I've removed the RSS and e-mail feeds because Google Sites doesn't provide RSS, and the temporary feeds, via Yahoo Pipes, broke. This is another strike against Google Sites. I'm considering other options.
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posted May 11, 2009 2:47 PM by Jay Collier
Over the past few months, we've been defining the architecture of an integrated online environment for Bates, and we've been rolling out the first two phases, both at the wide end of the funnel of engagement. First, here are two graphics we've produced to explain our initiative. (Thanks to Ethan Dahlin Magoon, our new online media producer, for visualizing many concepts in two small spaces.)
The first graphic is our proposed domain architecture. It is a virtual master plan based on an overarching blueprint for online engagement.
It is helping us show how future online content, collaboration, and transactions can support our constituents as they move from general awareness toward greater
engagement and commitment. This is critical for those of us who are
building future phases of our domain. Next, we are developing a new home site as entry to this environment; here's the site architecture. Unlike many home pages and top-level sites, we are working to establish, for our first-time online visitors, a connection with the deeper content which matches their own interests. One of our primary goals has been to surface the content that is already being generated by faculty, staff, and students around the College. (We identified a significant amount of content which was mostly invisible to the world — not by design, but by neglect.) We're raising our "news/magazine" prototype which presents stories — in text, images, audio, and video — classified by topic, to a production level at the same time as our home project.
Our students have become active partners in the development of this new environment, from production work in WordPress and DabbleDB, to writing about our strategy for the College community. If you're undertaking something similar, will you share here in the comments? We'd like to have company ...
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posted Jan 30, 2009 6:45 PM by Jay Collier
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updated Jan 30, 2009 6:47 PM
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I haven't been posting here at IKE.org for some time, as my attention has been focused on actually presenting the blueprint for, and building, such an environment. Please follow the developments here. Please comment! |
posted Nov 11, 2008 1:55 PM by Jay Collier
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updated Nov 11, 2008 2:46 PM
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The Bates IT department is currently working on a software architecture to support the kind of online ecosystem we've envisioned here, with your help, over the past six months. However, although we've inventoried a long list of desired features, the question remained: what would such an online experience feel like? Working with a vision and blueprint for online engagement, my group has been developing a series of prototypes to demonstrate. We've used WordPress, Netvibes, and Dekiwiki, and have Flickr and DabbleDB prototypes in development. This has been an interesting experiment in integrating multiple sources and aggregation services (as opposed to a single monolithic system). I've learned a lot about content structure and presentation — and integration with social media — with more to come. Please take a look and share your thoughts. -Jay |
posted Sep 29, 2008 7:29 AM by Jay Collier
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updated Sep 29, 2008 9:53 AM
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Dirk Swart and his colleagues at Cornell have released a paper outlining the objectives for an easy-to-use Web publishing tool to support Cornell data repositories. Cornell has given permission to share, so take a look and feel free, as always, to comment below. - Practicing Web 2.0, by Dirk Swart, Al Gonzalez, Barbara Friedman, Tonya Miles, David DeMello, Tony Lombardo, Lisa Cameron-Norfleet, Nathan Reimer, Robert Miller, Corey Merrell
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posted Sep 27, 2008 3:06 PM by Jay Collier
Bates' Steve Moitozo brought together over two dozen faculty and staff from around the College for a "quality attributes workshop." The goal was to identify and prioritize needs for an Integrated Knowledge Environment at Bates. He has given us permission to share the package of materials he provided, in advance, to the participants. I (Jay Collier) presented an introduction to online engagement as a context for the rest of the workshop. |
posted Aug 19, 2008 10:57 AM by Jay Collier
Rached Ruben has posted a research project called "The Use of Social Media in Higher Education for Marketing and Communications: A Guide for Professionals in Higher Education."
From my point, most noteworthy is the visualization of the "conversation prism" subtitled "the art of listening, learning, and sharing."
Take a look.
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posted Aug 19, 2008 10:48 AM by Jay Collier
OKI's Jeff Merriman offers his definition of the interoperability of software systems:
“The measure of ease of integration between
two systems or software components to achieve a functional goal. A
highly interoperable integration is one that can be easily achieved by
the individual who requires the result.”
Middlebury College's Segue social learning system is being used to host OKI's new site.
"Segue is a curricular content management system designed for teaching,
learning and research. It is essentially a synthesis of wikis, blogs
and traditional content management systems"
This is a reminder to revisit our list of related initiatives.
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posted Jul 30, 2008 11:52 AM by Jay Collier
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updated Jul 30, 2008 12:10 PM
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I'm attending the Campus Technology conference for the first time this week.
Yesterday, I learned about more walled gardens in academic technology than I'd ever imagined. At the same time, there was a strong awareness that many of the external social media services which are available to students, faculty, staff, and alumni are being used everywhere, even in classroom settings, because they are easy to use and powerful.
Flickr photo from rpongsaj
The discussions finally expanded from the trees to the forest late in the day, as a result of the conference backchannels (1) (2). I met several more folks interested in the integration of critically-important walled gardens with content objects and relationships published and shared out in the wild. Gary Brown gave a talk today. Georgetown and Tufts are presenting tomorrow. Boston College is rolling out new services soon. Sterling College is developing an academic framework for integration.
Right now, there's so much to take in, and I'm going to let a week go by before attempting to start on sense-making. In the meantime, I wanted to report that the desire to envision an ecosystem where these many kinds of online learning experiences — private, group, public — can cohabitate is shared widely, and is being explored by far more people in higher education that I realized.
If you're interested in the detailed, unfiltered stream, follow along!
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posted Jul 17, 2008 12:38 PM by Jay Collier
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updated Jul 17, 2008 12:49 PM
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The headline is a flame-thrower, but the concepts in this article sure sound familiar, don't they?
"A social publishing system combines [online experience patterns] into a cohesive set of technology ... that provides structure for people to express ideas and engage each other in proven patterns."
If you get beyond the term "social publishing system," I think the article captures a couple of our core themes.
First, any knowledge objects you create — you could also call them content, nodes, assets — in any media, accessed through multiple methods, should all be able to be managed easily by you. Al Gonzalez calls this the "well," the content repository that holds actual objects and also links to externally hosted objects. They are all part of your online identity, whether text, images, audio, video, maps, or slideshows.
Second, interacting with every object is a social experience, even if it's just you and it ;) Mostly, however, you authorize others to interact with these objects in a variety of ways. Here are patterns from the original article with my italicized social descriptions.
Publication pattern: "a writer and editor moving an article, story, press release, transcript, timeline, event listing,through an approval chain"
Water cooler pattern: "a person publishing personal opinions and observations on a regular basis"
Presentation and Q&A pattern: "a structured discussion about an idea or document"
Study group pattern: "several people jointly editing a document or group of documents"
Speed dating pattern: "people publishing personal profiles, creating and maintaining their digital social graph, and interacting within their network"
The original article uses technology patterns: wiki, blog, etc. I suggest that what matters, here, are the experiences that people have of each others' media creations and the patterns of those social experiences.
In other words, content objects, by themselves, are chunks of published media. When they are experienced by others, through any pattern, they become social.
What do you think? The lines (threads) are open.
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posted Jul 3, 2008 11:34 AM by Jay Collier
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updated Jul 3, 2008 11:36 AM
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With your help, I've reached another milestone in the IKE Project, one level deeper in our grand quest from vision toward reality. Here's a little background.
First, we developed a statement of vision, goals, and objectives.
Next, we conducted quite a few listening sessions with our users and identified a handful of overarching principles.
Then, we made a (very long) list of the many different system types that comprise our current online experiences.
Now, I've pulled together all feature requests I've received — from all sources — and organized them according to the general principles. Click on the "Detailed requests" tab if you want to see the complete collection.
This spreadsheet is a draft, ready for your feedback. I'm going to leave it static until July 9, so, if you have any recommendations for improvements please post them in the group forum.
I hope the next step will be a simple survey that can get to the relative importance of these features.
-Jay
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