The Auricle

So what’s a mashup?

A web site or application that combines the content of one or more other sites into something new. Take bashR which blends Wikipedia, Flickr, and social bookmarking del.icio.us. Result equals article from wikipedia, photo from flickr and links related to the search areas from delicous. Other example is Chicago Crime which combines a police database with Google Maps to show the location of reported crimes. Or consider Podbob helps users discover new media by linking a live events database from EVDB with free online music, i.e. search on a city and listen to the bands before going to see them. Fans even have their own events, e.g. esoterically named Mashup Camp Day in California

But the mashup concept is not new, it’s just that we didn’t call them that. See for example:

• Web page commentary as an educational tool? (Auricle 23 November 2004)
• … the view that digital resources are inherently distributed and will never be delivered by a single service provider. Source: JISC Information Environment Development Strategy 2001-2005 2nd draft
• Applications aren’t islands of functionality any more; they are bridges for information (Simon Bisson, Building Bridges, Guardian Online, 8 September 2005).[/i]
• Diana Laurillard’s 2002 Educause article Rethinking Teaching for the Knowledge Society (PDF) in which she describes (but doesn’t name) a quasi-mashup tool which integrates online discussion with a web page and so she argues supports the conversational framework and her concept of the Generic Learning Activity Model (GLAM). The tool I think she was referring to is called Digital Document Discourse Environment (D3E) and was one the tools developed by the UK Open University’s Knowledge Media Institute.

UK Higher Education enjoys a large number of JISC services and programmes and so it’s easy to miss some of the possible gems tucked away in a quiet corner somewhere. One possible example is the BUFVC which, with a small core team, focuses on the use of film, video and, more recently, audio in UK Higher and Further Education. If I was to summarize the BUFVC’s main offerings it would be databases, off-air recording, consultancy, and research. A search on the JISC site for BUFVC also uncovers a large number of references to the work of BUFVC.

I find Clark Boyd’s technology podcasts for the BBC/PRI coproduction The World are invariably worth a listen. An item in Technology Podcast number 85 (15 February 2006) about China Internet Censorship recently caught my attention.

Could the combination of Evernote’s handwriting and shape recognition plus a graphic tablet/digital pen achieve at least some of what a tablet PC purports to do? Are there any benefits beyond what can be achieved without this hardware/software combo for students or their teachers?

Who said this? ” …. to make the world’s information universally accessible and useful”. When was it said and who said it? Tim Berners-Lee? Vannevar Bush? Yahoo? Google? Microsoft?

In this fairly long post I twist and turn my way through some of the alleyways relating to the user experience of the digital television and video revolution that seems intent on impacting upon as all. Some alleys will be cul-de-sacs and some will have deep holes to fall into. Some alleys will be dressed up as prime real estate only to have their cover blown, and some will be, well … just confusing. This particular journey takes us from Hull to China and back.

So Google has bought the company behind the Writely Web based wordprocessor and so adds, what will undoubtedly be, the first of several such online ‘office’ applications to its stable.

I found this one via Michelle Lamberson’s informative blog. Michelle is the Director of the Office of Learning Technology (OLT) at the University of British Columbia (UBC) where that other persona Brian Lamb resides.

It’s sometimes useful to sample the business perspective on the proprietary VLE world. Take for instance Business Week’s analysis of Blackboard’s financial health (7 Feb 2006). This is a world away from the concerns of those actually using these products, but such analyses provide an essential reminder why these products exist, and sometimes cease to exist. But, with the US Department of Justice’s approval for the ‘merger’ of Blackboard and WebCT (the companies, not the technology), for the institutions who bought into WebCT there are now, surely, more pressing concerns? Like, What do we do now?

Way back in November 2004 my Auricle posting A filling station model of e-learning? proposed that, instead of the institutional monolithic model of e-learning, we need to think in terms of: … an emergent model in which various sites on the internet become almost like resource ‘filling stations’ for mobile multi-function devices. Sony’s latest gizmo may well help things along nicely … unless of course the usual DRM, IPR issues (which arise so rapidly in this space) find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of potential success.