Web Futures: Implications For Higher Education

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Web Futures Implications For Higher Education
http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/seminars/k
cl-2006-01/
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• Brian Kelly
• UK Web
• UKOLN
• University of Bath
• Bath, UK

This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonComme
rcial-ShareAlike 2.5 licence (but note caveat)
Subject to confirmation at end of talk
UKOLN is supported by
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Contents

• Introduction
• Background The History of the Web
• Where Are We Now?
• New Developments
• W3C developments
• Web 2.0
• Deployment Challenges
• Conclusions

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About Me

• Brian Kelly
• UK Web Focus post funded by JISC and MLA to
  advise UK HE / FE and cultural heritage sectors
  on best Web practices
• Based at UKOLN, University of Bath
• Helped set up Web service in Leeds University in
  Jan 1993 - first in UK(?) and in first 50
  registered at CERN)
• Web evangelist from 1993 (against Gopher
  orthodoxy!)
• Attended several WWW conferences since first in
  1994

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History Of The Web In HE

• 1993 Early adopters
• 1994 Web wins (Gopher starts to be phased out)
• 1994? Web-support Mailbase list (David Riddle)
  start of (enthusiastic) UK HE Web community
• 199? University Webmasters start to be
  appointed.Website-info-mgt Mailbase list set up
  to support University Webmasters (political
  pawns, not cool Web developers)
• 199? Best practice docs published by AGOCG
• 1997 First Institutional Web Management
  Workshop (IWMW) held at KCL (held annual ever
  since)

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Reflections On IWMWs

• KCL 2 days (lunchtime-lunchtime)
• Newcastle 3 days (2 days content)
• Goldsmiths "
• Bath "
• Belfast 3 days (2.5 days content)
• Strathclyde "
• Kent "
• Birmingham 3 days (2 days content)
• Manchester 3 days (2 days content)
• Bath 3 days (2 days content)

June Sept " " June " " " July June
There are no easy answers ? We can all contribute
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We're Doing Well ?

• Positive aspects of the UK HE Web community
• Willingness to share experiences (e.g. on
  web-support and website-info-mgt lists)
• A well-established annual event
• Avoidance of the ghetto mentality senior
  managers, information professionals, designers,
  software developers, trainers, meet, talk and
  socialise together
• Challenges we face
• Open sources vs licensed software debate
• Role of standards (e.g. SMIL vs Flash)
• Managing with limited resources
• Managing service vs supporting user needs - cf
  Andrew Aird's talk in 2002 on "Pursuing A Radical
  Web Strategy"

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What About Web Standards?

• Early Days
• HTMLCSSWAI WCAG ? (Netscape's support for
  CSS was a problem)
• Later
• XML a winner
• New W3C formats (PNG, SMIL, SVG, )
• Limited take-up and other solutions have
  benefits (e.g. Flash)
• More Recently
• Complexity and Confusion Semantic Web, Web
  Services, deployment difficulties (e.g. XHTML
  2.0), patent issues, process issues,

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Summary UK HE Web In 2004/5

• State of play in 2004/5
• Web is mission critical
• We have Web teams and resources (but we'd like
  more)
• We have a Web/Information Strategy
• Focus tends to be on publishing
• Key applications areas
• Institutional Web site ? Intranets
• VLEs ? Portals
• Digital repositories ?

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Web For 2006

• Significant changes seem to be happening
• Blogs and Wikis
• RSS and Podcasting
• Mobile devices
• Pervasive networks (WIFi, broadband at home, 3G,
  )
• Integration of services ("mashups")
• Microformats
• Google developments
• SOA
• Web 2.0

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Web 2.0

• What Is Web 2.0?
• A marketing term, rather than a formal technical
  standards ("an attitude not a technology)

• Characteristics Of Web 2.0
• Network as platform
• Architecture of participation
• Social networking
• Social tagging
• Remix and mash-ups
• Blogs Wikis
• Syndication
• Users
• Always beta

Web2MemeMap, Tim OReilly, 2005
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Web 2.0 Exemplars
Let's look at some examples presented to SWLAC
staff
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AJAX, XML, Web Services,
Does your campus map use Google Maps, or is it
trapped in a GIF file?
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Google Earth tour of IWMW events
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(No Transcript)
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• Note
• Greasemonkey environment

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• Note
• BBC Backstage competition (free iPod??)

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Mobile Devices

• Potential of mobile devices in learning,
  research, etc.

Lectures on iPods student-created Podcasts ..
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Note that Talis (UK library vendor) are
publishing Blogs and Podcasts about "Library
2.0" And UKOLN/CDNTL have also been experimenting
PDF
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http//www.everyobject.net/static.php?pageinterac
tive
Are your University Podcasts available through
iTunes? Aren't you missing out on a major
distribution channel? (Note Student's Union radio
shows are leading the way)
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Creative Commons, Science Commons,
Open Access, Open Source, are helping to drive
Web 2.0. What's the UK HE's take on this?
UK participants include National
Archives Natural History Museum
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http//creativecommons.org/
See "Let's Free IT Support Materials!" (EUNIS
2005 paper) as an example of what UK HE could be
doing
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http//www.flickr.com/

folksonomies

• Issues
• "Claim your tag" (e.g. "iwmw-2005") and
  convention (e.g. "kcl-publicity",
  "imperial-graduation-2006") for your photos,
  Blogs, etc.?
• NB londonterroristattack tags on 7/7
• Should you proactively make you photos, etc.
  available?

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Semantic Web or semantic web

• Semantic Web
• W3C approach to provide a Web with meaning
• Hard
• Lower case semantic web / microformats
• Been waiting too long for the SW, let's make use
  of today's technologies
• Microformats provide semantic in (X)HTML using
  ltspangt, ltdivgt and lta .. rel"foo"gt

Examples Define structured date about people,
dates, etc. thus ltspan class"vcard"gtBrianlt/spangt
XSLT transformations to VCard, etc NB Tom
Heath's acronym harvester
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Blogs (1)

• Blogs
• User created content (diary-style interface)
• Student use
• Shared learning ? Social use
• Gaining experience ?
• Research use
• Dissemination ? Engagement
• Resource discovery ?
• Support use
• What's On, for sale, ? Email alerts
• Creating RSS ?

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Blogs (2)

• Challenges
• Can we trust our users?
• Will we be sued, get embarrassed, ?
• In-house or externally-hosted?
• Should we do it?
• Can we afford not to?
• Experiences
• University of Warwick Blog service - see Podcast
  interview
• Interests from talk at IWMW 2005 and UCISA/UKOLN
  event, Nov 2004

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Wikis (1)

• Wikis
• Collaborative Web-based authoring environment
• Wikipedia is an example of a successful Wiki
• See QA Focus "An Introduction To Wikis" briefing
  document
• Issues
• Can we trust the contributors?
• Wiki spam, grafitti, IPR, ?
• Best practices, interoperability,

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Wikis (2)

• Discussion
• Can you afford not to contribute to Wikipedia?
• Can provide Wikis for use by small groups
• Can be used for annotation
• Is being increasingly used
• Implementation
• Which is the best?
• Wiki migration

UKOLN intends to host a Wiki (using MediaWiki) to
develop community resources on CMSs, VLEs,
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Instant Messaging (1)

• Instant Messaging
• Trivial chat which should be banned?
• Learning is a collaborative activity, so instant
  messaging, chat rooms, etc. are important
• Issues
• Which environment MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, IRC,
• ID management
• Spamming, noise, etc
• Whats this got to do with the Web?

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Instant Messaging (2)
http//www.meebo.com/

• Meebo
• A Web-based IM client
• An AJAX application
• Issues
• How do you ban it?
• Interoperability

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GMail

• Who needs a University email account when you can
  get 1 Gb from a GMail account (with AJAX
  interface) ?

• My Plans
• Get GMail ID
• Use it as secondary source for mailing lists
• Don't divulge ID (no spam)
• Wait and see what extras Google provide (RSS feed
  would be nice now available)
• Gain feel for privacy issues

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Skype / VoIP

• VoIP future of telephony
• Popular applications such as Skype
• Integrated voice, IM, Web, (and now video)
• Can be high quality
• Free (or cheap to landlines mobiles)
• Conference calls

VoIP is coming, so nows the time to gain
experiences. What are the implications of free
always-on telephony. You could all be
broadcasting this talk now!
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RSS
See RSS briefing paper

• E-mail has its role but
• Why send messages which time-out when many users
  will read them too late?
• Why not use delivery channels which are
  spam-free?
• Why not use delivery channels which are more
  suited to receiving information (as opposed to
  discussions)?
• Why not allow users to select their preferred
  channels?

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Deployment Challenges

• Such questions
• How do we go about deploying Web 2.0?
• More importantly, should we (isn't it just hype?)
• Challenges
• The Web policy is owned by the marketing people
  they see the Web as a publishing vehicle not as a
  communications tool
• We can't use Creative Commons, open access, etc.
• We shouldn't make use of commercial services
• These services are
• Technically / philosophically flawed
• Don't reflect our views on open source /
  standards
• Breaking out of our existing culture, software,

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Answers

• What are the answers to these questions?
• How do we face the challenge of 'disruptive
  technologies'?
• Is this a real issue don't we simply absorb
  such technologies through evolution?

Answers to questions will be sought at the
UKOLN/UCISA/CETIS workshop on "Initiatives
Innovation Managing Disruptive Technologies" at
University of Warwick, 24 Feb 2006.
lthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/seminars
/kcl-2006-01/gt
Or submit a proposal for a talk or workshop at
the 10th Institutional Web Management Workshop at
University of Bath, 14-16 June 2006. (Call for
papers currently open) lthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/web
-focus/events/workshops/webmaster-2006/gt
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Some Answers For Free ?

• Thoughts about deployment strategies
• The need to be an adaptable/agile audience (cf.
  the Monarchy and the London Whale / Di's funeral)
• It's not new cf eLib Hybrid Libraries, the
  RDN's Behind the Headlines as 'mashups'
• Benefits of modular approaches to reflect the
  diversity of the HE environment (cf E-Frameworks
  and SOA approach to development)
• If you don't
• Your rivals will
• Your departments will use the stuff anyway
• Who needs central services when we can get better
  services for free from Google, Yahoo, !

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Discussion

• Questions, comments, etc. welcome