Category Archives: Web 2.0

JISC approaches the web with an open mind

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Last week (April 25th -26th) I attended the first of JISC’s Users and Innovation strand events in London. The event was run by George Roberts and a team from Brookes University. There are just over 100 people in the ‘Emerge’ community (http://emerge.elgg.org/) within the strand and they are by no means the normal JISC crowd.

The whole format was very encouraging with Lawrie Phipps and JISC approaching the ‘new stuff’ that is happening on the web with an open mind. The focus was as much cultural as it was technical and it was one the very few days I have attended where the technology really didn’t come first. The main theme was that of community both online and offline. I can see that the members of ‘Emerge’ will find common themes around the provision of social spaces, the use of immersive environments and many others. It will be interesting to see how the community evolves as the process of putting bids together starts.

I hope that this new format works for JISC and that the individual members of Emerge will benefit from being part of what could become a really useful community. As far as I’m concerned it has got off to a great start.

Some real data on Web 2.0 use

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As part of the JISC funded ‘SPIRE’ project we ran a survey to try to discover which online services people were using and in what manner. We were interested to find out which services were popular and if they were being used for work, for study or socially / for fun. The SPIRE project was originally looking into the possibility of using peer-to-peer technologies in UK HE and FE for informal sharing but switched to a more Web 2.0 focus as it became clear that these types of services were already having an impact on the tertiary education sector. They also appear to be where most of the informal sharing and collaboration is currently taking place online.

The survey was advertised to the Department for Continuing Education’s online students and on the online courses marketing pages. We received circa 1400 responses which left us with a lot of data to analyse. I have processed this data in to a number of colorful charts which are in the PDF below.

I have already drawn a number of conclusions from these charts but have not included these thoughts in the PDF as I would be interested to know what others think the data might mean.

Results of the survey undertaken by the JISC funded SPIRE project (PDF)

For the full analysis of this data please download the final report here:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/digitalrepositories/spiresurvey.pdf

Pedagogy Experts Group

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I have just got back from JISCs latest pedagogy experts meeting. Always a good place to find out more about things that are going on in eLearning (from a pedagogy perspective) either JISC funded or otherwise.

Had a very interesting discussion about the future of (e)assessment – I am looking forward to seeing some of the stuff coming out of this area, as whatever about massed mcq question banks I think that social software is going to completely change this space, but this presents a lot of challenges for the institution.

Also an interesting update on the SIMPLE project which looks like a really interesting example of simulations for learning.

So many services, so little time…

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At TALL we’re particularly interested in how the many forms of online collaboration might be used in education and educational institutions such as our own, and currently have a couple of projects touching the subject: SPIRE and Isthmus.

There has been something of an explosion of these services over the last few years, producing photo hosting, calendaring, bookmarking, mapping, and blogging sites just for starters. With so many of these various services to consider, we need a list of what they all are, and how they compare, complement, and compete with each other… and which ones should I use!?

Here are a couple of sites listing these services:

Here’s a quick selection of those that easily come to mind…
Identity/authentication/login

  • OpenID
  • LID
  • Yadis

Reputation/profile

  • ClaimID
  • Mugshot
  • Last.fm
  • jyte
  • myspace
  • facebook
  • http://twitter.com/

Photo hosting

  • Flickr
  • Zoomr

Blogging/journals

  • Blogger
  • WordPress
  • LiveJournal

News/aggregation

  • Digg
  • Bloglines
  • Google feeds

Bookmarking

  • del.icio.us
  • Ma.gnolia
  • Stumbleupon

Meeting/calendaring

  • iCal
  • Renkoo
  • planyp.us

Some provide multiple services, e.g. many profile services such as myspace provide some form of journal facility.