mark Stiles (who chairs the JISC-CETIS board as well as being on the IMS board of directors): IMS really needs to work more closely with horizontal standards rather than build a silo.

I think IMS LIS is worth a look when it comes out, as is Common Cartridge (though in the short term we can easily convert Cartridges to the more commonly-supported formats such as SCORM 1.2 and using the Content Transcoder). However I'd give IMS LTI 2.0 a miss.

But more generally, is IMS too old-fashioned to remain relevant? Or is its focus on rather "unfashionable" areas of education technology a good bet for longer-term survival? A lot will depend on the success - or otherwise - of the current three-spec strategy

OUseful Info—PDFs Do Your Licensing For You…


PDF is not a portable DATA format

That is:

PDF, a digital form used to represent electronic documents, allows users to exchange and view the documents easily and reliably, independent of the environments in which they are created, viewed and printed, while preserving their content and visual appearance. [PDF Format Becomes ISO Standard]

no derivs No Derivative Works — You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

The Ed Techie—We're all studio bands now

Marieke, over at RemoteWorker, asked me to do a guest blog post around this issue of being a remote worker and establishing a profile at your work place, which you can read in full on her blog.

I mixed up several issues, the first being the effectiveness of being an online worker, where I made a (tongue-in-cheek) comparison with the power-breakfasters of yore:

In the 1980s in the heyday of the Yuppie, there was talk of the ‘power breakfast’ when Masters of the Universe would meet at breakfast to do business to show how tough they were. This is nothing – nowadays I get up and reply to some tweets, put a comment on someone’s blog, respond to comments on my own blog that have come in overnight and maybe even produce a quick publication in the form of a blog post. I have done global networking before I’ve changed out of my pyjamas. And I’m pretty normal in this.

I also wanted to explore the notion that our online presence is somehow an improvement on our real identity, ie the online me is superior to the 'real' (or at least the real-time) me in many senses:

I know that some people now don’t bother attending my ‘live’ presentations (or are unconcerned if they miss them) because they know I will put them up later. And more than that, I feel that I have time to correct the presentations (although they still remain a fine example of amateur hour) so that the recorded version may well be superior to the live one. I think this may pervade across all of my online identity: my blog has more interesting things to say than I do, and my twitter stream is wittier than I am. I have become like one of those bands of whom people bemoan ‘they’re not as good live’. And as we perfect our online skills, maybe this is the fate that will befall us all. In which case, don’t ask me to give a keynote, I’ll just record you one instead.

I was just exploring some ideas here, so pop over to Marieke's blog to give it a read.

Open Education News—Open Source Options in Education Administration


Nathan Willis at Linux.com has a new article on open source options in education administration. Willis discusses several programs such as Kuali and openSIS. From the article:

Like any organization, schools and universities need resource planning software to take care of everything from human resources to budgeting. They also have unique needs, such as integrating with government financial aid programs, and nine-, ten-, and twelve-month payroll cycles for different classes of employees.

Open Education News—OER Presentation at WhippleHill User Conference


ccLearn’s tweeted that their presentation at the WhippleHill User Conference 2009 is now available at Slideshare. WhippleHill, according to the blog post by Jane Park, is a school website development company that encourages the use of open tools. From the blog post:

They [WhippleHill] also host an annual user conference where they invite cutting edge initiatives to lead sessions on new media and technologies pertinent to the changing world. ccLearn had the opportunity to lead one of these sessions entitled, “Creative Commons and Open Educational Resources: How the world is changing and what you need to know to keep up” targeted mainly at education around CC and copyright for high school students.

OLDaily—EduBacon

EduBacon is a (relatively) new blog by Steve Egan. Love the slogan: "Before, education was bland. Now it's got extra flavor, salt, fat and cholesterol." And "Large Helpings, Hearty Food, Extra Flavor". The most recent post is on open engagement.
Steve EWgan, Weblog, July 2, 2009 [Tags: ] [Link] [Comment]

OLDaily—Video Call (two strikes already) for Amazing Stories

You can help Alan Levine prepare for his talk for an upcoming Open Education conference by sending him examples of good things that have happened to you as a result of sharing your work openly. Also, it's worth reading about his issues with YouTube (interestingly, most of my videos are stored elsewhere, as I have never had success with YouTube. Alan Levine, Cogdogblog, July 2, 2009 [Tags: , ] [Link] [Comment]

OLDaily—Second Life, Education and Openspace

There's trouble in the virtual world. Andy Pulman links to: Andy Powell Loses Faith in Second Life, Fuzzy Buzz on why Linden Lab needs to read Snow Crash again and Zonja Capalini on Openspace. Related, especially to the last item: OpenSim. Andy Pulman, Andy Pulman Edublog, July 2, 2009 [Tags: ] [Link] [Comment]

OLDaily—Using audio and video in Firefox

For my first use of the video tag, a test pattern (if you are using Firefox 3.5 you should see it).

Here is some more information on the video and audio tags. Here is a link to DailyMotion, which is promoting the use of open video. Various Authors, Mozilla, July 2, 2009 [Tags: , ] [Link] [Comment]

OLDaily—Building the user-centered web

"I believe strongly," writes Ben Werdmuller, "that a decentralized, user-centered model for the web is the best way to advance it as an application platform." I agree. And many of the initiatives he cites are at least part of the solution: "The Diso Project is turning the WordPress open source blogging tool into a decentralized digital identity through an array of open standards, and the project's Chris Messina has a lot of wise things to say about its development; Laconi.ca is a decentralized microblogging platform, whose Open Microblogging standard may be adaptable into a more widely-scoped technology; The Open Stack is a set of developing technologies that address some of the issues; Marc Canter's Open Mesh treatise goes into detail on many of the issues." Ben Werdmuller, Weblog, July 2, 2009 [Tags: , , , ] [Link] [Comment]

OLDaily—Woodlawn Elementary thinks outside the book to pull D to a B

As usual, I caution against the 'gee-whiz' news story. That said, I'm sure people will want to quote this item. "Woodlawn Elementary's math teachers locked up their textbooks in a music room closet.... The school went from a D to a B this year... Instead of textbooks, teachers used games, group assignments and other materials. They also focused on showing students different ways to solve the same problem." Via ASCD. Sylvia Lim, St. Petersburg Times, July 2, 2009 [Tags: , , , ] [Link] [Comment]

OLDaily—Socialbrite

JD Lasica - with whom I collaborated (along with Marc Canter) on OurMedia - has launched Socialbrite. "Socialbrite is a learning hub and sharing community that brings together top experts in social media, social causes and online philanthropy." The list of experts on the site will include names familiar to many readers. JD Lasica, Website, July 2, 2009 [Tags: none] [Link] [Comment]

OLDaily—The #interestingOPMLexperiment

Tony Hirst suggested that we try something like this experient for the fall edition of the Connectivism course. There is definitely some merit to the suggestion, and especially in the idea of comparing OPML lists before and after the course, to observe progress, and also to look at other networks, such as Twitter or Facebook connections. Of course, we may need to draft someone like Tony to implement this. Heh. Mat Morrison has offered to share the (Perl) code he used to produce diagrams like this one of congress twitterers and of other Twitter social network analysis. Mat Morrison, mediaczar, July 2, 2009 [Tags: , , , , , ] [Link] [Comment]

OLDaily—Recommendations on MrTweet

Thanks to Orla Hegarty for the recommendation - and for thereby pointing me to this service, which is an interesting attempt to explicitly leverage recommendation as a service. The risk of such a system being gamed are there - but if the reputation of the recommender is taken into account, this risk can be minimized. The system (currently) needs overt recommendations - where it would take off, I think, would be if it could capture recommendations through linking or other practises. Various Authors, Website, July 2, 2009 [Tags: ] [Link] [Comment]

OLDaily—Open Education Resource Foundation

WikiEducator is announcing the launch of a new Open Educational Resources Foundation (OERF). In a nutshell, they write, they want to institutionalize OERs, atgtain financial sustainability for the movement, increase fcollaboration among OER providers, and support greater reuse of OERs. "The major value proposition," they write, "lies in opportunities for education institutions to improve efficiencies through OER resource creation and distribution -- most notably reduction in cost and improvements in quality." I think that the value proposition for OERs lies in their potential for use by individuals, not institutions, and that this is where efforts need to be focused.
Wayne Mackintosh, WikiEducator, July 2, 2009 [Tags: ] [Link] [Comment]

Scott Wilson's Workblog—Time to move on ... to Wordpress?

My blog server is on its last legs...

I started this blog some years back as part of my work customising Zope to provide a website for CETIS

Its served pretty well, but I think I'll have to migrate over to Wordpress soon. If nothing else, I can no longer delete anything on this server! Hence this rather pointless post to get rid of a duplicate entry.

Scott Wilson's Workblog—Wookie Meets Shindig: OpenSocial and W3C Widgets in Moodle

Following the CETIS Widget Working Group meeting we've been working hard on our Wookie widget engine, integrating the engine and plugin structure to integrate with Apache's Shindig engine for Google Gadgets/OpenSocial and seeing widgets running inside platforms such as Moodle opens up new possibilities when it comes to more open, "mashable" learning environments.

Just to give a quick taste of where we are now, here's a couple of W3C widgets and some Google Gadgets running inside Moodle using the Wookie Moodle Plugin:

click to enlarge

We've enhanced some aspects of the server recently, and been keeping track of the most recent developments in the W3C Widgets Specification, but perhaps more importantly recently I've been focussed on improving the user experience at the application level. For example, here is the screen for selecting a widget or gadget in Moodle:

click to enlarge

We have quite a few more things to look at for Wookie, and we've got two more releases planned to get us to 1.0; I recommend hanging on for release 0.9, which should be out within a few weeks. We're also investigating how we can better integrate the OpenSocial APIs from the Apache Shindig engine. The Sakai project is already using Shindig for Sakai 3, and so we'll hopefully be tapping their expertise soon.

Both Wookie and the Moodle plugin will be available for download soon on the Wookie website.

Yesterday I also attended the W3C Widgets working group meeting held at Orange Labs in Paris, where I gave a short presentation on our work (below), as did Jerome Bogaerts and Alain Vagner from the Palette project, who demonstrated some very nice extensions they've made for drag-and-drop events between widgets. The specification work W3C is doing is coming along very quickly now, and we should see the final version of the Widgets 1.0 packaging specification pretty soon, and then the related specs such as the API and Events model along afterwards. We've been keeping track of the specification as best we can, but there are still some changes likely that we'll be implementing in future revisions of the Wookie engine.

Widgets And Wookies
View more presentations from scottw. (tags: shindig w3c)

The next CETIS Widgets Working Group face to face event is going to be in Edinburgh on the 23rd of March; I recommend registering and coming along if you want to get involved in any of this work.

Scott Wilson's Workblog—A Wiki in a Widget

Just how much typical VLE/CMS/Groupware tools can you actually replace with Widgets? Well I've long disliked the Moodle wiki, so decided to have a go at writing a Wiki Widget. I've embedded it below.

Now its not exactly brilliant, but then again it wasn't a big job; mostly I used the Creole javascript WikiText parser, and hooked it into Wookie's Wave Gadget API implementation to handle shared persistence. So you can have a shared wiki per course area, or indeed per blog post. I'm sure with a bit of effort it could be quite usable - sometimes less is more.

The source package for this widget can be downloaded here. (Change the file extension from .wgt to .zip to open it up and look at the source).

(I wonder how long until it gets spammed?)

If you're in the UK education sector, or develop a platform used in the sector, and would like to get involved or better informed about developing, using or supporting W3C widgets and related technologies like Google Wave, then probably the best place to start is the CETIS Widgets Working Group.

eFoundations blog—Investigating the "Scott Cantor is a member of the IEEE problem"

The UK Access Management Federation and other similar initiatives worldwide provide a SAML-based single sign-on solution for access to online resources for the education and research community.  Typically, a user must sign-on to their home institution, using their local username and password, before being granted access to a remote online resource.  In the main, this prevents the user from having to remember a separate username and password for each online resource that they wish to access.  However, there is a perceived problem that some users have several affiliations (their university, their employer, the NHS, their professional body, etc.), each of which may grant access to a different set of online resources, and that, currently, online services are not able to make seamless decisions about which resources a given user is entitled to access because they lack knowledge about these multiple affiliations.

We have recently funded Simon McLeish at LSE to undertake an investigation into this area, commonly known as the Scott Cantor is a member of the IEEE problem. (Scott Cantor is lead developer of the Shibboleth software and an editor of the SAML 2.0 specification).  This investigation will try to discover the extent of this problem in UK HE - who is affected, how serious stakeholders perceive it to be, and what is expected from a solution - in order to inform future work in this area.

More information about this study can be found thru the project's Wiki.  As usual, the final report will be made openly available to the community under a Creative Commons licence.

Open Education News—New Zealand Collaboration With WikiEducator


Patricia Schlicht, from WikiEducator, is announcing that the New Zealand Ministry of Education is collaborating with WikiEducator on a national OER project. Details of the plan are available at WikiEducator. From the wiki page:

The strategy aims to start planning the co-design of a national OER initiative in collaboration with the sector, ultimately shifting to a project owned and driven by New Zealands’ teachers. During the initial phases the Ministry of Education and OER Foundation will support the sector in building capacity and an inventory of OER examples as the foundations for achieving an engaged national community of teachers. Ultimately, we plan to build a sustainable and active community of teachers empowered to transform learning in the classroom using digital OERs and shared experiences.

Open Education News—Text of Federal Public Access Bill Available


David Wiley is announcing that the full text of the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2009 is now available. Wiley notes that there is an exemption clause for “works that generate revenue or royalties for authors.” From the blog post:

If enacted, this would give the public (us!) free public access to the results of the research we’ve paid to have conducted through NIH, NSF, the Departments of Education, Agriculture, Labor, Energy, and more. Passage of this bill will fully tip the scales of knowledge creation to the side of almost unrestricted innovation. As we all know, technology is seldom the impediment – policy generally is.

Open Education News—The Disruption of Scientific Publishing


Author Michael Nielson has a new blog post suggesting that scientific publishing is on the verge of disruption. Nielson suggests that the future of current scientific publishers is bleak, but does offer possible new directions. From the blog post:

It’s easy to miss the impact of blogs on research, because most science blogs focus on outreach. But more and more blogs contain high quality research content.

Open Education News—Open Translation Meeting Held Last Week


Ahrash Bissell has a summary of a meeting about open translation held last week in Amsterdam. Bissell links to photos and a manual for open translation. From the blog post:

We discussed open-source translation software, open and volunteer translation communities, openly licensed works – both translated and for translating, open databases for machine translation, and the intersection of translation with open education, open video, open business practices, and more.

eFoundations blog—RESTful Design Patterns, httpRange-14 & Linked Data

Stefan Tilkov recently announced the availability of the video of a presentation he gave a few months ago on design patterns (& anti-patterns) for REST. I recommend having a look at it, as it covers a lot of ground and has lots of useful examples, and I find his presentational style strikes a nice balance of technical detail and reflection. If you haven't got time to listen, the slides are also available in PDF (though I do think hearing the audio clarifies quite a lot of the content).

One of the questions that this presentation (and other similar ones) planted at the back of my mind is that of how some of the patterns presented might be impacted by the W3C TAG's httpRange-14 resolution and the Cool URIs conventions for distinguishing between what it calls "real world objects" and "Web documents", some of which describe those "real world objects". The Cool URIs document focuses on the implications of this distinction on the use of the HTTP protocol to request representations of resources, using the GET method, but does not touch on the question of whether/how it affects the use of HTTP methods other than GET.

In the early part of his presentation, Stefan introduces the notion of "representation" and the idea that a single resource may have multiple representations. Some of the resources referred to in his examples, like "customers" (slide 16 in the PDF; slide 16 in the video presentation), when seen from the perspective of the Cool URIs document, fall, I think, into the category of "real world objects" - things which may be described (by distinct resources) but are not themselves represented on the Web. So, following the Cool URIs guidelines, the URI of a customer would be a "hash URI" (URI with fragment id) or a URI for which the response to an HTTP GET request is a 303 redirect to the (distinct) URI of a document describing the customer.

But what about non-"read-only" interactions, and using methods other than GET? The third "design pattern" in the presentation is one for "resource creation" (slide 55 in the PDF; slide 98 in the video presentation). Here a client POSTs a representation of a resource to a "collection resource" (slide 50 in the PDF; slide 93 in the video presentation). The example of a "collection resource" used is a collection of customers, with the implication, I think, that the corresponding "resource creation" example would involve the posting of a representation of a customer, and the server responding 201 with a new URI for the customer.

I think (but I'm not sure, so please do correct me!) that the implication of the httpRange-14 resolution is that in this example, the "collection resource", the resource to which a POST is submitted, would be a collection of "customer descriptions", and the thing posted would be a representation of a customer description for the new customer, and the URI returned for the newly created resource would be the URI of a new customer description. And a GET for the URI of the description would return a representation which included the URI of the new customer.

Restcool

(In the diagram above, http://example.org/customers/123 is the URI of a customer; http://example.org/docs/customers/123 is the URI of a document describing that customer

And, finally, a GET for the URI of the customer (assuming it isn't a "hash URI") would - following the Cool URIs conventions - return a 303 redirect to the URI of the description.

There is some discussion of this is in a short post by Richard Cyganiak, and I think the comments there bear out what I'm suggesting here, i.e. that POST/PUT/DELETE are applied to "Web documents" and not to "real-world objects".

The comment by Leo Sauermann on that post refers to the use of a SPARQL endpoint for updates - the SPARQL Update specification certainly addresses this area. It talks in terms of adding/deleting triples to/from a graph, and adding/deleting graphs to/from a "graph store". I think the "adding a graph to a graph store" case is pretty close to the requirement that is being addressed by the "post representation to Collection Resource" pattern. But I admit I struggle slightly to reconcile the SPARQL Update approach with Stefan's design pattern - and indeed, he highlights the "endpoint" notion, with different methods embedded in the content of the representation, as part of one of his "anti-patterns", their presence typically being an indicator that an architecture is not really RESTful.

I should emphasise that I'm trying to avoid seeming to adopt a "purist" position here: I recognise that "RESTfulness" is a choice rather than an absolute requirement. However, interest in the RESTful use of HTTP has grown considerably in recent years (to the extent that some developers seem keen to apply the label "RESTful", regardless of whether their application meets the design constraints specified by the architectural style or not). And now the "linked data" approach - which of course makes use of the httpRange-14 conventions - also seems to be gathering momentum, not least following the announcement by the UK government that Tim Berners-Lee would be advising them on opening up government data (and his issuing of a new note in his Design Issues series focussed explicitly on government data). It seems to me it would be helpful to be clear about how/where these two approaches intersect, and how/where they diverge (if indeed they do!). Purely from a personal perspective, I would like to be clearer in my own mind about whether/how the sort of patterns recommended by Stefan apply in the post-httpRange-14/linked data world.

OLDaily—Symbol Grounding and Proportional Analogy

"If symbols must be grounded in perception," writes Peter Turney, "how does this grounding happen?" We might naively suppose a 'picture' theory of meaning, along the lines of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, but this version quickly falls to objections such as Quine's 'gavagai' example, cited here. But I don't think Turney's proposal, to ground them in relations ("we note meta correlations between relations between symbols"), fares any better. The meta correlations are still radically underdetermined by the phenomena; this is the root of Quine's challenge. There's a similarity between this approach, and Minsky's "second-order-differences", and Russell's theory of types, and as I share Wittgenstein's dissatisfaction with the latter, I am dissatisfied with the former. Yes, symbols are grounded in perception - but we must redefine what "grounded" means. Peter Turney, Apperceptual, July 1, 2009 [Tags: ] [Link] [Comment]

OLDaily—Arguing About Free and the Future

There's one very right thing and one very wrong thing in David Wiley's post. The very right thing is this: "In a world of free, everyone can play." This, in a sentence, captures what is inevitable - and what is right - about the world of free. It is not just a price revolution, it is a liberation for those who, in the past, had no voice. The very wrong thing is this: "Competition! Massive amounts of almost-no-barrier-to-entry competition." This represents a sort of market-oriented thinking. But in the world of free, market economics makes as much sense as lead parachutes. I don't feel I'm competing against the other people (including Wiley) who post online for free. Quite the opposite - we are engaged in this great enterprise together, and what each of us does supports the other. David Wiley, iterating toward openness, July 1, 2009 [Tags: ] [Link] [Comment]

OLDaily—Back to The Past

I have numerous memories of the North Country (in Alberta) too, and it's nice to be reminded of the land and the people. But I'm really linking to this because of the nifty audio and video comment system Terry Anderson is now using in his blog. I want! (And I'll link to the IRRODL stuff when I get a chance to take the time needed to read it). Terry Anderson, Virtual Canuck, July 1, 2009 [Tags: , , , ] [Link] [Comment]

OLDaily—Working Session on Open Social Learning (I). Marc Alier: Open Social Learning?

I want to think about the combination of 'open' and 'social' with 'learning'. I know, it all seems to hang together, but it's too neat, and doesn't fit outliers like me. Anyhow, this is a summary of a presentation from Marc Alier. starts off with useful definitions of open learning and social learning - though these may not be universally accepted ('open' learning means something very different here). See also summaries of sessions by Ruben Diaz and Dolors Reig. Ismael Pena-Lopez, ICTlogy, July 1, 2009 [Tags: none] [Link] [Comment]

OLDaily—NewTube

Congratulations to the teachers of New South Wales, who are now able to access YouTube. "Access will of course allow teachers to plan, research, display and embed YT videos in their resources, within their working context . One giant step…for liberal access and OER . Now state teachers can enjoy the same access entitled to many private school colleagues." Tim Hand, Tim's Blog de Blog, July 1, 2009 [Tags: , , , , , , , ] [Link] [Comment]

OLDaily—EdubloggerCon 2009 Reflections

Smaller, less scripted, and therefore better. That's Jeff Utecht's summary of this year's EdubloggerCon at NECC. Also: "Because of Twitters live constant scrolling feed, we also talked about how the "life span" of a blog post is shrinking. I use to get comments on a blog post lasting weeks. Now I post a blog, it gets a comment or maybe two in a the first 10 minutes, gets retweeted for about 20 minutes and then it's old news." Jeff Utecht, The Thinking Stick, July 1, 2009 [Tags: , ] [Link] [Comment]

OLDaily—NECC Unplugged

This is kind of cool, and there should still be time to catch some of the Wednesday (July 1) sessions. "Also variously referred to as "NECC 2.0," the NECC "Fringe" Festival, or the NECC "Unconference." NECC Unplugged is held during and as a part of the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC ) June 28th - July 1. It is three days of presentations where anyone can sign up to present, either on-site or virtually, and held on-site in it's own "lounge" area and also hosted virtually in Elluminate." Various Authors, Website, July 1, 2009 [Tags: ] [Link] [Comment]

OLDaily—Note to President Obama: Want to Fix the Schools? Look to Portugal!

Don Tapscott recommends that the United States follow the example of Portugal, which has taken to online learning in a big way. He also writes, "It's too early to assess the impact on learning in Portuguese schools. Studies of the impact of computers in schools elsewhere have been inconclusive, or mixed." First, I think Portugal is very different from the United States. And second, I think that jumping on some sort of Portuguese bandwagon is premature. Not that I'm disagreeing with his recommendations; it's just that the evidence he cites for them is lacking. And there are many more positive examples closer to home. Don Tapscott, Huffington Post, July 1, 2009 [Tags: , , ] [Link] [Comment]

Footnotes