http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/2007/05/03/study-stickies/

http://studystickies.com/

Amir Michail, the developer of a new service called Study Stickies, wrote an email asking me to look at and comment on his new service. Study Stickies is a ’social’ note taking service for students. It allows them to enter info about textbooks, vodcasts, podcasts, PDFs and URLs and add study notes, linked to specific sections of these resources, which can also be tagged for finding and re-finding by others. It also seems to handle mathematical notations with ease.

There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the idea; indeed it reminded me of the “conversations” I’ve had with previous owners of second hand textbooks, evoked by their marginalia.

My issue, and what feels like it may be a challenge to adoption for a service like this, is around “where” the annotation takes place, “how” it occurs, both of which tie into the “why.” For instance, to annotate a textbook one needs to first enter in it’s ISBN number. But we already have a few places where students can find their textbooks online, either their library catalogues or amazon.com. A “web 2.0″ approach, that took seriously the value in leveraging existing services, would either offer a way (say a bookmarklet) for users to cite the thing they are commenting on *in context*, or, say like LibraryThing, at least tie into the APIs of Google and library catalogues everywhere to offer a query service. This is the kind of thing I often hear dismissed as an “implementation detail” (god how I hate that phrase) but it’s one of those small things that has lead to the uptake of countless web 2.0 sites that ‘get it’ and which is not done in countless web 1.0 sites that don’t. This is the “how” I refer to above.

The second piece is the “where” - the annotation systems that really excite me, for this is in essence what Study Stickies is, are the ones, like Trailfire, that reveal the annotations in context, while I am looking at the very thing that is annotated, especially for the “re-finders.” Think back to my above comment about marginalia in second hand books; this is how the experience should work like, instead of like finding someone’s notebook from last year’s class and then piece by piece connecting it back to the pieces of content on which it is commenting.

And both of these minor “implementation details” for me tie into the “why” people do (or do not) use services like this. If it allows me to easily add a note, while I am studying materials online, then I am motivated to use it for my own uses, and the network benefits from my personally motivated actions. People often point to “tags” as being the fundamental reason for del.icio.us success, but I would argue that the bookmarklets and toolbars that allow you to easily add to it were equally part of its success. And if, while looking at a resource, I am told that there are already notes from others which may be of relevance to me, I become motivated, again for selfish reasons, to take advantage of the network resource and increase its value.

Maybe these issues are not fatal flaws for Study Stickies. I can see ways in which they can address these as they move forward, and clearly it is a very young system. But I’d suggest that small “implementation details” like this are actually some of the things that lead to explosive growth for many of these new systems.

Yet there is an important thing Study Stickies has which the more “internet-wide” systems don’t, and that’s context. When you find an annotation in Study Stickies, by definition it’s a “study note,” something that a user in a likely not-too-dissimilar context to your own made, which offers a good chance of enhancing its value to you. In an internet-wide system like Trailfire, who knows who made the mark and whether it has any value to you. Sure, sometimes they’ll bear serendipity, but as many times, not, and worse, things that by right and by law we are often required to shield out. Or else, what is now more common with the current generation of social software systems, you can form a group, but its yet another ad hoc group built anew with each app that comes along.

—snip—

I have been trying for almost a week to finish this post. I wanted to talk about the critical need for not just open identification but, as importantly, open authorization. How their absence has allowed things like the Blackboard patent to flourish (read it, what do you think it’s about). And how these will provide the impetus for the next huge round of innovation, truely, social computing. But I couldn’t figure out how to do it in the time I have. So there. Rather than let this post go totally stale, click ‘Publish’ and be done with it. - SWL

http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/2007/05/05/bibliodyssey/

http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/

Total non-sequitar (how is that any different than usual, Scott) but BibliOdyssey, a trove of “Visual Materia Obscura” and Eclectic Bookart, took me back to my undergraduate days. As part of a Milton class my professor took us to Western’s rare book room to see some illustrated editions there. For the next 3 years it became my secret study haven, both because it was amazingly quiet (nobody else seemed to know about it), it had these great big oak tables, and contained these freaky books. I would ask the librarian to bring various works with weird and fanciful illustrations and open it on one of the pages, then work on my own stuff, looking at the illustration as a break. They either never caught on or else just tolerated me, but I had a perfect study space and loads of mind bending fun too boot. - SWL

http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/2007/05/05/bibliodyssey/

http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/

Total non-sequitar (how is that any different than usual, Scott) but BibliOdyssey, a trove of “Visual Materia Obscura” and Eclectic Bookart, took me back to my undergraduate days.

As part of a Milton class my professor took us to Western’s rare book room to see some illustrated editions there. For the next 3 years it became my secret study haven, both because it was amazingly quiet (nobody else seemed to know about it), it had these great big oak tables, and contained these freaky books. I would ask the librarian to bring various works with weird and fanciful illustrations and open it on one of the pages, then work on my own stuff, looking at the illustration as a break. They either never caught on or else just tolerated me, but I had a perfect study space and loads of mind bending fun too boot. - SWL

http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/2007/05/16/creative-commons-u

I run a repository service in B.C. (god, why does that always feel like the start of a stereotypical A.A. confessional, “My name is Scott and I am a recovering Learning Object Repository manager…”) We currently support sharing materials under two different licenses, either the Internet-wide Creative Commons (specifically the Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada flavour) or a BC-specific consortial license called the BC Commons.

Part of my job is to take the dog and pony show around to institutions, so increasingly I am in front of faculty from across the province presenting on this. Typically, to introduce the idea of these licenses, I start with the Creative Commons, because given it’s massive adoption, clearly everyone will have heard of it, right?

WRONG!!!  In well over a dozen presentations recently, I have NEVER had more than a 35% recognition rate for the Creative Commons (and that’s including librarian conferences!) and sometimes as little as 1 in 20 will have heard about it.

I know I’ve gone off on this before on cogdog’s comment area, but this is still just staggering to me. And I don’t really mean that as a critique on the faculty themselves, though neither do I want to praise inattentivenesses. But seriously, we, and by that I mean both those of us supporting faculty in general, and also those working on “openness and sharing,” need to do a better job of communicating basic things like the very existence of the Creative Commons. It shocks me to have to write that in 2007, but that’s my reality.

How about you - what’s the awareness level of Creative Commons in your organization? Any ideas on simple (free, easy) ways of increasing this awareness? Or is “mass retirement” the solution to your information literacy woes? Love to hear your ideas or stories to the contrary. - SWL

http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/2007/05/16/creative-commons-u

I run a repository service in B.C. (god, why does that always feel like the start of a stereotypical A.A. confessional, “My name is Scott and I am a recovering Learning Object Repository manager…”) We currently support sharing materials under two different licenses, either the Internet-wide Creative Commons (specifically the Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada flavour) or a BC-specific consortial license called the BC Commons.

Part of my job is to take the dog and pony show around to institutions, so increasingly I am in front of faculty from across the province presenting on this. Typically, to introduce the idea of these licenses, I start with the Creative Commons, because given it’s massive adoption, clearly everyone will have heard of it, right?

WRONG!!!  In well over a dozen presentations recently, I have NEVER had more than a 35% recognition rate for the Creative Commons (and that’s including librarian conferences!) and sometimes as little as 1 in 20 will have heard about it.

I know I’ve gone off on this before on cogdog’s comment area, but this is still just staggering to me. And I don’t really mean that as a critique on the faculty themselves, though neither do I want to praise inattentivenesses. But seriously, we, and by that I mean both those of us supporting faculty in general, and also those working on “openness and sharing,” need to do a better job of communicating basic things like the very existence of the Creative Commons. It shocks me to have to write that in 2007, but that’s my reality.

How about you - what’s the awareness level of Creative Commons in your organization? Any ideas on simple (free, easy) ways of increasing this awareness? Or is “mass retirement” the solution to your information literacy woes? Love to hear your ideas or stories to the contrary. - SWL

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Edtechpost/~3/124057670/

I run a repository service in B.C. (god, why does that always feel like the start of a stereotypical A.A. confessional, “My name is Scott and I am a recovering Learning Object Repository manager…”) We currently support sharing materials under two different licenses, either the Internet-wide Creative Commons (specifically the Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada flavour) or a BC-specific consortial license called the BC Commons.

Part of my job is to take the dog and pony show around to institutions, so increasingly I am in front of faculty from across the province presenting on this. Typically, to introduce the idea of these licenses, I start with the Creative Commons, because given it’s massive adoption, clearly everyone will have heard of it, right?

WRONG!!!  In well over a dozen presentations recently, I have NEVER had more than a 35% recognition rate for the Creative Commons (and that’s including librarian conferences!) and sometimes as little as 1 in 20 will have heard about it.

I know I’ve gone off on this before on cogdog’s comment area, but this is still just staggering to me. And I don’t really mean that as a critique on the faculty themselves, though neither do I want to praise inattentivenesses. But seriously, we, and by that I mean both those of us supporting faculty in general, and also those working on “openness and sharing,” need to do a better job of communicating basic things like the very existence of the Creative Commons. It shocks me to have to write that in 2007, but that’s my reality.

How about you - what’s the awareness level of Creative Commons in your organization? Any ideas on simple (free, easy) ways of increasing this awareness? Or is “mass retirement” the solution to your information literacy woes? Love to hear your ideas or stories to the contrary. - SWL

http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/2007/05/25/goodbye-twitter/

With apologies to CogDog,

It’s been fun, but for me, my experiment with Twitter is done. I tried briefly to encourage a mass migration of Twitter pals to Jaiku, but didn’t have the social mojo to accomplish it, and in truth, it didn’t appeal to me that much - too “busy,” not as simple and clean as Twitter, and as everyone pointed out, relatively empty of users.

It’s too bad, the experiment was fun, I really enjoyed the daily interaction with old friends like CogDog, D’Arcy and Brian and making new ones with Bryan, Jim, Gardner and others, but at the end of the day I have no affection for flaky apps that leave me feeling like I’m the one with the problem instead of just plain breaking (which at least you know was the apps fault). So goodbye Twitter, it’s been nice to know yah. And hopefully this won’t render me persona non grata with the Twitterati. - SWL 

http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/2007/05/25/goodbye-twitter/

With apologies to CogDog,

It’s been fun, but for me, my experiment with Twitter is done. I tried briefly to encourage a mass migration of Twitter pals to Jaiku, but didn’t have the social mojo to accomplish it, and in truth, it didn’t appeal to me that much - too “busy,” not as simple and clean as Twitter, and as everyone pointed out, relatively empty of users.

It’s too bad, the experiment was fun, I really enjoyed the daily interaction with old friends like CogDog, D’Arcy and Brian and making new ones with Bryan, Jim, Gardner and others, but at the end of the day I have no affection for flaky apps that leave me feeling like I’m the one with the problem instead of just plain breaking (which at least you know was the apps fault). So goodbye Twitter, it’s been nice to know yah. And hopefully this won’t render me persona non grata with the Twitterati. - SWL 

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Edtechpost/~3/124057669/

With apologies to CogDog,

It’s been fun, but for me, my experiment with Twitter is done. I tried briefly to encourage a mass migration of Twitter pals to Jaiku, but didn’t have the social mojo to accomplish it, and in truth, it didn’t appeal to me that much - too “busy,” not as simple and clean as Twitter, and as everyone pointed out, relatively empty of users.

It’s too bad, the experiment was fun, I really enjoyed the daily interaction with old friends like CogDog, D’Arcy and Brian and making new ones with Bryan, Jim, Gardner and others, but at the end of the day I have no affection for flaky apps that leave me feeling like I’m the one with the problem instead of just plain breaking (which at least you know was the apps fault). So goodbye Twitter, it’s been nice to know yah. And hopefully this won’t render me persona non grata with the Twitterati. - SWL 

http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/2007/05/28/current-list-of-us

http://www.immagic.com/eLibrary/ARCHIVES/GENERAL/IMM/I070524P.pdf

I believe, though could be mistaken, that this valuable list of current US e-learning patents was created by Jim Farmer at im+m.

This next comment goes in the “Scott complaining about something that is free” bin, but Jim, is there any way you could maintain this (if that is what you are doing in) in something like DabbleDB or a GoogleDoc spreadsheet? Something that automatically produces an RSS feed (and that you could give permission to others to add to, so as to not have to shoulder the burden alone).

Efforts like this that keep the community appraised are immensely valueable. And I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but much like the case with the Ed Tech conference listings I documented a while back, in this day and age we need to be looking at web-based formats and tools by default, ones that produce RSS and allow collaborative editing. There is simply too much too kepp track of to do otherwise, and it is only in spreading the load that we can hope to keep up. - SWL

http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/2007/05/28/current-list-of-us

http://www.immagic.com/eLibrary/ARCHIVES/GENERAL/IMM/I070524P.pdf

I believe, though could be mistaken, that this valuable list of current US e-learning patents was created by Jim Farmer at im+m.

This next comment goes in the “Scott complaining about something that is free” bin, but Jim, is there any way you could maintain this (if that is what you are doing in) in something like DabbleDB or a GoogleDoc spreadsheet? Something that automatically produces an RSS feed (and that you could give permission to others to add to, so as to not have to shoulder the burden alone).

Efforts like this that keep the community appraised are immensely valueable. And I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but much like the case with the Ed Tech conference listings I documented a while back, in this day and age we need to be looking at web-based formats and tools by default, ones that produce RSS and allow collaborative editing. There is simply too much too kepp track of to do otherwise, and it is only in spreading the load that we can hope to keep up. - SWL

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Edtechpost/~3/124057668/

http://www.immagic.com/eLibrary/ARCHIVES/GENERAL/IMM/I070524P.pdf

I believe, though could be mistaken, that this valuable list of current US e-learning patents was created by Jim Farmer at im+m.

This next comment goes in the “Scott complaining about something that is free” bin, but Jim, is there any way you could maintain this (if that is what you are doing in) in something like DabbleDB or a GoogleDoc spreadsheet? Something that automatically produces an RSS feed (and that you could give permission to others to add to, so as to not have to shoulder the burden alone).

Efforts like this that keep the community appraised are immensely valueable. And I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but much like the case with the Ed Tech conference listings I documented a while back, in this day and age we need to be looking at web-based formats and tools by default, ones that produce RSS and allow collaborative editing. There is simply too much too kepp track of to do otherwise, and it is only in spreading the load that we can hope to keep up. - SWL

http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/2007/05/29/thagoo/

http://www.thagoo.com/

So this kind of seems like a good idea, a site which allows you to search tags across a large number of social bookmarking sites, but somehow I expect I’ll use it as much as I use “meta-search” engines, which is to say, not at all.

If I knew I was getting the best stuff from all the sites, and it dealt well with duplication, then maybe. But my experience, which seems borne out by how hard it is to get people to shift off of their habitual search techniques, is that familiarity with the search experience (both interface and reliability of the results, and in the case of social bookmarking, the extent of your affinity or ability to control your sources) trumps the greater span of these ‘meta-’ approaches. - SWL

http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/2007/05/29/thagoo/

http://www.thagoo.com/

So this kind of seems like a good idea, a site which allows you to search tags across a large number of social bookmarking sites, but somehow I expect I’ll use it as much as I use “meta-search” engines, which is to say, not at all.

If I knew I was getting the best stuff from all the sites, and it dealt well with duplication, then maybe. But my experience, which seems borne out by how hard it is to get people to shift off of their habitual search techniques, is that familiarity with the search experience (both interface and reliability of the results, and in the case of social bookmarking, the extent of your affinity or ability to control your sources) trumps the greater span of these ‘meta-’ approaches. - SWL

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Edtechpost/~3/124057667/

http://www.thagoo.com/

So this kind of seems like a good idea, a site which allows you to search tags across a large number of social bookmarking sites, but somehow I expect I’ll use it as much as I use “meta-search” engines, which is to say, not at all.

If I knew I was getting the best stuff from all the sites, and it dealt well with duplication, then maybe. But my experience, which seems borne out by how hard it is to get people to shift off of their habitual search techniques, is that familiarity with the search experience (both interface and reliability of the results, and in the case of social bookmarking, the extent of your affinity or ability to control your sources) trumps the greater span of these ‘meta-’ approaches. - SWL