http://community.brighton.ac.uk/jd29/weblog/18743.html

Full story at: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5325&resid=1343

Very interesting mis of automated and social tools for recommending music. The pattern matching stuff is quite cool, but I particularly like the social tagging which mines the Web for a multi-dimensional tag list (reminds me a bit of PHOAKS in this), rather than relying on potentially biased or misleading personal tags. They are also doing some interesting work on visualisation of the results. And it is open source. All in all, looks like a system that marries a great selection of technologies and research-informed ideas to produce something that might be really useful.
Created:Thu, 15 Nov 2007 16:49:51 GMT

http://community.brighton.ac.uk/jd29/weblog/17763.html

Full story at: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5325&resid=1342

This is probably the biggest thing ever to happen in the world of social software.

Wow.

MySpace, Bebo and SixApart are in on the deal that already includes Orkut, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle (yes, Oracle). As the article says, checkmate for Facebook, but it can’t be long before they join in.

I can hardly wait to start playing.

The range of possible educational uses is staggeringly large. Maybe not as big as the invention of the Web itself, but potentially as transforming. I think that we have just seen the start of a new era.
Created:Fri, 02 Nov 2007 05:40:06 GMT

http://community.brighton.ac.uk/jd29/weblog/17559.html

Full story at: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5325&resid=1340

Yet again showing why it is a good idea to hire intelligent people, Google have launched three open and easy-to-use APIs for profile info, friends info (the social graph) and activities (news feed type stuff). We’ve needed this for a long time. What makes this doubly cool is that Google is not trying to compete head-on with Facebook and its proprietary brethren. Far from it. Instead, they have gathered together the likes of Orkut, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Friendster and Ning to implement the standards.Wow. This may turn out to be an incredibly big step forward on the road to the mashed up universe and applications that move into another realm of usefulness and adaptability. Web 3.0? No. But I think this might be the point that Web 2.0 comes of age.
Created:Wed, 31 Oct 2007 03:42:49 GMT

Interesting article relating social software, collaborative filters and evolution
Created:Fri, 19 Oct 2007 16:43:26 GMT

Original: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5325&resid=1338
Posted: October 19, 2007, 10:43 am

http://community.brighton.ac.uk/jd29/weblog/16713.html

Another year, another E-Learn. Seems like only last year that I was blogging E-Learn 06. I'm blogging this during my third no-show of the day (and it is only day 1). This has always been a problem with AACE conferences and they don't seem to have solved it yet. Still a great place to meet great people though.

I've just been to an interesting presentation 'Am I Still Wiki: The Creeping Centralization of Academic Wikis' by Andrew Moshimia. He told the tale of a wiki used by kids in which constraints were gradually increased over the course of a year, starting with a loose requirement to post something relevant through to a tightly controlled, graded set of teacher-set exercises. Of course, by the time it is that controlled, it is no longer a wiki: just a publication medium controlled by the teacher and written by the students, albeit one which replaces automatic control mechanisms with manual ones.

The general message was that, if you want high quality and engagement then the wiki (or publication system) should be closed, graded and controlled, whereas if you want pride and creativity it should be open. Of three interventions, open, semi-open and closed, about a third of students liked each and (significantly) disliked both of the others. An issue of control, with some correlation between locus of control and preferences for open or closed, as you might expect.

The semi-open approach (broad grades, list of options to choose from) was slightly more popular than the others, which I would hypothesise would also relate to issues of control: people like freedom, but a bit of structure is good for learners who are still forming learning habits.

Interestingly, few if any saw it as a collaborative tool: of course not! A wiki (at least in its basic form) is a poor collaboration tool. It is far more about collective behaviour. There is little support in the tool for any parts of the communication process that are needed to collaborate.

At last year's E-Learn I reflected on the difference between my first WebNet in Hawaii and that one, particularly the differences that a continuous connection with the rest of the world had brought when compared with a few minutes in an email room. Now I work for Athabasca University and all of my teaching is online, the rest of my working life fits in every remaining gap. But of course, there are no gaps. I'm sure conferences used to be more fun. 

http://community.brighton.ac.uk/jd29/weblog/16510.html

Full story at: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5325&resid=1337

A great article from Jaron Lanier. I will discuss it more fully in my blog (http://community.brighton.ac.uk/jd29/weblog/) but it raises some very important issues that I agree with and that mirror much of what I have been writing about for the past couple of years, but comes to some conclusions that I am not so sure about. Thought provoking stuff.
Created:Wed, 10 Oct 2007 07:53:49 GMT

http://community.brighton.ac.uk/jd29/weblog/16070.html

Full story at: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5325&resid=1336

Thanks to Terry Anderson for alerting me to this one: Intel getting in on the social act, with what seems to be a browser add-in with social features. With the weight of Intel behind it this could be worth exploring. An interesting collective application that presents itself as a personal application.I wish I could give more information about it but, like so many of these things, it is starting as a closed preview
Created:Tue, 25 Sep 2007 07:51:30 GMT

It is great to be here at Athabasca University, surrounded by the great and the good in e-learning, and very nice to be back blogging with a nice shiny new version of Elgg.

But now I have a problem: where do I blog?

Issues of aggregation and the newly popular term the social graph have been plaguing me for years but, by and large, it is easy enough to move from one platform to another and the pain has been bearable. The problems were seldom technical: essentially the decision was about where I wanted to call home. But now I have two homes and this leads to an interesting problem of synchronisation. I have started the process of importing a feed from my Brighton blog into this site, which itself imports a feed from my CoFIND system. If I were feeling really brave, I would add a feed from here to Brighton, but then there is a danger of an endless loop that will eventually lead to my blog posts taking over the entire virtual universe (or at least toppling a server or two and leaving me with a very messy clean-up job). Or would the Elgg servers be smart enough to recognise duplicates? My suspicion is that they would not, having already experienced Elgg importing the same posts many times. This is the kind of experiment that should be done in a controlled environment. 

Full story at: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5325&resid=1333

A nice post by Doug Noon on the significance of constraints in a complex system, applied to the role of a teacher in a classroom with kids. There are, unsurprisingly, several parallels with some of the principles that I have explored in my book (Control and Constraint in E-Learning: Choosing When to Choose), including the need for diversity and redundancy, local interactions, and randomness vs coherence, but Noon’s focus on practical issues for teachers and the human interaction side of things is refreshing and thoughtful. There is a good discussion developing around the post in the comments too.
Created:Sat, 25 Aug 2007 15:18:14 GMT

Original: https://community.brighton.ac.uk/pg/blog/jd29/read/111508/emergence
By: Jon Dron
Posted: August 25, 2007, 9:18 am

I am so behind the times. This term was coined last week and it has taken me this long to learn it. But it’s so useful – email that you want, but not right now. I get so much bacn. We all do. And we need to find ways to deal with it. I have already added a bacn Thunderbird tag but I don’t think it’s enough.I feel a research project coming on.
What is the origin of the term? I suspect it may be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/apelad/1205331476/

Created:Fri, 24 Aug 2007 08:13:49 GMT

Original: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5325&resid=1331
Posted: August 24, 2007, 2:13 am