Cole W. Camplese

New Publishing with the Embed

My friend and colleague, Ken Udas, had asked me earlier in the Summer to contribute to his excellent Terra Incognita blog but I kept blowing deadlines and missing obligations. Ken gave me an extension and has been gracious to allow me to squeeze a guest post in between a few very smart people. I had a good time working up something that was very different than what usually shows up at his site and I hope he isn't too put off by it. My post addresses the changes in big media and their evolving and emerging interest in embracing the social web. It looks at big media and their amazing move into allowing us to embed their property -- legally! It asks what it means for us in higher education and how we should be addressing this move.

I would really appreciate it if you took the time to bounce over to read the post and leave a comment for us to chew on and discuss. Besides, if you are interested in open content and learning then you should be tracking Terra Incognita. Thanks!

FUD: Web 2.0 in the Enterprise

I am sure regular readers of this (and my other blogs) won't be surprised by the fact that I embrace Web 2.0 technologies and approaches. I am all for openness and sharing and I deplore hoarding of knowledge that can enrich a community if exposed. I am also very interested in both using Web 2.0 tools to help shape an organization and adopting web 2.0 philosophies to overcome traditional support challenges. One of my colleagues, Jason Heffner, dropped a link in my del.icio.us network recently that made me think harder about the way my organization has attempted to adopt both tools and philosophies born out of the Web 2.0 space. The article Jason sent me is a little light on depth, but does scratch the surface of something serious ... that many existing people have an inherent fear associated with these tenants ... that openness is not encouraged and sometimes ignored. The article, Facing Web 2.0 Fear in the Enterprise paints a picture that we all need to understand what is happening in this space and we really ought to embrace it because it is critical to communicate, collaboration is key and our future colleagues are growing up with it.

I feel lucky in that most of the people I work with or for find this sense of openness as important as I do. We focus a lot of energy on our Intranet, for example, trying to make it a place where staff can spend time collaborating and communicating in a quasi-open sense. I say quasi only because as an Intranet it is closed to our group. This has proven to be a solid practice ground for writing and sharing knowledge as many of the staff within ETS are now writing in public blogs. The content that is being shared certainly doesn't appeal to all people at all times, but it is a move towards tearing down the walls around a knowledge-based group and exposing the intelligence that is contained within.

To me it is a very interesting swing ... just as interesting to me is how my RSS reading has radically changed along with this move. Three or four months ago I was an avid NetNewsWire Pro user with hundreds of feeds coming in from all over the world. I had a decidedly global view on the content I was consuming -- I am now a Google Reader user with only a hundred or so feeds, with close to half of the them being local. In other words, I am now spending my RSS time consuming content that is much closer to my community and guess what ... I am better informed about what is happening down the hall, across campus, and in my communities (State College, University Park, an PSU all qualify).

These shifts are also accompanied by other thoughts ... one is that email my be a part of the modern communication channel after all. I know that sounds crazy, but there are lots of people lamenting the state of email -- too much email, too much spam, too little clarity, too many back and forth, etc ... I am finding as my community gets more localized and better informed I can use email more efficiently to help point people to interesting activities happening within these communities. When I read something at a colleague's blog, I can send a quick note to my team pointing them in that direction. I also tend now to post it in the Intranet and drop the links into those who are in my del.icio.us network. I guess what I am saying is that all of our modes of communication add up to the Web 2.0 philosophy of openness and sharing. Its not all tools.

Back to the article ... in my view, Web 2.0 isn't to be feared as a radical approach to communication. It is nothing more than an opportunity to engage in communication appropriately. Trust me, it is scary to make the jump from being a knowledge hoarding person to a knowledge sharing organization. It takes practice and it takes administrative patience. But if you can get enough people on the bus and you give them a safe place to practice eventually the walls around an organization will begin to come down. When that happens fear turns into opportunities that are much more easily capitalized on.

Was this a rambling train wreck? If you have thoughts on it, share them -- it is the right thing to do.

Be a Pligg

For several years a couple of us have wanted an easy way to rate and organize content that students submit. Sure, we have a the typical CMS/LMS tools, but we have always talked about something much more simple and much more open. When Digg hit the web a couple of years ago we thought the model was perfect -- a place where users submit content and then the community does the rest. All we wanted was that environment ... enter Pligg. A little piece from their site:

In a world with so many Content Management Systems fighting for control it can seem nearly impossible to pick out a perfect CMS to suit your needs. That's why Pligg exists, because we know that no CMS is going to offer a perfect out-of-the-box experience for every user. The net would be a boring place if every site looked and acted the same, so be different! Pligg's dynamic structure allows users to quickly and effortlessly install and customize their sites.

What it all means to me is that I can quickly create a site that lets users submit content and control (through action) where that content lives on the site.

I see two areas where this stuff could be very helpful -- at the course and at the organizational levels. We talked about this during ETS Talk 27 this past week, but I think it is worth repeating here and hoping that the community will participate in some sort of conversation around this thing -- in other words, I could use some help thinking about what I will write about.

In the classroom this could be used as a sort of "Leader Board" where students could constantly submit and review content in an ongoing basis. The best content consistently rising to the top of the site. If you made it part of the assignment process you could create a very interesting way to view student and faculty contributions over the course of the semester. I have wanted to let my students be much more active in both contribution and quick assessment -- this may be the way.

At the organizational level I think it could be very useful as well. As an example, the new Blogs at Penn State platform has allowed the vast majority of my staff to start blogging out in the open. I would say that at least half are blogging on a regular basis and their posts have been very insightful on many levels. A few weeks ago I discovered how to aggreagate posts together quickly and easily using Google Reader -- that has been very helpful. But what if we wanted to take it to the next level? What if we wanted to see how the community would react to not only the content in their blogs, but also at all of our community hub sites and the general web? Pligg could offer us a very unique opportunity to create a new sort of meta hub for community based sharing and control. Solid and informative posts rise to the top and stay sticky longer -- that would be a good thing. I am wondering if this could be viewed as the ETS News site -- with our press releases competing with staff content ... it could just prove to be very interesting.

I would really like to know what others think about adapting a digg model to support learning and organizational communications.