… and that’s a problem because it makes RSS feed aggregation harder than it should be. Once upon a time, Tim Berners-Lee and a few of his close friends, invented the concept of a URL1, and in the early days of the web, the ‘U’ in URL could be taken to stand for Unique (although it’s always stood for Uniform). Thus, if you typed a URL into a browser address field, it would take you to one, and only one, destination....
The first week of #PLENK2010 is nearly over. Just one Elluminate discussion to go (16.00 Zulu, 17.00 BST). This is my first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) (it’s actually my first experience of any form of formal learning for quite some time) but despite all the dire warnings about information overload issued at the start, I actually think I’ve settled in quite nicely. I have read all the readings (and made notes!...
At Tony Hirst’s suggestion (see comments to previous post), I followed Alan Levine’s instructions and created a custom google search engine derived from Stephen Downes ‘feed of feeds’ OPML file. It took a couple of attempts as it’s not clear on the Google Custom Search Engine creation page just what you have to do, and the order you have to do it, but with Alan’s post and a bit of perseverance I worked it out....
I have started putting together a personal learning environment for the Massively Open Online Course PLENK2010. Taking my inspiration from mashup-meister Tony Hirst, I have created an Aggregator using Yahoo! Pipes. This takes the OPML file (connect.downes.ca/feeds.xml) from the PLENK2010 Participants Feeds page, feeds it through a filter to extract posts with #PLENK2010 in the body or title, and produces a simple feed reader. The output of this can be obtained in various formats including iGoogle feed reader gadget, Google Reader, netvibes widget, JSON and RSS....
Today a Massively open Online Course (MOOC) on Personal Learning Environments, Networks and Knowledge (PLENK2010) is starting. The course is being facilitated by George Siemens, Stephen Downes, our own Rita Kop and Dave Cormier and is being used in various was to research PLEs and their effectiveness. Personally, I am hoping to learn more about Personal Learning Environments and Personal Learning Networks (aren’t they the same thing?); how I might exploit them in my own personal learning; and how I might adopt the ideas in my teaching....