Earth: Mostly Harmless

What I’m up to at work

Work:
A run-down of what I’m currently coding for Spoken Word. I have had limited time to put toward Spoken Word stuff recently, but I hope this will change in the next few weeks.

• A citations system: Based on Chris Putnam’s excellent bibutils will allow download of RIS, EndNote and BibTex versions of the appropriate reference for a Padova item.
• A feature for Padova called Zeitgeist: this will embed the contents of del.icio.us URI info rss feeds (which essentially contain the posting history for that URI) reformatted and put into a nice AJAX drop-down box. This allows one so see how previous del.icio.us users have tagged and commented the item you’re looking at. Adding a callback to our database will allow us to maintain an informal zeitgeist of which items are most often bookmarked. Technorati support will eventually be forthcoming.
• Much more robust and useful XML output in Padova. It will output pure Dublin Core; Fedora FoxML or Library of Congress MODS. FoXML support is pretty much done - I just need to test that records exported in Fedora actually then import successfully into Fedora. DC is a copy-and-paste job, but MODS will require a few mapping decisions.

‘The Podcast Revolution’

This is a story I wrote for publication in my University’s student newspaper. It went out in the 16th October edition of the Strathclyde Telegraph. My thanks go out once again to all my interviewees.

South Kent College has become the latest institution to issue MP3 players to students. The college is issuing iPod nanos to enable learners to download lectures and other content from the college through podcasting technology. Podcasting, for the unfamiliar, is a system of distributing audio or video via web ‘feeds’, where new content is made available automatically to feed subscribers with ‘podcatching’ software such as iTunes or Juice.

Typically, this content is then synchronised onto a music player for listening. Mark Hunter, creator of the popular tartanpodcast (http://www.tartanpodcast.com), is enthusiastic about the medium’s educational potential. “Versatility is embedded in what podcasting is - user-created content. That means that every user can create content unique to them: their tastes; their passions; their vision; their message”.

South Kent is not alone in recognising the power of podcasting: many educational institutions now have podcasting schemes. Some, like Stanford and Wisconsin-Madison University, have set up ‘iTunes U’ sites with Apple’s assistance. Others, such as the University of Western Australia have created bespoke systems: UWA’s solution is now marketed commercially as ‘Lectopia’. By all accounts, both types are extremely popular. Indeed, the Wisconsin-Madison programme was initiated as a result of student and staff demands.

The policy of institutions distributing MP3 players to students is more contentious. The first institution to do so on a large scale was Duke University in North Carolina, where media reports suggested that students and staff were failing to take full advantage of the devices. A report in Duke student paper ‘The Chronicle’ even contained a plea for the programme to be scrapped, according to Christian Science Monitor. Beginning with the current semester, Duke will instead lend the devices to students, with a fee charged to those wishing to retain players after term.

Meanwhile at Strathclyde, some academics have been pushing forward with podcasting. Kevin O’Gorman, PhD student at the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, is creating ten video podcasts based on BBC archive material thanks to Higher Education Academy funding. The ‘Talking Hospitality’ collection takes in such themes as the 1936 Berlin Olympics and the indigenous hospitality of the Bedouin peoples. The BBC programmes were sourced through Spoken Word Services at Glasgow Caledonian University (http://www.spokenword.ac.uk).

Does this new technology pose risks to the traditional relationship between lecturer and student? Hunter sees podcasting as a way to “augment traditional learning” rather than replace it. O’Gorman concurs, seeing the mechanism as “another space for learning and teaching”. Lack of appropriate written evidence on subjects of interest led him to look elsewhere, and “constructing podcasts from BBC programmes has been a particularly rich theme”, he attests.

A wider podcasting strategy at Strathclyde is currently in development, according to Prof. James Boyle, Academic Champion for Teaching & Learning Through Technology. “Mobile devices, including the ability to work with podcasts, will have a major role in the future”, Prof. Boyle explains. He notes that Strathclyde has plans for deploying infrastructure to support technologies like podcasting: “Learning Services also recognise that their existing Streaming server (for streamed video and audio) should be extended to allow podcast downloads”.

The opportunity to be Scotland’s leader in academic podcasting is still within reach, if staff and students are willing to embrace the medium soon. Persuading them to do this shouldn’t be hard: Hunter suggests that part of the appeal of podcasting is the masses of free content for MP3 players. And who could say ‘no’ to that?

By Graeme West


9th October 2006

It’s a university, but not as we know it

Aidan spotted this Guardian article on the Saltire Centre, our new learning centre/library at GCU. Yup, folks, this is where I work

There are a lot more photos of it on Flickr - the ones by BigRedBall are mine. This set by JISC InfoNet is particularly good.

It’s a university, but not as we know it:

The Guardian featured our new Saltire Centre in its recent Educational Supplement (published Tuesday the 19th of September). The review is a very positive one and highlights on how the building is changing the way in which students interact with each and how the building is a sign of things to come and is paving the way for other Universities employing such a forward thinking approach to student learning and learning environments.

The Saltire Centre, a futuristic but people-friendly learning space at Scotland’s fourth largest university, has a serious purpose. But its impact on visitors and users, from the talking lifts to the inflatable igloos, is anything but solemn. It lifts their spirits and makes them smile.

Read the full article here.

(Via Spoken Word Matters).

Social networking

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about how to provide some sort of social network service for students and alumni at universities in Scotland. The thing is, the social side of things at Scottish universities is pretty good - but it does pretty much consist only of bars and nights out, and it’s difficult to meet many people from outside your own faculty other than through this sort of thing. What I’d like to see more of are kind of ‘half-way’ activities like informal societies and shared interest groups, to try to extend the links between disparate groups at the universities, and increase the general sense of ‘community’.

First of all, my journey started at the Facebook, an impressive social network for students and alumni, which having expanded out of its US homeland is available in about 20 HE institutions in the UK. Andrew Gruen introduced me to this, and while it’s impressive, it’s really only the beginning of what might be possible using social networks.

Last week in a History tutorial I discovered a whole range of interesting, and obscure, links between people attending. Several groups knew one or two other people there, but gradually it emerged that a lot more linked the attendees than was obvious at first. The tutor also mentioned that he had been keeping up with what a few ex-classmates were up to using Friends Reunited. While the intentions of FR may be admirable, it has two limitations for me: firstly, the only real semantic information is based on names, classes and schools; and the second is that it’s a horribly commercial endeavour. I think anything of this nature should essentially be student-led.

What struck me was that all of the extraneous information which people might want to submit could be presented in a semantic form, à la Facebook, but that on the scale of an individual institution, much deeper and more interesting links might be formed than what’s possible there.

The most obvious difference is that people will often know each other better - but on an institutional scale, it might also be possible to leverage clubs, societies and unions into providing semantics (or even allowing users to create metadata on their membership of such things that would emerge into a structure of sorts). Furthermore, the social network itself might be a highly suitable place for clubs and societies to base themselves and recruit new members. After all, if you can see others who are also interested in 2nd century Greek pottery, you might find (obscure societies permitting) that there’s a group set up for just your sort, or choose to set one up of your own.

Enter Ning. A development platform and API for social network apps. I’m going to give this a go, and possibly steal huge swathes of code (possibly). I don’t think it’d be very suitable for actual deployment but it might be useful as a playground to see what’s possible, and how it might work. Also, I’ve been tentatively looking into joining the Geek Society at UoS, so I’ll see if any of them are interested in looking into it. Spoken Word (where I work) might also be interested - hopefully in hosting, but it might also be relevant to the Shibboleth project we’re bidding for.

Unfortunately, as you can see, Strathclyde doesn’t exactly have a thriving societies scene, so I think a Glasgow-wide deployment might be appropriate. It also makes sense given the large numbers of intra-institution social links between students at the University of Glasgow, GCU, the University of Paisley and so on. Who knows, I might even get the unions on board.