Level Setting
As I was reading through introductions and other early blog posts I started to recognize a slight trend -- the language of the course (on the technical side) is causing a little confusion. With that in mind I thought I'd add a post defining (in my own words) what a handful of this stuff is. This should probably be more of a wiki page, but for now I'll just add a few definitions ... comments should be working on the blogs today or tomorrow, so feel free to add thoughts as this grows:
- RSS -- RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS is an XML (extensible markup language) varient that allows content to be redistributed without any style associated with it. It is pure content that can be pushed around the web and redisplayed in nearly any other location. It is most commonly used to allow users to subscribe to websites (mainly blogs and news sites) so that fresh content is delivered to them in a single interface. In the same way you use an email client for reading new messages, an RSS (or news reader) is used to subscribe to sites and read newly updated content -- all without having to visit the original site to find it. At the simplest level it is an incredible time saver ... imagine having all the new content from 20 online newspapers delivered to one location only when newly published material is available? No need to surf to 20 sites, it comes to you. There are lots of other things about RSS that we will discuss in the coming weeks as well.
- Web 2.0 -- This really isn't one thing, it is more of a philosophy and approach to the way the web is evolving. We'll discuss this in class today, but think back to when the web started and remember what a one way platform it was -- updates were not regular, the common person did not have a voice online, and creating web sites was hard. Today the web is an open platform where anyone can not only consume content, but create it with ease. Look at the way the web has evolved into a platform for open participation -- blogging, photo sharing, social sites (FaceBook and My Space), social bookmarking, and so much more. Web 2.0 is about people, it is Soylent Green.
- Pligg/Digg/Social Ratings -- All of these types of sites are built around a very simple premise, that people (especially communities of people) can create a better source of relevant news than a single editor. This all started with Digg -- mainly a news aggregator site (no original content, just content that is linked in from around the web) that allows the members of the site to vote content up or down. Content with the greatest number of votes (or diggs) end up on the front page and more easily discoverable. We've adapted this approach with our course Pligg site. Pligg is simply an open source version of Digg. Your blog posts are aggregated in (via RSS) to the site and each post can be voted on.
I could go on and on, but those seem to be the ones I read about the most. We'll dive into a lot of this over the next several weeks and will be looking at how to take these tools and use them for teaching and learning.
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