Virtual worlds are getting quite a bit of attention at work at the moment and for good reason. Clearly there is a huge potential for their use in education and momentum in this area is really building. Like many I have experimented a bit with platforms like Second Life but am now wanting to do more. Second Life, while being great for some uses may not meet all requirements for everyone. I am particularly interested in installing my own virtual world and there are a number of options. Once installed, the first thing I need to do is start building or populating my virtual worlds and so far this is not easy for a novice. A lot of effort seems to be required to start creating appealing and useful artefacts for these worlds. What I’d really like to do once I have created something is to be able to transport it into another virtual world so that I can get some re-use out of it. Some sort of standards and mechanisms for such transportation would be great here. Interoperability specs here we come!
So it was with interest I read this post on the readwriteweb blog.
‘Teleporting’ sounds a lot more interesting than ‘harvesting’ (metadata). Sharing and re-using assets from virtual worlds is going to be very important and I look forward to hearing more about work in this area (perhaps we will see an OpenSocial for virtual worlds).

Cheers,
Jerry.

technorati tags: interoperability, virtual worlds,standards

Original post by jleeson and software by Elliott Back

From the Learning Futures Eiffel team blog here’s a nice introduction on standards to consider for ePortfolios. It gives a nice summary of the major ePortfolio specific standards to consider and importantly, mentions related specifications such as OpenSocial which I believe those interested in ePortfolios should start to at a minimum, become familiar with. From the article:

Today, even if few ePortfolio suppliers are engaged in the implementation of existing specifications, those doing it generally do so within the context of a specific community, using what is called application profiles, i.e. an adaptation of a base specification to the particular requirements of this community. This adaptation adds a level of complexity to the issue of interoperability, as different application profiles of the same base specification do not necessarily interoperate…

Our own experience in this area certainly backs this up. Some time ago, we developed an Employability Skills ePortfolio and used the IMS ePortfolio specification to build it. The IMS specification itself is (well) quite comprehensive to say the least which added some complexity to our work but in developing a profile specifically for employability skills, we in effect lost interoperability with other IMS ePortfolio conformant applications unless they used the same profile as us (highly unlikely).

In the past I have discussed the need for simple to implement standards and concentrated on specifications such as RSS, Atom and microformats. The Learning Futures article references hResume, an interesting format used by LinkedIn. Compare the definition for that with a heavy duty specification and see which one you would rather implement.

technorati tags: ePortfolio, standards,interoperability

Original post by jleeson and software by Elliott Back

From Stephen Downes’ blog, notification that the IMS Global Learning Consortium is exploring the use of Creative Commons licensing in its interoperability specifications. The press release from IMS doesn’t go into a great deal of detail other than plans to run a pilot project under a form of Creative Commons licence. It will be interesting to see what form that licence takes. It sounds like it could be a great initiative and I look forward to more details coming out.

technorati tags: IMS GLC,
Creative Commons

Original post by jleeson and software by Elliott Back

Interesting post from Tim Hand got me to thinking about this one. From Tim’s perspective, the standards arena seems to have stalled a bit (if I’m reading correctly). When compared to what’s happening in Web 2.0 with new services and technologies just powering ahead. Try to keep up with what’s happening in the world of mashups alone and it’s staggering. There is interoperability (of a kind) everywhere. Developers are connecting up all sorts of apps, data sources etc to deliver new, innovative services. In doing this they are not dependent on cumbersome, complex standards. We recently did some research on standards in the area of ePortfolios and one of the major findings from that was the impact that Web 2.0 was having in that area. It was hard to find ePortfolio implementations (other than vendor software) that were using standards such as IMS ePortfolio but many of the implementers were interested in using RSS and other lightweight specifications in their implementations. They could easily consume content from other sources and also publish/syndicate their content very easily. Simple specs and simple services enable them to include functions from other sites into their ePortfolios (eg using Flickr to hold images of your work). Students also saw services such as myspace and Facebook as better places for them to have their ePortfolio (there were some interesting variations on this though).
So what does this mean for the formal world of standards and specifications. The very nature of the standards process is a slow one. A great deal of work goes into the development of a standard/specification which involves development work, collaboration, reviews, (public) comment, ratification and so on, all of which takes time. Time unfortunately is not ‘Standards’ best friend in the frenetic, fast pace of the Web 2.0 world. As the rate of change increases in both speed and sheer number of new services, it seems to me that the slow paced standards process faces a real challenge to keep up.

technorati tags: standards, Web 2.0,ePortfolio

Original post by jleeson and software by Elliott Back

Here’s a great local innovation (I like those). Podmo provides ‘free community networking for mobile phones’. Its a great service which provides access to content and other services such as messaging at no cost to users. All you need to setup a ‘podmo free zone’ is a server with Bluetooth radio capability that has access to the Internet (I set mine up on a laptop). The Podmo Server can be downloaded for free from the website.

Many mobile phones now support Bluetooth so connecting your phone to your Bluetooth network is pretty easy to do (most of the time). Podmo supports an increasing number of mobile phones and the list on their website is pretty comprehensive. Unfortunately for me, my phone just happens to be an LG phone for which there is no support. I understand there may be some differences in their Bluetooth implementation (so much for interoperability). However, with a bit of begging, I managed to borrow a Nokia N73 for a short time to test this out. To run Podmo on your phone you need to download the podmo player. This turned out to be very easy now that I had a supported phone.

Once that was done, registration was simple and away I went. There were a number of different types of downloads to have a look at, some news/information services and a messaging service. What Podmo really needs is more content and services - I’d like to see a web browser in there so that I can get out to the web without incurring charges from the mobile phone carrier. Their website provides a facility to upload content as well if you want to contribute.

To me there seems to be enormous potential for education and training with services such as Podmo. It is very simple to setup a Podmo network anywhere. This could be in an education environment, work setting or any number of locations where it would be useful to establish some sort of connectivity. Since most mobile phones support Bluetooth, and the number of phones supported is pretty good and should only get better, the cost of providing network devices could be extremely cheap (get users to use their own phones). Using the Podmo network the connectivity, via Bluetooth, is free which removes a substantial barrier for using mobiles. What is needed is some good educational or training content.

There are some obvious limitations such as the range of Bluetooth and perhaps, the number of devices that you can connect, depending on your bluetooth radio/server. Given the vast number of mobile phone models there will always be the possibility that some users may not be able to connect as well but the popular ones seem to be covered. Despite these limitations, I think that this sort of networking is really worth further investigation.

Cheers, Jerry.

technorati tags: Podmo

Original post by jleeson and software by Elliott Back