Examples of creating and presenting project-wise del.icio.us resource-bases

10-July-2006

[ site features , project planning ]
This is a longish post explaining the process we're proposing for building up a project del.icio.us resource base the easy way - in small pushes using our own personal bookmarking - and later adding features in this site for presenting aspects of the resource-base.

I'm posting this to give some examples of the kind of process we;ll be using to make it as easy as possible to build up a project resource-base using del.icio.us.

One thing which I'd like to get clear is the difference between a del.icio.us USER and a del.icio.us TAG. A user is a login name registered with del.icio.us - an account with the service. A tag is a wortd or words added in the 'tags' field when bookmarking an item - it is just used to organise bookmarks, not to log in to the del.icio.us system and create them.

To add bookmarks to del.icio.us you need to be able to log into an account. The reasons why I suggest that we all get our own accounts, instead of sharing the username and password for the one account are:

We will all likely end up using del.icio.us for other work as well as for this project. If you opt to stay logged into your own del.iicio.us account all the time, it makes it very quick to add new bookmarks whenever you feel like it It's dangerous to let too many people have login rights to the one account - too easy to accidentally delete other people's posts etc. It is not necessary to post all our items directly into the WLp account in order for them to arrice there. We here at KnowNet have written scripts and utilities for pulling bookmarks in from multiple accounts.

It is hard to show you what I mean within the current WLP site because we do not yet have very many resources. BUT we have several examples of other projects which have already built up substantial del.icio.us resources by individual usrs tagging over a period of time. In each of these cases, the project del.icio.us accounts not the direct repositories for the original bookmarking our users did - they added the links in the del.icio.us accounts they are usually logged in as, and we later "sucked" some of their tags from that account to the project account.

So far, we have implemented two main kinds of interface for displaying del.icio.us resource bases within project sites:

Tag Clouds these are displays of all the tags used to categorise the bookmarks in a del.icio.us account. In most of our tag cloud displays, you can browse the tags dynamically: click a tag to instantly show the top 100 items with that tag as well as the 'related tags' ( tags that have appeared on at least one item alongside the tag being displayed). Clicking a related tag changes the display so that the links listed are those with both tags. This is a quick and powerful way to look for patterns Live embedded links-lists these are RSS-feeds for the most recent items with particular tags applied to them. They can be displayed easily within site content or as weblog sidebars. We can even show you how to embed these within a single piece of prose.

For examples of Tag Clouds see the following

EGCRF's del.icio.us bookmarks
These are all from the NGRF del.icio.us account, which is shared directly by several close colleagues at the IER. It is updated nightly from the for:egcrf tag in the NGRF delicious bookmarks.
NGRF's bookmarks at del.icio.us
Unlike the other project accounts, these have all been entered directly by a few closely-knit co-workers who trust each other with the same login details :o) It has become a hefty resource.
Vidensdatabase "Tag Cloud"
This is an experimental, smaller resource-base, for the Danish focus group in the EGCRF project. The focus group weblog "has its own" del.icio.us account, so all the members of the blog can indoirectly post the the del.icio.us account without needing access to any login details at all
Opendock Project Tag Cloud
This is not ready for public viewing yet, but is a serious resource in the making for a project using the Learning Design standard for sharing learning activities. It is updated nightly from particular tags in my own and Al Harris' bookmarking, and is already probably the best resource on the subject to be found anywhere.
www.mc-dip.net
Again, this is not ready for public viewing (scroll down for the tag cloud). It is updated nightly from Al Harris, my own, and Glenn Hardaker's bookmarking.

For examples of Live Resource Lists see the following:

See the UK Country Area in the EGCRF Project site for examples of live listing - within content - of links that have been given particular tags.

The main UK page 'pulls in' the most recent items from the whole egcrf del.icio.us account (remember - these will be coming from several other accounts - no-one actually logs in *as* cgcrf)). Most of the sections within the UK country area have their own live linkslists displaying items tagged with one particular tag which is related to the content of that section. See the links below for examples.

Gender
This area of the site is under development. The case for highlighting gender as an issue that continues to be pivotal in overcoming injustice is as strong as ever. Whilst men undoubtedly experience discrimination, it is women who continue to suffer most disadvantage on the basis of their gender.
Race and Ethnicity
This area of the site is under development, it is intended to be used in conjunction with the section on 'asylum seekers, immigrants and refugees' below. .
Asylum seekers, immigrants and refugees
This area of the site is under development, it is intended to be used in conjunction with the 'race and ethnicity' section above.
Disability
This section will grow into a brief overview of definitions, legislation, models, relevant statistics and barriers to employment faced by people with disabilities across Europe.
Age
This section of the site is under development. As more people choose or are compelled to work beyond what was once a statutory retirement age, there is growing interest in their guidance needs and entitlements.
Sexual orientation
This section of the site is currently under development... Discrimination against lesbians, gay men and bisexuals is increasingly acknowledged as a problem in the labour market.
Socio-Economic Context
This area of the site is under development. Socio-economic background has an acknowledged impact on career trajectories.

Mike Malloch; 10-July-2006 18:26:01 forum (0)

Some new features: courses, objectives and learning-opportunities

23-January-2006

[ site features ]
We have added new features to the site, which allow members to post the details of courses and their constituent learning-objectives, and also to note learning-opportunities which match organisations to learning-objectives.

You may notice a new link in the main navigation tabs at the top of the pages: Courses. Click that link to see a list of the available 'courses'. If you are logged-in, that listing will also include a button for adding a new course.

Each 'course' consists of a list of learning objectives and an occupation. The intention is that those learning objectives are appropriate as a course as part of advancing one;s skill and knowledge for that occupation.

For each course, members can post a 'learning-opportunity' ( see the link at the top-right of the page when logged-in and viewing a course's details). A learning opportunity is intended to note that some of the learning-objectives in a course can be met by an organisation. A time-span and contact name / contact details are noted, along with the organisation's name.

For each learning-objective in that course, it is noted whether the objective is 'represented' in this learning opportunity fully, partially or not at all.

Can project partners please provide some feedback on whether these features address the requirements of the project. KnowNet created this functionality in response to a detailed feature request as interpreted by Graham Attwell.

We hope to refine and improve these features, and to integrate them with individual professional-development-profiles and web-logging for potential learners.

If you have comments about the new features, or about the conceptual architecture they reflect, please either add a comment to this news item, or email Mike ( mike @ theknownet . com )


Mike Malloch; 23-January-2006 11:52:54 forum (3)

3 comments.

Latest comment:
30-January-2006 19:18:22 by abrown; Portfolio and LAR

Welcome to the WLP project management weblog

10-November-2005

[ site features , project planning ]
This is a little message welcoming the WLP partners and management team to this weblog. I kick things off by posting some links to project-related bookmarking I have been doing in my del.icio.us account, and noting an email thread about developing skills-development diaries within the site.

This is a weblog for the partners in the WLP project to discuss the work we do to make the project as successful as it can be...

Below is an email which was part of a thread about developing skills-development diaries in the site. It also has some very useful links to some of mine and the NGRF's tags in del.icio.us which have been sued over the past few months to bookmark web resources of interest to the project.

Graham Attwell writes: Sounds very cooool - am well happy with timeline - I think this could   be launch of a great product. Portfolio in plone will have many, many   people interested.

OK - I will offer partners option of one day extension to meeting to   do basic training etc

Okie dokie!

I'll keep people posted.  As the issues come close to realisation I'll also post to Knotations blog, http://www.knownet.com/Members/mmalloch/blog ,  and will post bluesky planning to my main blog http://www.knownet.com/writing/elearning2.0

Graham just emailed with a food lightweight idea for getting started  - just give an interface for listing the learning-opportunities as potential categories - we'll get back on that when Steve is back ( he's off for the rest of the week cause his wife just had a little operation )

By the way, some tags I've been tracking related links into: ... I also include some NGRF tags that Alan et al have been tracking into

[ NB - there are a lot of other related links among my bookmarks, but I hadn't tagged them with wlp in mind so it would take some thought to extract all of the tags -- just have a look round my elearning bundle of tags for instance ] 


Mike Malloch,
Software Architect,
KnowNet Ltd

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Mike Malloch; 10-November-2005 12:46:04 forum (0)