A d c o l o g

Yahoo! Pipes are not anything new, they’ve been out as beta for over a year now, but they are one of the more under-utilised tools available.  Someone recently asked me about them, so I thought I’d do a quick blog entry on how to use them. To do this, I need to try and explain information feeds too.  This may be a bit more tecchie than some blog entries, but it’s a useful tool so I thought I’d give it a go.

The web is made up of various types of information.  The first, blandest, format is text, sometimes enhanced slightly through HTML.  Most webpages you see are written in a form of HTML.  HTML allows a web designers to change the way the page looks to a human eye (the format), by making text bold, larger, smaller or in different colours.  However, it still needs a human mind to understand it.  If you send the information to someone with the HTML taken out, it just becomes plain old boring text.  That’s where XML comes in.  XML marks out the content of the page rather than the format, meaning that when the information is sent, another web page can process it in it’s own way.  If that’s a bit confusing, think of it like this.  This blog entry is made up of various content items.  There’s the title (Using Yahoo! Pipes…) and there’s the image, then there’s the actual text.    If you’re reading this on the site, the title is green, the image is flushed to the left and the text is grey.  This is set by ADCOLOG’s HTML code.  However, if you wanted this on your website, the colours might not match.  So, you’d want to get the XML feed from this page, put it on your page and tell it that the TITLE should be orange, the text blue and you don’t want the image.  Because the XML says which bit of the text is the title, your web page could process this.

Another advantage of XML is that you can use it to keep track of changing websites.  If you have an RSS Reader (I use Google Reader) you can subscribe to an XML feed and every time I put a new post on here it will show up in your reader.  If you do this with all the websites you want to check, it means that ratherr than having to spend hours having to check lots of sites, you can see “headlines” of  all the new posts and changes, read the ones you want and disregard the rest.  Dave Briggs has some good tips on organising this.

OK, so we’ve got all these feeds of information going about the web.  Sometimes, you may want to bring them together.  For example, we’re about to launch a new feed for our E-Guides.  As an E-Guide (which is an ACL or WBL E-Champion) you don’t often have time to check lots of feeds.  That’s a job us E-Learning Advisers can take on.  But, there are a number of feeds involved.  Firstly, there is the feed from this blog.  Then there is the feed from the WBL advisor’s blog.  Then there are resources that I’ve spotted, marked on my del.icio.us account, and ones that the WBL advisor has spotted too.  To get every E-Guide to subscribe to all four feeds would be an unrealistic exercise.  Which is where Yahoo! Pipes comes in.  First, you need a Yahoo! account.  After that, go to Yahoo! Pipes and click on ‘Create A Pipe’.  Now, you have a whole list of different options down the left hand side and an empty workspace to the right.  Expand the ‘Sources’ tab and drag the ‘Fetch a Feed’ into the workspace.  Enter the first feed URL into it.  Now do the same again for as many feeds as you want to get.  Next, expand the ‘operators’ tab on the left.  Select the ‘Union’ Module and drag it onto the workspace.  Now, draw a line (click and hold the mouse) from the white circle at the bottom of each ‘fetch feed’ module to the white circle on the ‘Union’ module.  Then draw a line from the ‘Union’ Module to the ‘Pipe Output’.  In the diagram shown, I’ve also added a ‘Sort’ module, which arranges the feed in order of date.  There’s lots of different things you can play with here to sort and alter feeds, if you’re slightly more technically minded.

The result is a pipe that combines these feeds.  By saving the pipe and clicking “Run Pipe” you can then get this as a feed in itself or as a widget to go on your website.  We’ve put it on our E-Guide forum.

It may seem very complicated but it’s actually relatively straightforward. What’s more, it means that the “front end” information the E-Guides get (either by RSS or Email) will be clear and relevant, saving them time in the long run.

It’s worth getting to know these tools, as information flows are becoming more and more important as a tool for learning on the Web.  Information flows are an essential part of the semantic web which we’ll be hearing a lot more about over the coming months and years.  RSS Readers and Yahoo! Pipes are just the start of managing and manipuulating the huge amouunts of information we receive into something useful to help us with our teaching and learning.

I think we’ve all heard of e-portfolios by now.  They are something that are used a lot in HE and fairly well in some FE institutions, however we don’t really hear about them in ACL.

Maybe this is because of the cost.  Maybe it’s because the infrastructure used by many ACL providers doesn’t support e-portfolios.  Maybe it’s because of the mixed messages we keep hearing about the many e-portfolio options we can choose from.

There is no doubt that the custom built e-portfolio can prove useful and can fit in perfectly at many institutions and quite possibly some ACL providers.  However, I recently came across another option, one that is free of charge and can be used on any net enabled computer in the world.  It’s name?  Google.

I think everyone knows the search engine “Google” by now and most will know the maps and image search facility.  What many may not know about is Google Docs, Google Sites or, under their joint name, Google Apps.

Google Apps can be set up by an institution to work within their own domain.  Restrictions can be put on this so that anyone without a @learningprovider.ac.uk domain couldn’t share or transmit outside.  Or there could be no control and it could be open.  Google Apps contains:

• Email Addresses for all users (Gmail)
• Free access to compatible equivalents of Word, Excel and PowerPoint (Google Docs)
• Google Sites (Google Sites)
• Google Calender
• iGoogle Start Page

Even if you don’t want to take the formal step of setting up Apps, Google can act as an e-portfolio, as all of these components can be used individually.  Setting Apps up on a domain just adds for a more infrastructure sound service.

Documents can be uploaded or created directly in Google Docs, videos and sounds uploaded to YouTube and emails and to do lists created in Gmail, Calendar and iGoogle.  Blogs can be created in Blogspot.  It’s worth noting at this point that the YouTube and Blogspot postings don’t need to be public.  While they can’t be restricted to a domain (as they could on a commercial e-portfolio) they can be marked private but shareable, so they can only be found by the person putting together the portfolio.  The documents can be done by the student, or opened to collaboration with other users for group work or marking.

At this point a Google Site can be created.  This is an extremely easy to use interface which allows everything to be brought together.  An example of it can be found here.  This site can be open, or can be restricted to particular email addresses.  You can add gadgets for blog RSS feeds alongside your google docs, youtube videos etc.  You can add documents directly or as attachments and comments can be added too.

Another advantage of using this an an e-portfolio system is that students can keep what they produce and continue to show it off, share it or use it.

This won’t suit everyone;  it isn’t secure in the way a corporate solution would be and it is a buisness tool that can be adapted for education, rather than a bespoke service.  However, it is free, it is easy and, hopefully, this could spell an opportunity for Adult Community Learning.

To see my example GooglE-portfolio click here

I don’t know if anyone is reading this blog yet, as I’ve not really publicised it, but as a new blogger I’m very interested in where blogs can go. I think blogs are a must for all people in ACL – they can enable reflection as a professional, or be used as a method to communicate good practice. If you’re planning on opening up a blog to the world, they are also a great way to reach and inform communities.

Dave Briggs, who recently spoke at the RSC YH Creative Connectivity event, has posted a good guide on where to start and what to think about.

I’ve shared this on my ACL RSS Feed too – make sure you subscribe!