The Ed Techie

A critical mass of tagged, subscribable content

I haven't looked at Pageflakes for a while and went there the other day. I registered as a new user, and it impressed me with the default content it provided. It picked up I was in Cardiff from my IP address and provided me with a decent set of Cardiff related content, including:

• Cardiff news stories
• Cardiff photos
• A google map with Cardiff events marked on it
• Cardiff weather

Several things struck me about this, apart from thinking 'that's cool!' (as an aside can a 40 year old actually use the term 'cool' in any context without embarrassment?). The first was that considering it only had one bit of info to go on, that's not bad personalisation. Imagine what a learning system could do that had course history, user preferences, learning styles (if such things really existed), scores, etc to go on?

Second, this level of purely automatic content selection (I don't suppose there was a little man selecting content for me at the Pageflakes garage) has only really been realisable recently as we have reached a critical mass of content that is tagged (the photos were from Flickr and just used the tag Cardiff) and which is subscribable and available. Having been an advocate of learning objects a few years back (and as a means of writing, I am still a fan), this critical mass was something they never really achieved and so the visions of a personalised course didn't materialise. It also demonstrates, if further demonstration were needed, that making your content available in RSS and accessible (ie not behind authentication) is the key to both getting it seen and to a personalised future.

The last thing was what could an institution like the OU do with something like this, maybe in conjunction with the BBC? Users could receive calendars with appropriate programmes slotted in, maps with relevant  'learning events' highlighted in their locality (which could be user generated e.g. a meeting of the physics club in the Cayo at 8pm), content that relates to both their subject and geographical area (e.g. an example of classic Georgian architecture can be found at...), plus a range of general subject content feeds.

Open as to...

The OU's internal curriculum and technology conference ran over the last couple of days. As with all such events it is both inspiring and a bit deflating. Inspiring because you get to hear of all the good stuff going on and see the enthusiasm of your colleagues. Deflating because things you want to happen still seem a long way off, and some of the same old arguments keep coming up.

One of the thoughts that occurred to me (not for the first time) was that the OU now needs to establish a new definition of openness, and by extension, new identity for itself. The OU's mission statement is:

open to people, places, methods and ideas

Now these are all good, I don't want to do away with any (although I sometimes might question the how much the methods one is true), but I think we could extend this to open as to technology and content. Here's why: increasingly the tools people use as part of their everyday lives are far more sophisticated than universities can create and (more significantly) maintain. We're going to have to accept that people have these tools and don't want a separate (inferior) set for learning. The walled garden approach is becoming less and less viable. Similarly, the amount and quality of content available makes the creation of bespoke content a much less useful way of spending time for an academic. But obviously we need to do something, so what we do is offer some good quality content, we construct good learning activities and we offer support and guidance (as well as all that accreditation stuff).

The other aspect of openness that struck me was that, like all unis, our VLE requires authentication to access. As soon as you do this you are cut off from the connected world. You can't use cool tools like Gabbly (unless you install a university version), and you can't subscribe to feeds. This came home to me in a workshop Tony Hirst ran, and he has a good rant on how the OU is failing to grasp the significance of RSS. Now there are a lot of reasons why a VLE needs to be closed (rights, privacy, etc), but increasingly it looks like a high price to pay.

I gave a talk on the broadcast strategy, which looked at how things have changed and suggests some new models for how broadcast could be used in teaching. Slideshare file below:

RSS as universal acid - revisited

I blogged before about RSS becoming the universal acid or lingua franca of web 2.0. Yahoo have just released the beta of their pipes, which is a way of remixing feeds and creating mash-ups without getting too dirty in the programming. With his talent for understatement Tim O'Reilly says it is "a milestone in the history of the internet."

Tony Hirst has had a go creating a pipe for the openlearn content, and seems to like using them.

I'm not quite as convinced that they are a) as easy to use as people think (what techies think is easy is not the same as the rest of us) and b) they will have quite the impact suggested. However, I do think they mark another step in the RSS march to domination, and that is what will be interesting. When RSS is the standard format for all content, then aggregating it, sharing it and reusing it become standard practice. If one thinks of all content like this then the idea of creating static stuff locked away in a VLE seems at odds with the rest of the world, and rather uninspiring.

With my learning design hat on, I also wondered whether the pipes interface might be combined with something like LAMS to produce a powerful means of mixing content and activity.