Photo remixed from Dev Null’s on Flickr under CC attribution Share-alike Generic

The new National Strategies site has gone over all Web 2.0 – for a start there’s a BETA button on there (my circling in red) plus a groups and discussions feature. I got the nod from Steve Beard via Twitter (another good reason to use that service) late last night so went to have a look. It was only when I logged in I saw the new features.         

This is quite a radical departure and it is welcome if not a little overdue. Here are some of the third party bookmarks included at present – see screenshot below – Del.icio.us, Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and Facebook.(!)

I was a little disappointed not to see Diigo on there but I have already fed back on that – I’d rather see Diigo than Facebook for a start! But having a del.icio.us bookmarking facility on some parts of the site is a very big change in the way these web resources have been rolled out before.

The login was a bit clunky and didn’t recognise that I was commenting or creating groups at first but that may have something to do with the database at 11.30 on a Sunday night and it is in BETA after all – a brave step and a bit of risk – well I never…

This means that finally Web 2.0 is being used in a sensible way to build an informal network around this site. I hope all pages have permalinks and don’t vanish – sites like Becta have been notorious for that in the past.

Voting and Rating

And yes there is rating – which is excellent too – does that mean if enough people think an idea doesn’t run in practice it’ll get ditched rather than having to shoehorn unworkable stuff into pedagogy – now that would be an interesting knock-on effect…

This is quite wonderful really – but I think the reality will be that very few teachers will know how to use it or have the time. I hope the site makers monitor patterns of use – I can see a few third party opportunities here for people to unpick the metrics on this – would that they’d go the whole hog and make the stats usage and RSS feeds “transparent” – I think possibly the visual ergonomics of the whole thing will change over time.

The interface is still very Web 1.0 and I’d like to see even greater simplicity there as well, that’s missing, but it’s a start. I haven’t had time to explore fully but here are a few suggestions – they may be there I can’t see them yet.

How to make it Mashable and Personalised

Here’s what I would like to see next:

-  the ability to link and upload video/audio/PDF exemplars to this site as well and attach them to the instances outlined.

- RSS feeds for everything – so people can remash the bits they want into Netvibes etc.

- the ability for advanced users to remash the data of flow on the site

e.g. search,

most popular votes er ratings,

advanced  search

Comments should be socially aggregated too

- these  all should have RSS as well as should the comments. And the comments and feedback should be aggregated with clever apps like IdeaScale or UserVoice – (thank you @josiefraser and @adrianstevensoon on Twitter for those) just two ways of improving feedback. They are examples of pro-active, dynamic feedback crowd-sourcing devices. Use them and improve the site.

- all this should be available for cross referencing data that can be exported for research purposes and metrics

Multimodal feedback and reflection

- widgits and apps like Voicethread and Seesmic for busy teachers to record their observations back to the site without having to type or the facility to bind those things in using APIs

- A video app like Viddler that allows people to upload a webcam comment inside video exemplars and have that RSS’d within exisiting media for reflection and discussion

You should then be able to post those comments with that exact section of video to a colleague

Mobile version

- Mobilise the thing for phones using new smart technologies like Intersquash – that really should be done immediately

Reskinning opportunities

- all the metadata should be available for mash and reconfiguration so third party developers can reskin the site making it easier to read for teachers – i.e. open source it so that, for example, if someone wants to make a site of all the videos on there by visual search they can – the more you open up data and information the more variety and personalisation you can have

- oh yes and have an OpenID option – now Microsoft, Google and Yahoo are using it why not the Standards site?

So what next?

Yes I want cake as well – this suddenly presents an opportunity to make policy to practice highly dynamic and it’s a start – it’s in BETA so there will be clunks I guess. But good on the DCSF for putting this up and acknowledging it will evolve.

There are teething problems – I was logged in and out all over the place with error pages as I tried to break it – but I like the fact it has been skinned for social networks in some parts.

At last it seems the government are beginning to “get it” – not bringing out an entirely proprietorial site but binding all the heavy lifting into the Social Networking world in general for a much, much larger scope.

Reality of use?

Just how many people will use this site in a “smart” way remains to be seen but I like the places it seems to be going.

What are other people’s opinions? Suggestions?

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 10th, 2008 at 1:31 am and is filed under Flux, digital inclusion, education policy, government, internet, learner voice, learning spaces, mobile, opensource, personalisation, politics, teaching and innovation, video, web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.