Learning2.0 : Journey to about2findout.com

I have updated the Tag Assistant component.

- You can now refresh the tag suggestions by pressing on a link. You don't have to save the page anymore. During the time of the refresh a typical web 2.0 waiting indicator is shown, courtesy of ajaxload.info.

- The suggested tags are filtered for correct spelling in the appropriate language. The spell check component I used is a completely open source .NET component called 'NetSpell', and you can find it also back on CodeProject. On the NetSpell site you will only find code that runs under .NET 1.0, so head to the CodeProject site and follow the link in the comment posted by Eric Woodruff. He has fixed some bugs and updated the code to run under .NET 2.0 as well. The spelling libraries are compiled from the OpenOffice site.

- If the tag already exists, a * is added to the suggestion. That way I hope people will use similar tags where possible.

Labels: about2findout, tags

Last week was a week with its ups and downs (laptop got stolen on the train). On monday we have a public holiday so it's a 3 day weekend. I'm going to take some extra time to continue my site. On the scribble board next to my desk I've noted in big red words the key characteristics I want to keep in mind for about2findout.com.

SIMPLE
SOCIAL
STYLE

It is my personal interpretation of the best the 2.0 wave has brought us. The simplicty of Google, the social aspects of Linked-In and the style of Flickr for example.

In the battle for RIA (Rich Internet Applications), the dominant Flash player (from Adobe) gets competition from all sides.
Flash is currently installed on 80-90% or even more of browsers, and is also a very popular learning format because of its excellent compression. It is a safe bet to develop for flash because it is the dominant technology by far. But in the future, we might have to consider competing technologies, just as we have to live with multiple browsers, platforms, etc.

- AJAX of course is a popular technology, and makes use of JavaScript on the client side
- Microsoft announced the beta version of Silverlight, a direct Flash competitor and a light version of the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) technology in .NET 3.0. There is a cross-browser, cross-platform player for Silverlight and some demo's available.
- Sun just announced the JavaFX scripting language to create rich applications (also for mobile phones etc)
- And the creator of the Ruby on Rails open source framework has his own opinions on all of this as you can read in this InfoWorld article

Will all this mean progress for the web user or double work for site developers?

Labels: ajax, flash, silverlight

Presence is supposed to become the next hype and/or killer app for the consumer oriented ICT business. With more and more people carrying mobile devices such as cell phones, smartphones, GPS or laptops around, the critical mass will not be a problem.

So what might 'presence' look like? At my work, we already have presence enabled in our internal instant messenger program called SameTime. Based on the IP subnet it knows in what building you are, and you can configure your location. Anyone online can see where you are working. That makes it handy to invite someone for a coffee :-) . Imagine popular IM clients such as Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, Skype or Google Talk become presence aware and you get a notification when your old friends or family are in town. Or imagine you can automatically search for and find similar minds on your holiday location. Or imagine you get an SMS when your children are almost home from school. Or where the cat is. Might be something. Of course, you'll also get spammed with messages of the nearest fitness and facelift clinic, but that is something we'll deal with later ...

Today, twitter.com is a popular service where people just say what they are doing. Now just add where you are doing it and new doors of possibilities open up...

So what might presence do for learning? Good question. It will surely help to localise expertise around you. It will help to find learning activities around you. It will help to see if you are in the lecture or in the pub next door :-). As usual, the future will tell us.

One example: you can check the whereabouts of learning guru Elliott Masie on his 'Where is Elliott' site. You get a Google Map with an indicator where he is. At the time of writing, he is in New York.

Labels: presence

Identity is a big thing on the internet, and without online identities, the whole social software concept stops. Most sites allow you to upload a profile picture or 'avatar'.

On Meez.com you can create your own profile pic as a 3D animated avatar. It is very simple: you create a free account and make your 'meez' by choosing a gender, haircut, top clothing, pants, shoes, attribute and background. Each time you have the choice between free or paying objects. After that, export the picture as a link, a picture in your blog or forum, or export it to your phone.

I had to try and I could not resist: my 'attribute' is not a microphone or a flower, it is Brad Pitt :-).

Labels: avatars, meez

The other day I was playing with a test release of IBM's upcoming social-software-for-the-enterprise Lotus Connections. In your profile you can add a sound file with the pronunciation of your name. It is something we have already for a long time internal in IBM and it makes sense. No more embarrassment during the first phone call or meeting when you mispronounce someone's name.

So I created a little sound file and uploaded it. Every Windows computer comes with the basic 'Sound Recorder' tool, in the Accessoires folder. Very easy to use, just click 'Record', speak and save the file. It is saved as WAV format, which is what Lotus Connections needs. The problem is that a lot of background noise (such as computer fans) are in the recording. So I downloaded and tried the popular open source sound recording and editing program Audacity. I'm not much of a sound man myself, but I did find out how to use the noise reduction effect in Audacity:
- Make a sound recording
- Select a piece of noise in the recording and select the Effects menu and Noise Removal
- Click the button Get Noise Profile
- Highlight the piece you want to edit, select the noise removal, again and apply 'Remove Noise' in step 2 of the dialog box.
- Save the file

The only problem was my recording now was more than the allowed 100 KB. And I haven't found out how to reduce that yet.




Here is a sample of both
Click here for the WAV file made with sound recorder
Click here for the WAV file made with Audacity

PS: In case you want to know, I'm using a Plantronics USB headset DSP 400.

Labels: audacity

Tagging is one of the most essential elements of a web2.0 site.

I have wasted a lot of time on this, but my about2findout.com project will have a Tag Assistant. Where ever you can put tags, a collapsible assistant provides some help on tag syntax and suggests tags based on your content. All you have to do is click on one or more of the suggested tags to add them.

How does it work? The collapsible panel is a feature of the AJAX toolkit. The tag edit box itself only allows approved characters such as a-z, A-Z, 0-9, _, - and a comma to separate tags. That is a feature of the FilteredTextBoxExtender in the same toolkit.

At present, the suggested tags are a tag cloud based on the frequency of words in the text you typed in on the various fields of the page.
- I have used parts of the TextSearch project on CodeProject.com for breaking the text into words.
- I have added stopwords for English, Dutch, French, German, Italian and Spanish to the filter mechanism of the word breaker. You can find back the stopword lists for many languages on ranks.nl.
- The tag cloud itself is the cloud component from Rama Krishna Vavilala on Codeproject.com. I have wasted a day on this component but could not find a better one. Basically the component has bugs when not used with a datasource, and a click on any other component on the page makes it disappear on a postback.

Later on, I want to add more intelligence and spell check to the component, and suggestions as you type on existing tags. But for now this component allows to add tags with a few clicks, and that is not bad.

Labels: about2findout, tags

Told you so: the first intranet experiments for virtual worlds are showing up. Both IBM and Sun are building a corporate kind of Second Life, or metaverse. The principle is the same, but it is within the well protected walls of your own organisation, and within complete control. Time will tell if there is a market for this.

You can read about IBM's and Sun's experiments in this GigaOM article by James Wagner.

Labels: metaverse, Second Life, virtual worlds

A mashup is one of the cornerstones of 'web 2.0'. It is a combination of different sources and web applications into one page. Your web profile might for example link to your blog posts, your flickr pictures and your current location via Google Maps. That would be a mashup.

Search engines are also experimenting with mashups that provide search results from multiple sources such as the web, pictures, blogs, wikipedia, video and other sources. It enables search engines to move away from 'search silo's' into one integrated search.

- Imagine Live Search from Microsoft just launched. You can read a review on the searchengineland site.

- SearchMash from Google gives you not only web links, but links to relevant blogs, Google Video, Images, Wikipedia.

- Alpha (in beta version :-) ) from Yahoo will give you web results, obiously flickr photo's, sponsored links, YouTube, News results and more on one page.

In case you just came back from an intergallactic holiday: there is a search engine war going on right now, so the different search mashups often will only link in their own sources or 'friendly' companies. But the principle is great.
I'd like so see such initiatives within companies. And I would so much like one of the portlets giving the learning resources relevant to the source; the courses and other learning activities that are available in the catalogue of your learning management system.

Labels: alpha, imagine live search, mashup, search engine, searchmash

Do you have your browser, email and word processor up your stick? Well, you can... A lot of the open source applications can run as 'portable applications' from a USB memory stick. Imagine you can not only take your data with you, but also your applications. Just stick the USB key into the computer and there you go...

For a list of free 'portable applications', go to http://portableaps.com . The list includes Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice,...

Also the open source LMS Moodle can run from a USB memory stick (that's how I discovered portable apps) as described here in the blog from Pierre Gorissen. The blog is in Dutch, but his screencast on how to install it is in English and you can download a ready-to-go image as well.

Labels: portable applications

Moodle is the most popular open source Learning Management System.

"Moodle is the brainchild of Martin Dougiamas, who designed the program while working on his Ph.D. at Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia. He developed it as a tool for his dissertation which was on a Socio-constructivist approach to learning." (Thomas N. Robb)

Originally it was made for use in schools and based on pedagogical principles you either like or you don't like, but increasingly it has found its way into the corporate world. An E-learning Guild Report from March 2007 reveals that it is the 4th most popular LMS system for organisations accross industries and for all company sizes, after SumTotal, in-house developed systems and BlackBoard, with a market share of 10,68%. The report further specifies some penetration of Moodle in large corporations, but a more substantial share among smaller firms or as a departmemental LMS (largest market share for SME). But also in terms of ROI and satisfaction Moodle scores high, and substantially higher than some commercial implementations. For example 96,2% of respondents give Moodle a good ROI, as compared to 75% for Saba and it scores highest on satisfaction in the SME market space.

You can read about my Moodle installation experience in the article 'Moodle installation, my try' on my 6C learning blog. It installs and updates quite easily via a web based installer, as many PHP based applications. Moodle is currently localised in over 75 languages and has a lively community that develops add-ons, or helps you out with hosting or installation services. The documentation is quite complete and many answers can be found back in the forums or with a Google search.

So let's evaluate the 3 pain points of the last time.

- I did not test integration, but Moodle has an LDAP component to link it with your company directory system. And in the roadmap I have found more and more APIs that are in the pipeline, so Moodle is well on it's way to opening up to other applications. Database support is already multiple: you can run Moodle on MySQL but also on Oracle or MS SQL Server. For integration capabilities and extensibility I give Moodle a thumbs up.

- Reporting: There is basic reporting on activities, logs and quiz scores and also SCORM tracking available. But it is nothing near the vast reporting facilities that many administrations need, for example for cost allocation, compliance tracking etc... And I haven't found a customisable reporting engine. I'm not convinced Moodle answers to the reporting and tracking needs of many corporations. That is a piece that will require custom programming. Thumbs down.

- SCORM: The SCORM module ships with the product, you just need to verify if it is enabled via Modules > Activities on the main administration page. Currently Moodle does not support SCORM 2004 but as I see very low adoption for it in the industry anyway, I don't really care. What I do care about is how my 3 test packages import, show and report. I have a small 2 MB sample package with a dummy course, a real course we developed in SCORM (12 MB) and a Thomson/NETg course (+100 MB). Unfortunately, all my efforts to upload a SCORM module have failed. Only in the Moodle demo site I was able to upload, run and track the small 2 MB course, because of the upload size limit. I do appreciate however Moodle makes a distinction between uploading the SCORM package, and importing it. You can ftp the package to the Moodle Data folder and then just point to it to import instead of having to rely on your PHP file upload settings for heavy packages. The SCO player however doesn't look very good.
But on all my installations I have the same error when I try to configure the SCORM package. It gets stuck on an empty 'modedit.php' and the module is never configured. It is a documented bug. And I did try, believe me. I tried on my hosted environment with Moodle 1.8. Didn't work. I upgraded to the Moodle 1.9 development release. Same problem. I installed Moodle on a USB stick and tried again. Same problem. I installed Moodle 1.8 on my own server. Same problem. I know that some people have uploaded SCORM modules and some even got NETg courses working. But I'm not one of them. So unfortunately I'll have to give it a thumbs down.

Labels: moodle

About two years ago I have played around with some open source Learning Management Systems (LMS). The by far most popular one is Moodle, but there are also Claroline, Dokeos, ILIAS, ATutor, SAKAI, ... and many more.
Most of the open source platforms have originated in the school system, so they are more oriented towards and more popular in school environments than the corporate world.

My findings at the time were that open source was not ready as a corporate e-learning delivery system because

1. Lack of support for standards such as SCORM (badly implemented or non existing SCORM modules) - companies need to live by open standards so they can buy courses everywhere and be sure (enough) they will work on the learning platform
   
2. Lack of a decent reporting infrastructure - companies need reports on course completion, scores, but also on consumptions for cost allocation between departments, etc. Most of all companies need to be able to fully customise their reports to their needs, and to export reports in popular formats such as XML or CSV.
3. Lack of integration capabilities - an LMS should not be a standalone system but linked to many other applications in the company, such as LDAP for authentication. But it should also be possible to make use of the LMS by using APIs or other service calls from within other applications or web sites. In a time of web services and SOA it becomes critical to open up the black box of the LMS to other programs.

In a recent Learning Guild 360° survey report respondents report that Moodle is currently the number 4 LMS today in companies! You'll find it more in smaller or medium companies, and you'll find it more as a test system versus production server, but still it is an impressive achievement.
So I think it is time to review the readiness of open source LMS systems for the corporate world again. Over the next posts I will explore 3 systems and share my findings with you:

• Moodle, because it is the most popular with the biggest install base and biggest community.
• Dokeos, because there is just a new major and promising update, and because it is Belgian.
• SharePoint Learning Kit, because it is the only working open source LMS-like system for the .NET platform.

I will be looking at those systems from a very specific angle: as a basic e-learning delivery system for companies. Basic e-learning delivery means uploading/making e-learning packages, enrolling people, taking the e-learning, reporting on completion and results. So I'm not concerned with class management or administration, and I'm not concerned with its (proven) usefulness for schools. I will also not go into the classic pro/con battle between commercial and open source software. There is a difference in support, openness, licence costs, complexity, in-house knowledge required, etc. I will just cover the 3 chosen systems from a functional perspective. Can they fulfill the needs of companies for e-learning delivery? And at the side: can I as a Joe Averge informatic get those systems working rapidly? Just to set the expactations straight.

Labels: dokeos, LMS, moodle, open source, sharepoint learing kit

I have been discussing full fledged 3D web virtual worlds such as Second Life. I have also been discussing cheap ways to add talking avatars to your web site. And now for something in between: avatars that move around in the current 2D web world.

Some say the web will evolve into Second Life-like experiences with 3D interfaces because that gives a richer and much more natural interaction. Today, there are free services out there that allow you to virtually 'walk' existing web pages, and interact with other visitors via their avatars. So you will actually be able to say 'let's meet at the restaurant's web site'. What a brave new world :-).

The first example is Itzle.com. It only works on Firefox and you get a command bar at the bottom of your screen where you can enter chat, or move to other sites. The avatars are very, very basic graphically, but they will gesture, talk via text balloons and walk to any point on the screen you click on. So you can actually go to some part of the page and comment on it or explain it.

The second example is weblin.com. The weblin program installs plugins for both Firefox and Internet Explorer. Make sure to select a 3D avatar because they are the ones that can gesture (like wave, sit down, etc.) You can either chat with the other weblin visitors to that page via a chat box or balloon text boxes. The avatars look much better, but they can only walk around at the bottom of a maximised browser window.

So what's the use of all this? Well, it's a more natural way of chatting than via a text box anyway. And I also see some use for education.

For example, you could meet with people on a web form and explain them how to fill it in. You can go with your students to a wikipedia page, literally 'walk around' on it and explore together and have a discussion on the topic.

For example, you can record screen caps or screen video from your avatar explaining a web-based application and integrate it in an e-learning course. Instead of an overlay with 'Fill your name in here and press next to continu', the avatar/coach can point to the text box and say 'You need to type your name here before you can go on.' It even gets more interesting when these avatar/agents can be scripted.



(Thanks go to Ralph for pointing me to the two sites.)

Labels: avatars, Itzle, Weblin