[p2pu-dev] idea for a microgrant proposal

[zuzel.vp]

With google groups it will be the same kind of interaction:
http://groups.google.com/group/p2pu-mathfuture/feed/rss_v2_0_msgs.xml

On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 9:42 PM, zuzel.vp <zuzel.vp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Joe,
>
> If understood correctly what you were discussing in this thread
> (correct me if i got something wrong), I think that the next version
> of P2PU (Lernanta -- which is based in the new software behind
> http://drumbeat.org) will make easier to share content with PlanetMath
> (using atom or rss). You can see an example of how this could happen
> in the drumbeat site. I am going to use my profile as example but the
> same applies for the page of a course which will be the equivalent of
> what drumbeat calls projects.
>
> If you take a look at https://www.drumbeat.org/en-US/zuzelvp/, you
> will see that I added to websites related to me in my profile (at the
> left-bottom of the page): my homepage (http://zuzelvp.com), and a link
> to my github account (https://github.com/zuzelvp). After adding those
> links, my profile automatically started to grab my activity at
> http://zuzelvp.com/?feed=rss2 and https://github.com/zuzelvp.atom and
> that is what you can see at the right of the page. At the same time my
> profile is associated with https://www.drumbeat.org/en-US/zuzelvp/feed
> which other web sites can read. PlanetMath seams to be providing rss
> too: http://aux.planetmath.org/doc/rss.html (e.g.,
> http://planetmath.org/rss/latestadds.xml), but I don't know if it has
> something similar per user (the links listed on that page seam to be
> posting the activity happening in all the planet).
>
> Will this kind of interaction fit what you had in mind? What do you
> think will have to be added above this to enrich the bi-directional
> link between PlanetMath and P2PU?
>
> --
> Thanks,
>    Zuzel
>
> On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 7:52 PM, Stian Håklev <shaklev at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi Joe,
>>
>> thanks for clarifying. You are right in that they are a bit different, but
>> overlapping, and specifically I think that the kind of design of Lernanta
>> that I am proposing would make the kind of special integration that you
>> propose much easier...
>>
>> Anyway, I think it's definitively important to get these ideas into the
>> discussion on the site architecture (I'll ping you when I figure out how
>> that discussion will be structured).
>>
>> Great ideas
>> Stian
>>
>> On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 17:03, Joe Corneli <holtzermann17 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Stian:
>>>
>>> On the technical side there are quite a lot of ideas here, some easier
>>> and some harder to implement.
>>>
>>> A rich bi-directional link between PlanetMath and P2PU has some vital
>>> differences from lighter-weight content sharing.  I think with
>>> appropriate design for this link, we would pave the way for in-depth
>>> collaboration between these and other online communities.  I'd really
>>> like to get some use cases figured out: on both the social and
>>> technical level, what does PlanetMath need to provide, and what does
>>> P2PU need to provide?
>>>
>>> The way I'm envisioning it now, PlanetMath would provide a place to
>>> work on problems (similar in some ways to the current problem solving
>>> space at Kahn Academy, but more open, more integrated with the
>>> existing encyclopedic knowledge base).  Someone studying math in this
>>> space will kick off an activity stream which could be pulled into
>>> P2PU.  I'm interested in what happens after that: comments from a
>>> course instructor, or from peers in the course?  An overlayed
>>> certification layer through P2PU's "badge" system?
>>>
>>> Starting from the P2PU side, I can imagine a course organizer wanting
>>> to use PlanetMath as a place to run the course: they could pick a
>>> number of tasks that learners would be advised to work on, and
>>> PlanetMath would help provide the needed structure ("tasks" from
>>> PlanetMath could potentially be imported into a "syllabus" on P2PU?).
>>> Activity associated with the P2PU course would show up transparently
>>> in PlanetMath (because it would *be* PlanetMath activity) but it would
>>> also appear in the P2PU course in a transparent way as well.  This is
>>> similar to what you said about "post by email" for Google Groups.  We
>>> want to have "post by email" in Planetary as well -- maybe forum-level
>>> mirroring is as simple as adding a CC to some email...
>>>
>>> Anyway, I'm hoping to have ONE summer intern working on this.  Whether
>>> they are funded through a Schools microgrant or through some other
>>> source isn't a major concern for me!  I was thinking that the Schools
>>> microgrant would subject the idea to the right sort of critique and
>>> vetting.  I'm not sure if it would pose too much of a challenge for
>>> one intern to be responsible for getting code into these two software
>>> packages (Planetary and Lernata), but as you indicate, there are
>>> others who can help with this.  I think the (broad) project of "P2PU
>>> integrations" overlaps but is not equal to the (deep) project of "P2PU
>>> and PlanetMath integration".  The latter is the one I'd like to make a
>>> bid for -- but if *everything* is funded, maybe we'll have a couple of
>>> interns working on these different tasks who we could conceivably get
>>> to talk to one another :).
>>>
>>> Joe
>>>
>>> On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 8:17 PM, Stian Håklev <shaklev at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> > Hi Joe,
>>> >
>>> > great idea. I've been thinking a lot about this myself -I've been
>>> > meaning to
>>> > write up a bunch of my architectural ideas for the new P2PU platform,
>>> > but
>>> > never got around to it. That work will probably intensify now that a new
>>> > tech lead has been hired, so this is very timely.
>>> >
>>> > I think this is very important - for the entire P2PU, not just SOMF.
>>> > Basically, there are two main concerns
>>> >
>>> > - accessing user statistics (postings, interactions, contributions etc)
>>> > for
>>> > statistics - we've talked lot's about having "dashboards" that show user
>>> > activity across courses to enable "early warning systems", and in the
>>> > future
>>> > possibly data mining to see what kind of variables are predictive of
>>> > user
>>> > involvement etc. When a bunch of courses have most of their activity
>>> > happening outside of P2PU, the numbers become quite useless. (One
>>> > improvement is that hopefully the new site will have a flexible enough
>>> > forum
>>> > system with full email integration that people won't need to use Google
>>> > groups) - but there will still be lot's of other sites which we want
>>> > people
>>> > to use - from Twitter, to Flickr, to Github. And even internally in
>>> > P2PU,
>>> > we'll have OSQA, Big Blue Button (how many people participated in a
>>> > meeting), the wiki, etherpad, etc.
>>> >
>>> > - pulling user contributions back into the P2PU platform, or linking to
>>> > it -
>>> > this both enables P2PU to act as a hub and give an easy overview of all
>>> > the
>>> > activity that happens - sometimes it might even be valuable to pull
>>> > certain
>>> > contributions into the platform for archiving (a blog might go down, a
>>> > ning
>>> > site might become unavailable). this is also important for building
>>> > portfolios, peer-grading, badges etc.
>>> >
>>> > My idea was to create a kind of plugin architecture where people could
>>> > write
>>> > "connectors", for example I could write a Google Groups connector, which
>>> > would enable a course to link up a Google group, someone else could
>>> > write a
>>> > Flickr connector etc. These could be very simple, using an existing API
>>> > (RSS
>>> > or activitystrea.ms), but could even be using screenscraping or some
>>> > other
>>> > mechanism. The important thing is that we wouldn't have to build all
>>> > this
>>> > into the core code, but just make it available for people who wanted to
>>> > create them for different services.
>>> >
>>> > This is also something that would make our platform much more
>>> > interesting
>>> > for others to run their courses on.
>>> >
>>> > I think we should definitively integrate this discussion into the larger
>>> > p2pu-dev discussion - maybe we'll need a "reward" for people to
>>> > implement
>>> > it, maybe we can get a google SoC to write it (feeel free to help John
>>> > Britton on his proposal!), or maybe it can be done in other ways.
>>> >
>>> > Also have a look at at edufeedr from Hans Poldoja, I think he is trying
>>> > to
>>> > achieve something  abit similar.
>>> >
>>> > Stian
>>> >
>>> > On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 07:46, Joe Corneli <holtzermann17 at gmail.com>
>>> > wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> Maria and I were talking about this idea.
>>> >>
>>> >> We would like to make it possible for P2PU users to interact on other
>>> >> sites and associate activities that take place on these external sites
>>> >> with the user's P2PU account.  Two examples of relevant external sites
>>> >> are planetmath.org and github.com.  The idea is that activity in
>>> >> "compliant" sites could be slurped into P2PU and, where relevant,
>>> >> comments or interaction about this slurped-up content could be sent
>>> >> back to the external site.  There are two relevant protocols to work
>>> >> with: see http://activitystrea.ms/ and
>>> >> http://www.salmon-protocol.org/.
>>> >>
>>> >> The concrete proposal would be to hire a summer intern for around
>>> >> $5000 USD to implement support for this communication link in P2PU and
>>> >> PlanetMath.org.  Since ActivityStreams are used very widely on the
>>> >> internet, a significant degree of activity *importing* can take place
>>> >> from sites like Github that provide ActivityStreams (the Salmon
>>> >> Protocol would be useful for bidirectional communication, but it isn't
>>> >> yet implemented as widely as ActivityStreams).  The plan would be to
>>> >> implement both sides of this connection in a way that would be readily
>>> >> portable to other sites that might join the network in the future.
>>> >>
>>> >> This would address a specific and strongly-felt need at SoMF, namely
>>> >> to get learners into environments with strong content-specific support
>>> >> for learning mathematics.  But at the same time, there is a much
>>> >> broader need across P2PU for effective integration with external
>>> >> communities and services.
>>> >>
>>> >> Please consider this note to be discussed further, then shared further
>>> >> to other relevant P2PU lists before fully formalized as a "proposal".
>>> >> Another thing to note is that I am, in parallel, applying for funding
>>> >> for the Planetary project with Google Summer of Code, which would help
>>> >> us deliver the "strong content-specific support for learning
>>> >> mathematics".  Comments on the GSoC proposal are also welcome:
>>> >> http://piratenpad.de/kwarc-soc -- the main point of relevance for the
>>> >> current draft proposal is that we're not expecting this to be an
>>> >> entirely off-the-cuff project, but rather something integrated into an
>>> >> existing workflow and with additional support from other parties.
>>> >>
>>> >> There are a number of further questions to consider in further
>>> >> developing "use cases" (P2PU courses!) that exploit such a
>>> >> bi-directional communication link, and I will forward to those
>>> >> discussions.
>>> >>
>>> >> Regards,
>>> >> Joe
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > --
>>> > http://reganmian.net/blog -- Random Stuff that Matters
>>> >
>>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> http://reganmian.net/blog -- Random Stuff that Matters
>>
>>
>