Session S3C
Work in Progress - PI2E, Towards a Google Home Page for e-learning Manuel Caeiro-Rodriguez, Martin Llamas-Nistal, Juan Gonzalez-Tato, Javier Alvarez-Osuna
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[email protected] Abstract – The idea of this project is to translate the principles of Web 2.0 to e-learning, enabling social participation and dynamic data exchange between users. We are working in the development of an i-Google Gadget, called Edu-GAL (Educational-Gadget Activity List), with e-learning services and its integration with other existing tools and gadgets on the i-Google platform. Edu-GAL will take advantage of a set of existing Web services that provide main e-learning functionalities. The project is located in the context of so-called Personal Learning Environments (PLE). Compared to traditional e-learning systems, in especially Learning Management Systems (LMS), PLE are more learner-centered as it is the user who defines and decides the environment at which he/she will learn. Index Terms – i-Google Home Page, Gadget, e-learning, PLE, LMS. INTRODUCTION In recent years we have witnessed a revolution in Internet called Web 2.0 or Social Web. This new concept is represented by a new type of applications in which users are supported to create new content and exchange them with other users, maximizing the personal involvement and community building and networking. Examples include blogs, wikis, forums, RSS, tweets, social tagging, social networks and podcasts. Personalized homepages (also known as startpages, or personal web portals) are web pages, which may include two types of components: feeds and gadgets. Feeds provide users to view updated content from different web sites based on pulled mechanisms (e.g., RSS, ATOM). Gadgets are interactive applications that provide all kinds of Web functionality from presentation to content interaction with others. Homepages can include custom applications according to the user's personal preferences, combining for example, a reader e-mail, a list of news, weather forecasts, stock market indices, hours of movies in theaters, etc. The result is that the users have all the information they are interested in a personalized, fast and immediate way through a single interface. Some of the most popular homepages are Netvibes Pageflakes, Microsoft's Live.com and iGoogle. iGoogle is a customizable and configurable homepage. Users can combine gadgets of all Google applications including Gmail, Google Maps, Google Calendar, Picasa, Google Reader and Google Docs. There are also gadgets to
allow connection with other web applications like Wikipedia, YouTube, T.V. Guide.com, Facebook, Twitter and iTunes. The result is that the user can access their favorite sites through its homepage. In addition, gadgets can be included in other websites such as MySpace and social networks as Facebook. There are plenty of gadgets for iGoogle. The Google Search gadget has over 45 million users. Currently available in 73 countries, 43 languages and there are more than 248,000 available gadgets. From the point of view of this project there are several interesting educational gadgets [1]: • IReminder allows users to establish a "To Do List". This gadget can be configured to send reminders for each task in the list by e-mail or mobile. • Google Notebook allows scratch pad to take notes and tag entries, export them or send them in Gmail documents • ISuggest to search on other related web sites which the user is viewing. • Timesheet recorder allows you to track minute to minute of what users are doing. From a technological point of view a gadget is normally a small XML file that contains a combination of Javascript, HTML and CCS definitions. Gadgets are supported in HTML 5 and AJAX. For the development of iGoogle gadgets several API are provided, among which we can find FriendConnect or OpenSocial, which facilitate the exchange of information between users sharing similar interests. STATE OF THE ART The state of the art shows how the personalized homepages, including iGoogle, have a degree of maturity including a multitude of applications and programming facilities. A gadget can use specific APIs (e.g., OpenSocial [2]) to offer information sharing with other gadgets. There are also efforts to use the iGoogle gadget technology from an educational point of view (e.g., Memeteka [3]). In any case, this is an application that integrates existing gadgets to compose an elearning environment, but it doesn’t provide any specific gadget that facilitate the implementation and monitoring of educational activities. The majority of the e-learning systems (e.g., LMS, VLE) [4] rule for the provision of e-learning capabilities. In front of them, Personal Learning Environments (PLE) [5] have been proposed to enhance the capacity of particularization and customization in e-learning systems. However, today the LMS is revealed as the reference applications and are used by
978-1-61284-469-5/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE October 12 – 15, 2011, Rapid City, SD 41st ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference S3C-1
Session S3C Similar to the previous case, it will be the responsibility of Edu-GAL to show the involved people in each case.
agencies and schools to provide full functionality. PLE proposals are still at a very early and experimental stage.
CONCLUSIONS
THE PROPOSAL Faced with this situation arises the development of an specific e-learning gadget, Edu-GAL (Educational-Gadget Activity List), which is responsible for the management of educational activities. Edu-GAL could be downloaded and assembled along with other gadgets in a "Home Page of I-Google to Elearning "(PI2E) by the student, building in this way his/her own e-learning environment. Edu-GAL will provide the access point to all educational activities in which the students are involved. From the selection of a particular educational activity on Edu-GAL, the other gadgets included in PI2E will show contextual information. As an example, suppose an user selects a DJ master class. Then, the other gadgets included in PI2E display the related information: the agenda other musical activities, the forum topics about the contents of the course, gadgets with YouTube content and resources from SlideShare, etc. In this way, PI2E may include features similar to those of the current LMS and that have all sorts of gadgets, but at a much lower cost and in a very customizable way. Moreover, a line of work will incorporate the functionality of existing LMS (e.g. Moodle) in their own environment through specific gadgets.
The proposed system is specially designed to support informal learning. It is considered as formal learning the education that is taught based on curricula and official programs in which the student gets a degree or a certain certification. Against this model, in informal learning the student is not "bound" to make a certain studies, it is something that he searches and wants. In this way, the student does at his/her own pace and using the systems that takes his/her fancy. Obviously, this fits well with the principles of Web 2.0. The next activities in this project involve the development of the gadget, its connection with the PoEML Web Services and the communication with other gadgets. After, we plan to do some pilots to get experiences with the system. Then, we will continue this project by developing gadgets for specific tools that can be used in combination with Edu-GAL. For example: gadgets to perform questionnaires, to provide forums, etc. ACKNOWLEDGMENT We thank Galician Consellería de Economía e Industria for its partial support to this work under grant “PI2E: Páxina Inicial I-Google de E-learning” (10SEC002E).
WEB SERVICES We plan to take advantage of a set of web services to provide in Edu-GAL the functionality of a typical e-learning system. These web services have been developed in the context of the PoEML language [6]. PoEML is a modeling language intended to support the design and computational execution of lesson plans involving key issues such as reusability, adaptability, flexibility and the support of collaborative learning activities. Up to date we have developed an execution engine that is able to process PoEML models (namely: lesson plans) and manage the state of learners along lesson activities. This functionality is provided as a set of web services and it has already been used to support two developments: one based on Moodle [7] and other one providing a mixed platform with PC and TV interfaces [8]. The functionality provided by the PoEML Web services enables to offer the following information in the Edu-GAL gadget: • Each learner can get the list of learning activities that he/she has to work out. These activities include information about deadlines, mandatory or optional character, relationships with other learning activities, etc. • Each learning activity involves a learning context that may include specific tools required to perform the activity. The PoEML Web services just provide the information about these tools and it will be the responsibility of Edu-GAL to offer it. • Each learning activity also involves a relation of other learners (and maybe teachers) that are involved in it.
REFERENCES [1]
Hurm, L., Steele, K., Hill, A., Tidrick, A., Tunnicliffe, C., Baker, C., Irving, K., Peppler, A. K. “iGoogle Full Wiki Text”. [Online]. Available https://wiki.itap.purdue.edu/display/INSITE/iGoogle+Full+Wiki+Text
[2]
OpenSocial Specification [Online]. Available http://opensocial.org/ & http://docs.opensocial.org/display/OS/Home
[3]
Casquero, O., Portillo, J., Ovelar, R., Romo, J., & Benito, M. (2008). “iGoogle and gadgets as a platform for integrating institutional and external services” Mash-Up Personal Learning Environments. Proc. of 1st Workshop MUPPLE, 37-41.
[4]
ADL Instructional Capabilities Team, Choosing Management System, 21 December 2010, Version 2.2.
[5]
Van Harmelen, H. (2008) Design trajectories: four experiments in PLE implementation. Interactive Learning Environments, 16(1), 35 – 46
[6]
M. Caeiro, “PoEML: A separation-of-concerns proposal to instructional design”, pp. 184-208, 2007 (in L. Botturi & T. Stubbs, Eds., Handbook of visual languages for instructional design: theories and practices edited by, IGI Global)
[7]
Perez-Rodriguez, R., Caeiro-Rodriguez, M., Anido-Rifon, L. (2008) “Supporting PoEML Educational Processes in Moodle: a Middleware Approach” In Proceedings of the V Simposio Pluridisciplinar sobre Diseño y Evauación de Contenidos Reutilizables (SPEDECE’08).
[8]
Caeiro-Rodriguez, M., Fontenla-Gonzalez, J., Perez-Rodriguez, R., Anido-Rifon, L.E. (2010). Instructional Design with PoEML in a Elearning-as-a-Service Model. Mixing Web and IPTV Learning Experiencies. In Proceedings of te International Conference on Addvanced Learning Technologies (ICALT’10), 736-737
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Learning
978-1-61284-469-5/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE October 12 – 15, 2011, Rapid City, SD 41st ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference S3C-2
