Services

An often overlooked trick that my assetManager tool has up its sleeve is a search interface to Radio UserLand's built-in RSS aggregator.

Back in the good ol' days when web services were trendy I created a web services interface to Radio's aggregator. Passing it a keyword returned a formatted list of all RSS items containing the keyword. This neat trick is invoked using a simple macro:

<%["xmlrpc://127.0.0.1:5335/RPC2"].assetManager.rssSearch ("keyword")%>

where "keyword" is what you want to search for. Add this macro to any weblog post or your weblog template to include a list of found items. You can even use this service to search other people's aggregators (if they allow it). All you need is the IP address of the remote Radio aggregator.

Try adding:

<%["xmlrpc://147.188.64.44:5335/RPC2"].assetManager.rssSearch ("rss")%>

to a new post in your weblog. You should get a list of RSS items from my aggregator matching "rss".

Here's a similar trick using Manila as a front-end to Radio's searchable aggregator.

I've updated the assetManager tool to v0.984. Use the Radio application menu Tools -> AssetManager -> Refresh Code... to get the latest version.

What's New

Added some new RPC handlers to give the tool some web service functionality

1. pictureGallery service. Use this to place a selected sub-set of the images in your picture gallery anywhere in your weblog. Pictures are selected by a keyword. If the keyword matches all or part of a picture's filename then it gets included into a mini-gallery. use the service like this:

<%["xmlrpc://127.0.0.1:5335/RPC2"].assetManager.pictureGallery ("keyword")%>

e.g. on my machine <%["xmlrpc://127.0.0.1:5335/RPC2"].assetManager.pictureGallery ("deganwy")%> yields

deganwy2.jpg	deganwy3.jpg	deganwy4.jpg

If you'd like to allow other people to use pictures from your weblog then replace 127.0.0.1 with the IP address of your machine. For example, to include the above pictures in your weblog use:

<%["xmlrpc://147.188.64.44:5335/RPC2"].assetManager.pictureGallery ("deganwy")%>

2. rssSearch service. I like this one. Do you ever feel swamped by all the RSS news items you have in your weblog? Then why not filer them. Or better still, have a list of all the items on the same topic on your weblog. The list updates every time you update your weblog post. This service looks through all your subscribed to news feeds and places those feed items that match a keyword you specify in your weblog.

<%["xmlrpc://127.0.0.1:5335/RPC2"].assetManager.rssSearch ("keyword")%>

On my machine, <%["xmlrpc://127.0.0.1:5335/RPC2"].assetManager.rssSearch ("education")%> yields

rdhyee News

1. Lots of travel in September and October

Moreover Technologies - UK education news

1. This isn't education
2. Council calls for new school governors (added 16/9/05)

elearningpost

1. ADV: $5000 Scholarship Contest - Dec 25th

AP Health

1. ADV: Medscape.com - Free Physicians Resource

As with the picture gallery service you can allow other people to embed filtered items from your subscribed to news feeds in their weblog by publishing this web service with your IP address rather than the default local address 127.0.0.1. Why might you want to do this? OK, here's an idea. Say you've heard I subscribe to a lot of feeds on healthcare but you're only interested in smokers. You can use this web service to only list items on smoking. Try it now, copy/paste the following into a weblog post of your own:

<%["xmlrpc://147.188.64.44:5335/RPC2"].assetManager.rssSearch ("smokers")%>

Searchable RSS portal

I'm building a list of medicine and educational RSS news feeds. Medical education is one of my fields of interest. I have a modest list at present and I'm looking for more. If you know of any more would you let me know? The feeds that I have are searchable so a potentially large amount of RSS data can be filtered.

Click here to visit my searchable RSS feeds service.

If anyone is interested in this as a web service you can embed a list of news items filtered according to your own interests by pasting the following web service macro into your weblog:

<%["xmlrpc://147.188.64.44:5335/RPC2"].newsfeeds ("keyword")%>

where 'keyword' is whatever you are interested in e.g.

<%["xmlrpc://147.188.64.44:5335/RPC2"].newsfeeds ("learning")%>

will give you the following:

rdhyee News

1. Lots of travel in September and October
   

   I'll be traveling at lot in September and October, speaking at a number of conferences:

   • NISO Metasearch and OpenURL workshop (September 19-21, 2005, Washington, DC)

     Integrating Metasearch with e-Learning

     Various strategies for integrating e-learning and metasearch systems will be described, drawing from the speaker's experiences of combining data and services from ExLibris' MetaLib X-Server, Sakai, the Firefox browser, and the Scholar's Box.

   • Open Education Conference: Advancing the Effectiveness and Sustainability of Open Education Conference (Sept 28-30, Logan, UT)

     Towards remixing any content from any source with any service: lowering the barrier to use of content in open education

     As the amount of open content continues to grow, the need for tools that allow users to interact with this content will also grow. The Scholar's Box is a one such tool that enables users to gather resources from multiple digital repositories in order to create personal collections and other reusable materials that can be shared with others for teaching and research. Using the Scholar’s Box as a primary example, the talk will outline the many possibilities and challenges that face designers of tools for remixing content with services.

   • LITA National Forum 2005 (October 1, 2005, San Jose, CA)

     Breaking Out of the Box: Creating Customized Metasearch Services Using an XML API (co-presented with Michael McKenna, Roy Tennant, and David Walker)

     In addition to its own standard interface, Metalib, one of the premiere federated search systems used by libraries today, provides an XML-based API known as the X-Server. Little known and rarely used, the X-Server nevertheless offers libraries the ability to create highly customized metasearch systems and portals, ultimately producing more usable and powerful research tools. This session will include a brief introduction to the X-Server and showcase implementations at the California Digital Library, the Interactive University Project at UC Berkeley, and Cal State San Marcos.

   • Small Tools, Big Ideas (a conference on the discipline-specific technologies reshaping the practice of teaching art and art history) (October 7, 2005, New York City)

     Scholar's Box

     The Scholar's Box is a tool being developed at UC Berkeley that enables users to gather resources from multiple digital repositories in order to create personal collections and other reusable materials that can be shared with others for teaching and research. It is designed to connect domains that are of particular importance to educational users: digital libraries, educational technology, social software tool, desktop content authoring. The fundamental conviction behind the Scholar's Box is that teachers, artists, and researchers -- as part of their creative process -- should have easy-to-use tools that let them remix any digital content from any source with any software service. This talk will demonstrate how the Scholar's Box can be used to support the teaching of art and art history by allowing scholars to create annotated and reusable sets of images drawn from diverse sources. The sources will range from brand name institutional repositories to personal image services such Flickr to the Web at large.

2. an educause e-book on the "Net Generation"
   

   EDUCAUSE | Resources | Educating the Net Generation:

   The Net Generation has grown up with information technology. The aptitudes, attitudes, expectations, and learning styles of Net Gen students reflect the environment in which they were raised—one that is decidedly different from that which existed when faculty and administrators were growing up.

   I've thought myself as of being part of the "net generation" and so believe myself to know in my gut how "Net Gen students" are like. That attitude is probably folly on my part, so it would be useful at some point for me to read this online book as a corrective to my own understandings of the next generation of students.

CETIS: Standards in Education Technology

1. New CETIS briefings available
   

   The ever-popular series of CETIS briefings on e-learning standards just received two new additions, two major updates, and some tweaking on others.

Hmm, what do you make of this? Paste the following into a weblog post:

<%["xmlrpc://medweb3.bham.ac.uk/RPC2"].mcq.service.get ("1")%>

Airflow through the lungs...

		A. increases from the trachea to the alveoli as total surface area increases.
		B. increases from the trachea to the alveoli as total surface area decreases
		C. decreases from the trachea to the alveoli as total surface area increases
		D. decreases from the trachea to the alveoli as total surface area decreases

There's a toy for anyone to play with in my instant outline (subscribe via the big OPML coffee mug at left). Right-click on anything in Radio such as a name in your Buddies list or an outline heading in your instant outline and you can choose to search for the selected text using Google. The results pop-up as an RSS file in a new outline in your copy of Radio.

Google to RSS in Radio. A picture speaks a thousand words...

This Manila web site:

http://medweb5.bham.ac.uk/radiodiscuss/

is linked to my Radio instant outline. I can right-click to add any text in anyone's instant outline to the Manila site's home page and readers of my outline can post new discussion messages via Radio.

I think that's pretty neat. The simple scripts that do this are yours for the taking in my outline.

There's a feature that's common to most if not all commercially available VLEs. As a student, you only have access to the learning materials while you're an enrolled member of the course. Leave the course and the materials are no longer available to you and very likely any material you created as part of your course is also lost. It may be archived in the institution hosting your course but it's probably no longer available to you.

Maybe what we need are teaching & learning web services. Plug-and-play services that deliver learning objects to the user to meet their needs, whether they're enrolled in a course, updating themselves as part of CPD or just plain curious and eager to learn.

Interoperability would be nice, such that information providers can provide pedagogically neutral content that you can adapt for your own needs, in your own personal VLE. This personal VLE is not just a VLE in the limiting sense of present VLEs. This is your own personal online presence, your lifelong learning record, your weblog, your Memex.