Web Futures: Implications For HE

Web Futures: Implications For Higher Education Brian Kelly UK Web UKOLN University of Bath Bath, UK UKOLN is supported by: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/seminars/kcl-2006-01/ Acceptable Use Policy Recording/broadcasting of this talk, taking photographs, discussing the content using email, instant messaging, Blogs, SMS, etc. is permitted providing distractions to others is minimised. Also feel free to access the presentation, follow links, etc. This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 licence (but note caveat) * * Subject to confirmation at end of talk

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

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

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)

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 Finding answers from gurus and best practices Performance, authoring tools, HTML, databases CMS  Web strategy  Exploiting new stuff 1997 Today Meeting people, networking, “I am not alone”

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 "

What About Web Standards?
Early Days
HTML+CSS+WAI 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, …

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  …

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

Web 2.0
What Is Web 2.0?
A marketing term, rather than a formal technical standards ("“an attitude not a technology”)
Web2MemeMap, Tim O’Reilly, 2005
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
…

Web 2.0 Exemplars Let's look at some examples – presented to SWLAC staff

AJAX, XML, Web Services, … Does your campus map use Google Maps, or is it trapped in a GIF file?

Google Earth tour of IWMW events

Note:
Greasemonkey environment

Note:
BBC Backstage competition (free iPod??)

Mobile Devices
Potential of mobile devices in learning, research, etc.
Lectures on iPods; student-created Podcasts; ..

PDF Note that Talis (UK library vendor) are publishing Blogs and Podcasts about "Library 2.0" And UKOLN/CDNTL have also been experimenting

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) http://www.everyobject.net/static.php?page=interactive

UK participants include: National Archives Natural History Museum Creative Commons, Science Commons, Open Access, Open Source, … are helping to drive Web 2.0. What's the UK HE's take on this?

http://creativecommons.org/ See " Let's Free IT Support Materials! " (EUNIS 2005 paper) as an example of what UK HE could be doing

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?

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 < span >, < div > and < a .. rel="foo" >
Examples
Define structured date about people, dates, etc. thus:
<span class="vcard">Brian</span> …
XSLT transformations to VCard, etc
NB Tom Heath's acronym harvester

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  …

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

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, …

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, …

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
What’s this got to do with the Web?

Instant Messaging (2)
Meebo:
A Web-based IM client
An AJAX application
Issues:
How do you ban it?
Interoperability
http://www.meebo.com/

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

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 now’s the time to gain experiences. What are the implications of ‘free’ always-on telephony. You could all be broadcasting this talk now!

RSS
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?
See RSS briefing paper
RSS:
Syndication of content
A light-weight standard used in the JISC IE
View on Web, using one of many dedicated RSS viewers, Opera or Pluck IE plugin
Shouldn't RSS viewers be standard on desktops? Shouldn't we be creating RSS feed for news alerts – and not just adding to email overload? Google for " rss is opt-in authenticated email "

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, …

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. <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/seminars/kcl-2006-01/> Or submit a proposal for a talk or workshop at the 10 th Institutional Web Management Workshop at University of Bath, 14-16 June 2006. (Call for papers currently open) <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/ events/workshops/webmaster-2006/>

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, … !

Discussion
Questions, comments, etc. welcome

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Web Futures: Implications For HE

by Brian Kelly on Aug 01, 2008

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