Mobile JWiki

On the side as of late I’ve been working with Tim Jore at Distant Shores Media to help them create ajaxy goodness for their MediaWiki-based site at http://door43.org that features free and open licensed contributed discipleship resources for everyone in every language, including an open Bible, open Bible School, open worship music, etc. Anyway, I’ve just released a new application for them that dynamically has the ability to turn their entire wiki into a mobile online/offline application.

So if you are using MediaWiki, or would like to mobilize someone else’s Web site or wiki, you can find the simple 1-2 pages of code here: https://github.com/rwadholm/Mobile-JWiki. The code can be put on any server anywhere (that supports PHP 5.3), and will create a mobile offline/online version of whatever site you point it  at (out of the box it works with MediaWiki) via PHP,  JQuery, JQuery Mobile, and HTML5 (and it works as well without javascript enabled, so for non-smartphones it’ll still serve up your mobile site just fine). Don’t tell anyone I told you this, but you could even use it to make your own mobile offline/online version of Wikipedia that’s hosted on your own server.

The real purpose, however, is to allow users of wikis in areas with spotty internet connectivity or expensive data plans to be able to learn on the go, using their phones, without a continually active internet connection.

Learning to Blog, Blogging to Learn

Last summer I finished an E-learning solution for highschool and college teachers who would like to learn how to use blogs as a part of their instruction. Videos, links to online resources, and walk-throughs are provided in this extensive (2-3 hour) self-directed tutorial website. Feel free to use these materials in any way you want (think of the content as open source, as well as the code).

The World as Classroom

In Dr. Curt Bonk’s newest book (as yet unpublished) on the open world of online learning, a particular passage in a chapter summary on educational resources on the Web caught my eye: “With all these [free online] lectures available, how can we not learn? What is to stop someone from learning any topic she wants at any time of the day? How will ambitious, self-directed learners be mentored or tutored into and through all of this content?”  This passage got me thinking. What if someone really did create such a service for high schools, Colleges, and self-directed learners. What if there were a resource on the Web that provided not merely repositories of online learning modules, lectures, videos, OCW, and learning objects (as if that weren’t enough), but also provided tutoring, mentorship, and guidance through these ever-growing and changing Web resources? A team of instructional designers, reference librarians, and computer programmers could staff an online Web 2.0 service that provides these things (for money or ads as financial backing, or it could be volunteer work). Instead of “Online Tutor,” it could be called something like “Tutol” (TUTor OnLine). Or accreditation could be sought for such a service, leading through OCWs, independant studies, searches, research topics, etc.

One might ask: “Isn’t a wiki a form of such guided learning through a topic?” Not really. While they are participatory in nature, wikis (at least the ones I’m familiar with) have very few integrated question/response or guided participatory learning tools. Online forums can come close to this, but seem to lack a broad enough scope. Also, forums often suffer from poor information architecture, making finding your way around (or sequencing instruction) a little difficult. FAQs are sometimes well organized, but are too static and are not usually participatory in nature, nor do they allow for extended discussions.

On the other hand, there have come to my attention interesting ideas about the automization of such a service. The US government-sponsored Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) has done research into just this topic. Here are some of their wide-ranging interests in the field of instruction:  http://www.adlnet.gov/technologies/index.aspx. The ADL also helped in the creation of SCORM (the shareable content object reference model) which standardizes learning resources and repositories to be easily accessible and reusable. Along these lines they are also developing Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) which are “computer software systems that seek to mimic the methods and dialog of natural human tutors, to generate instructional interactions in real time and on demand–as required by individual students”. These tutoring systems are being developed for the fields of artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, and cognitive science. Is there hope for such an artificial tutoring system? Can these sytems be applied to other fields as well? Could something like this be the next Google (which automates Web searching) by automating Web tutoring? Not only could a person find anything on the Web, a person could also learn anything on the Web. Is such a thing possible? Are we being swept up into an Isaac Asimov world where we learn from robot mentors? I’m guessing not. I think, though, that social learning using automated Web 2.0 or Semantic Web tools is a distinct possibility for great growth in the next five years. So whether or not instructional designers, librarians, and computer programmers will be used to actually assist in tutoring individuals on the Web in the near future through this maze of online resources, these experts will be needed at the very least to design and implement the systems that will eventually do the tutoring. Somebody needs to teach the machine before it teaches us (tongue in cheek).

The Open World

This week after work I was hanging out on the curb by my building waiting for my wife to pick me up in our car. The sun was shining, and I was standing in the shade of a nearby tree. I was thinking through the events of the day. A coworker and I had been working through a difficult Web programming issue, and had been working at it for week or two. While I was imagining a solution, I had a bit of a “Zen” moment.

I have been reading Dr. Bonk’s newest book on factors that come together that are making our world open. In an open world, almost anyone can learn almost anything at almost any time of the day or night and from almost anywhere. In his book, Bonk discusses why this is so and the great opportunities it presents. The book is very personally motivating and is energetically written. It is hard not to absorb his positive outlook on the world. I find it hard to read more than 50 pages without going out and checking out the things that he discusses. He’s so excited about these new opportunities that his enthusiasm convinces me to see them and try them for myself. Anyway, back to my Zen moment.

There I was under the tree thinking about computer programming problems. I thought about how much of programming these days is done publicly (open source, or freely available on the Web). The Web programmers in our world, by and large, are open to sharing their knowledge and expertise online. Asynchronously I can just Google a problem I’m having and check out many different solutions and work my way to solving my own problem with help from other experts.

Now, my dream in life is to be a missionary and help people in other parts of the world. I’m getting this degree only because I think it might help me to do this. One skill I have to offer and share with the world is designing and developing for the Web. I could help others learn this skill and pass on this knowledge so that they can become self-sufficient knowledge creators and sharers. If I helped impoverished people to develop these kinds of skills and helped them to see opportunities in their world for growth, I could help them in a small way. This knowledge could really open their world. And that’s when it hit me: all this time I had been reading and rereading Bonk’s book on an open world, I had not really grasped at a visceral level what he meant by an open world.

Until that moment.

I now realized that the world is opened to those with whom knowledge and skills are shared. And that is what is happening in our world today. Learning resources are being shared on a grande scale. And this helps people in the third world by opening up their minds to a whole world of possibilities. If knowledge is power, then we give power by sharing our knowledge. We give the world to others. What an enterprise!