[p2pu-dev] Generic content sharing between sites (Re: idea for a microgrant proposal)

[Joe Corneli]

I'm just going to create a new thread here for discussion of "generic
content sharing", because Stian's email contained a lot of ideas that
are likely to relate to, but are not the same as, my microgrant
pre-proposal idea, which I'd like to keep quite focused.  I'll sum up
the specific proposal again in another thread.

On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 5:28 AM, Stian Håklev <shaklev at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Zuzel,
>
> thanks for jumping in.
>
> I think you are right in that RSS will play an important role, however there
> are some complications.
>
> In some cases, we might get the RSS feed of an entire mailing group (as you
> suggested), and we'll need to link identities in google groups with
> identities in P2PU - who posted what? (Otherwise, we can have a gadget that
> displays the newest posts on the site, but we cannot use it for tracking
> user activity, portfolios, etc). If everyone used the same mailing address
> that they used when signing up for P2PU, it would be easy, but I'm not sure
> we can count on that.
>
> In other cases, we might get individual feeds for users, for example the
> feed for a given Flickr user. In that case, user attribution will be easier,
> but how to know which entries are for a given course? (User + tag? Similar
> if we syndicate someone's personal blog).
>
> Talking about blogs, one of our earlier problems was how to syndicate both
> the blog and the comments - and how to show this in a clear way. (I know
> many blogs have RSS feeds for comments too, so possible).
>
> And I'd love to be able to log which members of a course attend Big Blue
> Button sessions - or edit a file in Etherpad...
>
> (Part of this for the tools that are "integrated" with P2PU is to offer
> single-sign-on anyway, which I know we will work on).
>
> :)
> Anyway, it will be fun to think about how to do this.
>
> Stian
>
> On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 19:42, 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
>> >
>> >
>
>
>
> --
> http://reganmian.net/blog -- Random Stuff that Matters
>
>