Frances Bell :: Blog :: Web 2.0 and Dynamic Personalisation

 I am currently writing about Theorising 'Web 2.0' (initially in education but will broaden later). Obviously I started with the O'Reilly definition (that has a very interesting starting point) and am using that to critique whether or not there is a clear boundary around What is and is not Web 2.0?

 

 Erik Schonfeld used the categories Aggregators, Mashups, Webware, Social media, Social networks, Internet TV when he created his fascinating (though difficult to read) map of Web 2.0 around the world

Another approach I am taking is to look at a range of applications and services that would claim to be Web 2.0 and look at features that they mainly have in common:

v  User profile

v  Contact management

v  Configurable ‘look and feel’ (using CSS themes and skins)

v  User content generation (e.g. text, audio, images, videos)

v  Tagging (labels for content)

v  Privacy control features

v  Ease of integration with other web content (using links and RSS feeds)

 

Collage of Web 2.0 logos from mmmonica's photostream

I have just been reading Josie Fraser’s ideas on dynamic or deep personalisation that she spoke of in this blog posting

“Dynamic personalisation refers to what we regard as learner-led personalisation: support and acknowledgement for the learner to create, write, collaborate and direct content and activity within the contexts of their own choosing. In this vein, Amazon users produce their own lists and reviews and comment on others. They can complete profiles, up load photographs and choose to connect with other users. Active participation is characteristically participatory, self directed and community based. We define the facilitation of dynamic personalisation as “production, reception and relationships are supported by the system but determined by the user - the ability to create original or derivative works, to collaborate, form networks and connections via the user’s choice of applications, locations, and platforms.”

Superficially, many Web 2.0 applications do permit user (learner) creation of content and collaboration, and where they allow integration (such a showing picture that is linked to image stored elsewhere) there is some degree to which user can choose contexts.  Open Source software communities offer participation in development but to what degree do Web 2.0 services allow the ‘community’ to determine production and features other than by survival of the fittest and market forces? Who mashes up?

Going beyond the list of features above, Mike Wesch’s list of things (from the ubiquitous video)that we need to rethink can give us some ideas on theorising and critiquing Web 2.0 namely copyright, authorship, identity, ethics, aesthetics, rhetorics, governance, privacy, commerce (not to mention love, family and ourselves).  For example, the lenses of copyright and authorship could help us to analyse the Facebook Terms of Use relating to User Content

 “By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire.”

The words perpetual and expire seem to be in contradiction with each other.

Christopher Sessum’s take was much more grounded in education itself in this post.  Also Nancy White has a seminal series of posts on Blog Community that link in nicely to learning.

Anyway, enough of this and back to writing my paper.