Prototype Services & Encourage Further Development
One of COSL’s software and service development principles was to prototype, and support long term if necessary, the types of tools and services we thought would be useful for teaching and learning writ-large. This philosophy lead to funding from the Mellon Foundation to build the Folksemantic tools and services we developed in 2006-2007.
Folksemantic Tools
Folksemantic built alpha and beta versions of the tools we thought were necessary to link folksonomies, social media/social networking, and the semantic web to be harnessed to support open education.
At the time we started, many of the tools were unique–but as we progressed, and we fully expected this to happen, a number of startup companies emerged providing the very tools and services we were working on. This is an outcome we expected. Really, we wanted to use/implement these tools and services for a greater purpose. If the tools and services existed, seemed relatively stable, had reasonable funding/support and had reasonable uptake we’d gladly use the service. But until that occurred, we wanted to demonstrate the value and one method of providing the tool or service. And if necessary, we’d continue running the tool/service over time.
Twine a Better Incarnation of Ozmozr
For example, we built Ozmozr to absorb the web. As a better social media aggregator Ozmozr was a fully functional proof of concept that had many of the underlying features and intents of the recently launched web 2.0 site Twine.
Twine Understands Your Interests
- Discover information that matters to you
- Collect and share bookmarks and other content
- Receive recommendations based on your interests
–Twine
Acawiki an Modern Incarnation of Gistr
On October 7, Acawiki, a modern incarnation of Gistr, launched.
AcaWiki is like “Wikipedia for academic research” designed to increase the impact of scholars, students, and bloggers by enabling them to share summaries and discuss academic papers online.
–AcaWiki
Justin Ball of COSL “wrote [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][Gistr] during a meeting. Gistr is a small utility application that helps us gather up our research in social network in one place.” The source code is still available, but the site was decommissioned earlier this year.
To be fair, we never really did anything with Gistr, but we did promote the idea and if you do a search you’ll see a few blogs picked up and reported on and described Gistr’s intent. And I haven’t checked, but it’s likely that the decision to develop Acawiki might have had some of it’s beginning in discussions between Acawiki founder Neeru Paharia and COSL’s David Wiley. And certainly it’s a small world because my current boss provided a great summary in Acawiki’s press release.
AcaWiki can provide an important ‘sense-making’ function for enabling easier sharing of knowledge that can help to build bridges across disciplines—and even between academia and those outside.
–Vijay Kumar
Senior Associate Dean andd Drector of the Office of
Educational Innovation and Technology at MIT
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