Elgg won't ship with any features. Why not? Elgg 1.0 won't ship with any end-user features; think of it as a social application engine that can power all kinds of different sites and applications.
Who are "we" to tell you what features you need? The original Elgg codebase came with profiles, a blog, a file repository, communities and an RSS aggregator. The classic Elgg will still be supported.
That's good -serving two audiences (shell for programmers; classic for out of the box non-programmers) and ultimately allowing free form development.
I think Elgg has a lot of potential - I have a number of Elgg sites running now - from a community of practice to reserach spaces to course and program delivery spaces. It is a many splendoured thing, with multiple applications and a capacity to evolve as your "users" evolve from students to researchers to professionals.
Personal tasers with an MP3 (in red, pink and even leopard print designs), mining student records, scholarships and curriculum for homeland security, watching foreign students/faculty (hidden camera surveillance and watchlists), target dissidents, armaments to campus security, privatize security - these are the steps being used to create Repress U - the new university for today's climate of fear. So much for open learning, open education and the pursuit of knowledge.
NITROREV: Virtual Wake As I see Eduspaces - a social network I am part of - about to die and untimely death - I was wondering how to mourn the loss of those connections I made through this network. Then I encountered Stephen Taylor's blog entry where he muses about an actual incident of cyber friendship loss. It caused me a moment of thought. When I physically die, my cyber identityt continues on. The data remnants of my cyber activity exists - how will those I never met physically, yet socialized with electronically express condolences and grief? What happens to me cyber properties - do they revert to my heirs who have no interest in maintaining my blog entries and other data? Are they parsed out to my cyber friends? Further to this discussion I have a number of social software sites I maintain for educational institutions. Students post comments, reflections, artefacts and compile eportfolios. If a student does die, what is to be done with their entries? Do we just arbitrarily delete their account or maintain it in a condolences area? The expressions of grief, condolences and maintenance of cyber properties upon one's earthly death - these are issues we are yet to grapple with.
Dave’s Educational Blog Dave Cormier lists his top ten tech ed stories of 2007 - number 10 is connectivism, number 1 is the action of one hacker to remove filtering software - what permeates all selections is openness and freedom and the need for effective education on the safe and efficient use of that openneness and freedom - kudos to Dave - always insightful
Techcrunch tells the story -social software and social gaming - social network site Meebo opened their platform last month to third party developers and is now open to game startups.
Twenty games launched so far - from chess and checkers to Texas Hold ‘em. Launch Meebo chat, click on a friend and start a game.
Invite friend, play together and chat together real-time. Synchronous, real time events within your social network.
From Virtual to Real: online football fans buy up a team and get real
"Found this via our good friend David Cushman's blog Faster Future. There is an online football (soccer) community called My Football Club in the UK. They have collected together some very seriously fanatical football fans and joined together to buy a real football club. For just 35 UK Pounds (50 Euros, 70 US Dollars) any fan can join and become part-owner.The fans then decide how to run the team, ie which players to buy and sell, etc. Its the virtual "fantasy league" football enthusiast idea jumping from virtual to real. And sure enough, now My Football Club has collected enough money and have done negotiations with the English professional football club Ebbsfleet United FC, and are buying the club. This is in the lower tiers of the English system, in the "Conference" and ranked 9th within its peers, but a team that now might get a chance to improve as the new owners bring in new money and will start to use collective wisdom of the fans to run the team. "
Can fans be better owners, make informed decisions? Here's an example of how social software is not truly allowing everyone to be part of the game.
This has great applications in marketing and learning development. This is a simple widget maker with great opportunity - let's say I want to create a learning object, embed an RSS feed to my wbeiste/institution and have it posted throughout the web, and when I make change they flow out to all locations at anytime?
Just another set of facts to indicate higher education better get it's shared space, social networking act together -
A new study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project shows that the next generation is switched on and producing content. 59% of all (U.S.) teenagers engage in at least one form of online content creation. Of those 35% of all teen girls blog, compared with 20% of online boys, and 54% of girls post photos online compared with 40% of online boys. Boys however like their video, with 19% of boys posting video online vs. 10% of girls. 39% of online teens share their own artistic creations online, such as artwork, photos, stories, or videos 33% create or work on webpages or blogs for others, including those for groups they belong to, friends, or school assignments 28% have created their own online journal or blog, up from 19% in 2004. 27% maintain their own personal webpage 26% remix content they find online into their own creations
Students will want to be active learners, dealing with authentic, relevant content, and dynamically collaborating in the development of new content. And they will want personalizable learning spaces where they have access control.
Item: non-profit music group Richter Scales create mash up video to present with their new song "The Bubble" - a parody on making it in the next big net bubble
Problem: after a million views on YouTube, video taken down because photographer Lane Hartwell objected to the unauthorized use of one of her photos in the video, then put up again with the offending photo replaced and a list of credits at the end for all the images used.
Real problem: the norms of the offline world and the emerging norms of the Internet are in conflict. People communicate on the web by sharing - reshaping images, audio - if you make it available expect it to be used. If you want to be part of a community - expect to share.
Solution - Payback: think of other forms than buying rights - maybe licensing - maybe trackbacks, leading to paid work
P.S. I just mashed techcrunch text - even stole straight lines. Copyright issue?
Further to Stephen Downe's discussion on trust and communities. Eduspaces, a free elgg powered community space managed and hosted by two entrepreneurs (Ben and Dave), fostered an active environment of educators discussing the use of and demonstrating the use of educational technologies. Eduspaces is being used by faculty, individuals and institutions for a variety of purposes - learning delivery, research space and respository, personal blogging, community creation, resource sharing, touchstone for learning, community of practice.
Now, seemingly out of the blue, the site is going down in mid January and folks are being advised to port their data elsewhere. Understandably, criticism has followed the surprise of this announcemnt. It is untimely. It is abrupt. It is unexpected. But is it a callous disregard for those who have invested data and time into developing their own spaces in Eduspaces? Have Ben and Dave, as Graham Attwell suggests, broken a bond of trust - a necessary component for community building - and impacted on the future acceptance and adoption of social software environments?
But it is always risky to have your activities housed on an external host. Eduspaces was a free service, hosted and moderated (without compensation) by two individuals interested in the advancement of free, open source software for use by the educational community, we should be a little thankful.
Many schools and faculty are making use of proprietary web services - like Facebook. If it should shut down I doubt there would be much chance of retrieving data. Were Dave and Ben great communicators? That's debatable. Were they funded and supported by those who benefitied from the use of Elgg and eduspaces? Hmm? No. And Elgg isn't suffering as an environment simply because Eduspaces is shutting down. Heck, even if Elgg shuts down we will continue to use the elgg installations we have on our server, and we will continue to add functions as required. Dave and Ben have established a platform, and made it available for personal customization. They have also left a legacy by contributing to the demise of proprietary learning and content mgmt systems and adding social components to authentic, reflective learning, and the creation and development of learning communities that thrive within and without and beyond the confines of program length and institutional membership. Lifelong, lifewide learning and the integration of formal and informal learning is now a true possibility thanks to advances like Elgg.
I agree that their actions are rushed, and they didn't 'discuss" with the community. And the optics aren't good - especially since eduspaces was a demonstration site of Elgg - Elgg may suffer as a result.
But the real question, as Graham rightly points out is that there was no organization to the comunity. We talk about organic development of free and open learning space like elgg, (eg. eduspaces) yet we often don't put an organizational framework around it (not management framework). What are the roles and responsibilities of site managment, moderation and of community members?
What the actions of Dave and Ben have demonstrated is that organic growth should not mean a hands off laissez-faire approach to community development. Organic Communities need cultivation. Trust must be earned , but it cannot be assumed. We trusted that Eduspaces would always be there for us, even if we as part of that community never contributed to its management. perhaps dave and Ben never saw eduspaces as their community - it was ours. maybe we are the ones who never established trust. Inevitably, all things come to an end. Even free, open, organic spaces.
New MA program in Online Communities at USCUSC's pioneering Charles Annenberg Weingarten Program on Online Communities (APOC) is the first master’s program in the world to recognize that online communities are the future of our economic, political, and social lives. They are the most successful application of “Web 2.0” concepts, and are increasingly popular as well as critical to the success of a wide array of industries. APOC students learn, gain firsthand experience, and then create an online community, attaining a master’s degree in just a single year.
I have repetitive stress injury, and need to investigate a new mouse and keyboard that can help with my condition. I went to Google, searched on ergonomic keyboards and received a number of hits - websites, mostly corporate or trade journals with reviews (paid for? promotions?) - extremely limited and not very helpful. So, I decide to search on blogs - and my first hit is a real Hit - Amy Hengst who maintains a blog devoted to home treatment for RSI . And lo and behold she has a comprehensive, informative list (and up to date) on ergonomic keyboards.
So here is my opinion drawn from this search experience. Websites are primarily corporate, designed to deliver a message leading to a sale, and often dated. The weblog - personal ones - can be corporate and sales driven but then there are also gems like Amy's where the message is up to date and more important than the sale. She as a blogger wants to share information and experience, not generate a sale. So for this trust test I side with the weblog.
I had an interesting dichotomy erupt during a conference presentation -attended by faculty and sessionals (grad students). When speaking about the use of social technology (OK people are social not technology but still labels are useful), anyway, a student stood up and asked "Why don't we use the tools we already use? Why not Facebook and IM or SMS chat or Ipodcasts?' To which an instructor responded (first year instructor) and said "Why should we have to use their tools - why don't they have to use ours (eg. Blackboard, Elluminate) if they attend our schools?" The discussion that ensued covered a lot of ground - from privacy to control issues, to autonomy, to freedom, to opportunity, to technology burdening to copyright issues and learning ownership.
I also had a slight mutiny in a course I TA'ed. (I spoke of this before) I established an internal installation of Elgg for the students to use as for personal reflection, project planing, collaboration and resource maintenance. Howeverthe day I demostrated and registered them to the Elgg environment our server sucked big time and it was slow and painful. By the next day all students had exited to the tools they know - Facebook, SMS and IM. Of course I blustered and countered with a posting about Facebook security and copyright issues, and of the CIA involvement - but it fell on deaf ears.
So another question to ponder. Do we build and support a series of loosely connected tools (eg. Elgg environment? Are we just creating another LMS? Should students use their own tools and networks? Why shouldn't their space be a learning space? Mind you I'm not sure the students really want their private world (Facebook) merged with their academic world.
View blogging photos as they are posted - Susan Sedder at Adventures in Educational Blogging introduces Blogger Play - an application that displays the photos being posted to Blogger accounts in real time, in a slide show format. It is a little voyeuristic - you're observing personal, professional, intimate and odd photos that bloggers are posting to share. there is no orer, no categorization - just random displays of photos as they are being posted to various blogs that have been developed for a myriad of reasons. It's like being given license to enter other people's living space and observe their everyday activities.
Sign up for FriendFeed, list the social networks/peer sites you belong to, and it tracks what you are doing on those networks, aggregates it all and provides you and your friends with a personalized feed of the data. That feed can be accessed on the FriendFeed site, or embedded via a widget into another website. (like Elgg)
While FriendFeed will probably become a social network itself, this is a great tool for those niche social networks - like elgg - so Facebook and the other giants don’t have to be everything to everyone! This is great news - we have been having students arguing with us to "come to their network (facebook)" and not implement Elgg (they having to come to ours). Now they can be everywhere wherever they are - and we can create our elgg social network for continued learning - they can be here, or there and still be apprised of what is going on.
NSBA survey touts social networking for students. The National School Board Association and Grunwald Associates have released a report Connecting and Creating: Research andGuidelines on Online Social - and Educational - Networking.
The study was comprised of three surveys: an online survey of1,277 nine- to 17-year-old students, an online survey of 1,039 parents and telephone interviews with 250 school district leaders who make decisions on Internet policy."
The report recommends that school districts may want to 'explore ways in which they could use social networking for educational purposes' — and reconsider some of their fears. "Many schools initially banned or restricted Internet use, only to ease up when the educational value of the Internet became clear. The same is likely to be the case with social networking."
Social networking technologies have significant educational potential. However social/commercial social networking sites - eg. Friendster, MySpace should not be the focus. It is the functionalities of these sites that are important, not the commercialization - and other non-commercial tools are available - see elgg for example.
Young people must safely gain the ability to use these social networking technologies just as they must learn how to effectiveley "network" in real life - getting together with friends, physical activities and athletics, arts and music, social service.
Educators and educational insitututions must learn to do their own honest risk assessments - and refrain from demonizing all social internet activities and trying to block students from social networking technology. If we model and teach the safe, effective use of these technologies, we wouldn't resort to knee jerk censorship.
NoSo - No social. Tired of networking? Don’t want to be linked to possible friends? Don’t want to share and contact? Want to disconnect, in silence? Now, there is a void for you on the web and off line. Artists Christina Ray and Kurt Bigenho, and web developer Gilbert Guerrero, have created NoSo (short for No Social Networking)
No So is an anti-flash mob - a non-experience. A network that is there but also is not there at the same time… “a real-world platform for temporary disengagement from your social networking environment. The NoSo experience allows you to create No connections, by scheduling No events, with No friends. When you're not podcasting, you're Skyping, texting, IM-ing, dating, trading, sharing, subscribing, downloading, updating, linking, approving, adding, checking, sending... Sometimes, you need a break. Sometimes, you need NoSo.”
When you attend a NoSo event, you are treated to a group of people sharing a cone of silence. Much like standing in an elevator with strangers - yet people have chosen to come to the NoSo event to sit together, in silence, in respect of each others desire not to socialize.
Next will be NoSho – the anti-social networking phenomenon for those who don’t want to gather together.
Not my text - but my intent - worthy of reposting.
Many of today's new dot-com corporations, like Facebook and LinkedIn, make money by building "walled gardens" and programs that conduct "data mining" to take advantage of casual users surfing the web who are signing up in their millions for the numerous popular "free" social network sites. (Facebook refuses to reveal its profits but is rumored to be worth $15 billion.) (A walled garden refers to a media strategy that compels users to one stay on their service. Data mining is the practice of collecting large amounts of personal information on website users by the site itself.) While Apple's iPhone unabashedly locks users into using AT&T cell phone service, sometimes the strategies are more subtle. FaceBook, the popular social network site, restricts the functionality of their site so that it is easy to remain on facebook.com, while making external linking and emailing difficult. LinkedIn, another social network site, doesn't allow users to delete their profile without contacting customer service. All of these tactics seek to make it easier for companies to collect information on individuals, with the sole purpose of creating consumer profiles for targeted advertising. The reason is simple: they make their money from the advertisers who will pay to get a captive audience (the kind they were once guaranteed on newspapers and TV) who might buy their products. It is possible that these companies will soon sell their inventions for vast profits in the same way that YouTube and MySpace did, by taking advantage of ordinary people who would probably not pay for their services unless they were completely free. But activists say that the the Web has enormous potential to be a digital commons, if we assert our rights to use it for purposes other than buying and selling. An activist group named Freespeech.org has put together a video that they are using to promote their "It's Our Web" campaign. The video, which spoofs the Transformers, is pretty entertaining, and manages to fit some complicated ideas about Internet user freedom into an accessible format. The underlying message of the video is a good one: the Internet is a medium that is best if it remains free. Restricting access to information is a taboo among Wikipedians, Slashdotters, bloggers and Gnubies alike because the free flow of information is what has driven the collective production responsible for the Web as we know it.
"CourseFeed phishes for information - CourseFeed is a security breach." Do students want to connect academic and personal social networks? Do Institutions want to connect with a proprietary system that "owns" the data and mines the data? Security breaches, confidentiality ocncerns, data ownership, access to licensed resource material - headaches galore.
Why not create your own centrally maintained social network using a tool like Elgg?
Still, here is what CourseFeed sells...
I'm a little late to the game here - and missed this one. Coursefeed (facebook app site) connects "you with your classmates and connects you to your school's online course content system. Browse your courses, post messages to the class, share notes – all without ever leaving Facebook. CourseFeed (product site) also alerts you when your professor posts announcements, tests, or content to your course. And you’ll get alerts when classmates post to the course wall and share notes."
Features: Without an online content system: * Course Wall * File storage for Course Notes, etc. * Course feed display of what's new posted by others. * Connect with others in the course. * Profile display to let friends know when you're in class.
With an online content system: * See everyone in your course – guaranteed accurate course roster. * View all online course materials without leaving Facebook * Course feed shows when professor posts announcements, files, etc. to your course. * View all announcements, new or old, in the announcements area. * One-click access into your school's online content system and auto-navigation that takes you right to the item.
Here's who owns CourseFeed...
Coursefeed is a free product from ClassTop, a proprietary content management and communication tool that synchronizes with major learning management systems. ClassTop is “a quick and easy way for instructors who are teaching multiple sections of one course to upload data into those courses all at one time.” With Blackboard, adding items to multiple courses involves logging on repeatedly to add items to each course. With ClassTop, only one login is required; instructors drag and drop files to place them. The files are synchronized with the LMS all at once at the end of the session. teachers can also make changes offline and have them uploaded when they connect online.
Here's one sad story...
"In order for CourseFeed to work with Wesleyan's network to access Blackboard and send notifications over Facebook, it needed user's usernames and passwords. When students added the application to their Facebook profiles, they had to give out this information, which put them in direct violation with Nebraska Wesleyan University policy and compromised their NWU accounts.Not only did CourseFeed use account information to send out Blackboard notifications, but it also accessed Blackboard accounts to send messages in students' names to their classmates, inviting them to add the application as well. It was these email messages and submitted complaints about them that first alerted Computer Services to the dilemma.Students also sent CourseFeed complaints to Facebook who then contacted ClassTop who, in turn, dutifully contacted Computer Services to work with them in finding a solution to the infringement of student accounts. Computer Services first blocked ClassTop's access to Blackboard and ClassTop also blocked students from accessing the CourseFeed application via Facebook. Next, Computer Services collected information on which accounts had been compromised and proceeded to change their passwords. Students were notified of this change through duplicate hard-copy letters sent to their mailboxes and home addresses; they were also informed through a notice that was posted on the NWU website. It is important to note that ClassTop's intent was not to create a malicious program that would infiltrate NWU's network. " But, it did.
As the eagles song Hotel California says - "You can checkout any time you like,But you can never leave!" Like so many services - proprietary services - like Google, yahoo, Facebook, etc. - they want us in but we can't get out - unless they say so - and they keep our luggage ! And they can, arbitrarily, as discovered by Robert Scoble - lock us out and just delete our account and data.
This should be a flag for all those educators espousing the use of third party social networks like Facebook in education. Alternatives, like Elgg, allow universities or educational foundations to run their own social networks, and not be prey to the whims of proprietary systems. As Robert also discovered the open ownership of our data and the portability thereof should be of prime concern! We are visitors to these sites, not seeking to become an inhabitant that is treated like a chattel. We own our ID and must be able to port our data whenever and wherever we want - see these principles espoused by the dataportability movement.
As Stephen Downes cites Steve O'hear " "the resistance of Facebook, MySpace, Google and most of the leading players in the user data space to offer easy data portability (I can't even backup my gmail with a simple one-click) is based on an old fashioned notion that lock-in is the best way to protect a strong market position." The whole promise of social software and open source was NOT to be locked in - that's why many of us in ed tech find the proprietary Learning Managment System as so much less than the grazing commons of the personal learning environment (PLE).
As a side note I am on Facebook and am also involved in an effort to search out our family roots. I found others on Facebook with the same surname and was sending them a message of introduction and inviting them to our surname site. The Facebook robots warned me that I was "spamming" and shoud desist. So much for a social site.
