1. Remixing elearning Scott Wilson, Glasgow 16/3/06
Publisher’s Note: This presentation was given at the CETIS Educational Content SIG (Special Interest Group) Meeting at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow held 17 March 2006.

2. What this talk is about Web services Learning networks
Connected systems
Web 2.0
The e-Framework

3. 1. Some background

4. Connected=better?
People obtain benefits from being connected into networks and communities
Systems connected into networks and meta-systems gain benefits not available to isolated systems
Metcalfe’s Law

5. Connecting with pedagogy
Six degrees - social networks - COPs
Connectivism - the network is the learning
PLE - placing the learner at the centre of the network

7. Connections The internet is all about connections
Connections can be made that break out of hierarchies (trees) and enable overlapping semilattice structures
Overlaps and fuzzy boundaries are characteristic of ‘natural’ or ‘open’ systems

8. 1+1=3?
When you combine the features of two systems, you can get unexpected synergies

9. 2. examples

13. More
Postgenomic - mixing weblogs and folksonomies with traditional research papers
Delicious library - mixing the desktop library and the online book store
43Things, 43Places, 43People…

15. 3. technology

16. Where does the magic happen?
As well as the web for humans, there is an increasingly large web for machines, too
It talks the same protocol (HTTP) as the more visible web, but uses dialects of XML (or RDF) instead of HTML

17. Web Services
A web service is when someone provides a service on the web for machines as well as (or instead of) for people
The most common type is a feed - an XML representation of a list of posts, media (podcast), or news

19. Apple desktop widgets using web service APIs

20. Feeds
Feeds are useful educationally as they are an attenuation device: they reduce the variety of the network to a selection of important sources
We can then mix, sort, group, rate and annotate the resources
Feeds aren’t just for resources, the same basic technology is also used for people (FOAF) and events (iCalendar)

22. Other types of services
Other services enable the creation or modification of resources rather than just getting alternative representations
These we (in the PLE project) tend to call “conduits”
For example, there is a standard protocol for posting a new entry in a weblog

23. Conduits
Conduits are extremely useful as they provide a feed-forward mechanism - we can share our mixes with others
It also means we can separate hosting from authoring, something taken advantage of by a huge range of desktop weblog clients

24. Discovery Feeds tend to be advertised on sites using common icons
There are also tags in HTML that can be used to automatically find associated feeds
Complete sets of services (APIs) often have their own page on a site with descriptions of how to use them

26. 4. education

27. Educational Web Services
Feeds and conduits are increasingly common on the web, but are there any specific things we’d like in education?
For example, what about being able to get feeds of courses rather than articles? Or post an essay for marking rather than a post?

28. There are quite a lot… Enrollment (who’s on what course) Reading lists
Timetables
Curriculum/prospectus
Portfolios
Learning designs/activities

29. Enter the e-Framework
A collaborative effort by JISC, DEST, SURF, NZ MoE and others to make sense of web services in education
Identifying the possible kinds of services, and try out solutions, help implementers, and agree specifications
Also looking at identifying services in common with other domains in education, like research and administration

30. Reference models
Envisaging how services can be combined to support an educational process or address an area of concern
Assessment, portfolios, personal learning, learning activities, course validation, curriculum management…

31. More links http://www.elframework.org