Now Joining in the Blog Hullabaloo
February 17th, 2008Thanks to quick commenting and some sleep, I woke up with a fresh appreciation for the Open Content -> Blog publishing idea I was skeptical about just six hours ago. I do like the impetus this provides for actually making use of some of the open content that is out there and I suspect it will stimulate some discussion about both the lack of progress in a workable rich standard for feeding more complex objects– or at least for making content truly portable rather than having all multimedia inclusions pointing back to a potentially unreliable (from the adopter’s point of view) source and server– and different options for more sophisticated and/or more granular reuse. And I think there is merit in both the ultra-light approach of bringing content into something like WordPress and also experimentation in the hazy middle area of management that Drupal could represent.
When ranting and raving I sometimes forget that part of my evaluation is different from many others because I have a particular interest in open materials that are suitable for a) distance education and b) independent learners… that tends to color what I see, since most of the open content being created is clearly intended as supplemental materials for someone who is enjoying the privilege and ability of teaching or learning at an institution. For those who don’t have that privilege, sucking materials into another, more local, system is largely irrelevant given the lack of attention to their needs in creating the content in the first place.
As Alan said, I’m probably a bit optimistic in thinking that those who will be reading about this will already be comfortably familiar with this medium. I suppose I was thinking too much about the audience of ed tech bloggers. Blogging isn’t even a minor practice in my neck of the woods, much less feed reading and certainly not importing RSS feeds of content.
And you know what? I don’t want to be seen as trying to squelch any excitement that can be generated about open content or blogs as LMS or creative re-uses of feeds. There are plenty of people out their ready to pee on your Cheerios if you dare lift your head and get excited about something that isn’t new or shiny (or deep rooted or respectful) enough.
[...] Ruminate wrote an interesting post today on Now Joining in the Blog HullabalooHere’s a quick excerpt Thanks to quick commenting and some sleep, I woke up with a fresh appreciation for the Open Content -> Blog publishing idea I was skeptical about just six hours ago. I do like the impetus this provides for actually making use of some of the open content that is out there and I suspect it will stimulate some discussion about both the lack of progress in a workable rich standard for feeding more complex objects– or at least for making content truly portable rather than having all multimedia in [...]
[...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]
[...] been a bit of buzz recently on more ed tech blogs than I think I can refer to about using blogs as a delivery host for opencourseware as PLE-inspired learning content. This [...]