Blogs, Wikis, and RSS

Utilizing Populist Internet Technologies in Education

Tutorial Presentation for CCSCOctober 28, 2006

Thomas C. LominacProfessor of Mathematics and Computer Science

Virginia Military InstituteLexington VA 24450

(540) 464-7493lominactc@vmi.edu

Informal Poll

How many….

• Regularly read blogs?

• Write a blog?

• Use a blog for a class?

• Use an RSS aggregator to read RSS feeds?

• Write for a Wiki?

Why I got involved

• CS Curricular guidelines—like many others, our program needed more content about ethics, social issues

• Received in-house TTL grant to develop a new course, “Contemporary Issues in Computing”

• Desired features:– Student participation– Up to the minute topics for discussion to augment

basic issue categories (freedom of speech, intellectual property, privacy, security)

Outline

• Overview of what’s been happening

• Technologies

• Implementation issues

• A bit of hands-on

• Conclusions

• References

What’s Been Happening

Excerpts from remarks by Bill Gates at Microsoft CEO Summit 2004:

• “One thing that I think has been an interesting dilemma…is this issue of centralization versus empowerment.”

• “…the next generation of collaboration really is about bottoms-up creation of Web sites where the IT department doesn’t have to get involved.”

• “Another new phenomenon that connects into this is…a thing called blogging. And a standard around that that notifies you that something has changed called RSS.”

• “Another big phenomenon is building communities around Web sites….And virtually every company ought to have on their Web site the ability for their customers, their suppliers, various people, to interact and their employees to see the dialogue taking place there and jump in and talk to them and help them.”

Overview of Technologies

• Blogs

• RSS

• Wikis

Blogs

• Web log– n. a personal set of entries, usually structured in

reverse chronological order, published in a web-based log or journal.

• “Weblog” => “we blog” (Peter Merholz, 1999)• blog

– n. A Web log. – vi. To run a Web log.

Blogs were…

• The first widely adopted simple, personal web-based publishing tools first blogs (c. 1997) were HTML pages generated with whatever

editor was available gained momentum as a force with the appearance of certain

web-based services and applications such as Blogger, LiveJournal, and MoveableType

exploded in 2002-2003

• The first set of tools supporting simple creation of XML-based content, embodying the principle of separating structure and content from presentation

• A new form of social ‘network writing’

Common Features

• Main content area with articles listed chronologically, newest on top

• Archive of older articles

• Way for readers to leave comments

• List of links to related sites

• Feeds for syndication

Blogging’s Influence

• War blogs – (after 9/11) weblogs primarily devoted to covering news events concerning an ongoing war (e.g. Afghanistan, Iraq)

• Talking points memo (Josh Marshall)-influential in resignation of Trent Lott as Senate Majority Leader

• Howard Dean and Wesley Clark utilized blogs in their 2004 Presidential campaigns

• “Rathergate” (2004) bloggers built a case that memos on 60 Minutes were probably forgeries

Educational Blogs

• EBN (Educational Bloggers’ Network) http://www.ebn.weblogger.com

• Weblogs in Higher Education http://www.mchron.net/site/edublog.php

What You’ll Need

• Blog hosting site (see http://www.lights.com/weblogs/hosting.html for a more extensive list)– Blogger (http://www.blogger.com)– LiveJournal (http://www.livejournal.com/)– Weblogs.us (http://weblogs.us/)

• Blogging Software– Moveable Type (http://www.movabletype.org/)– Radio UserLand (http://radio.userland.com/)– WordPress (http://wordpress.org/)– Blosxom (http://www.blosxom.com/)– Greymatter (http://noahgrey.com/greysoft/)

RSS

RSS stands for…• RDF Site Summary…• … or Rich Site Summary…• … or Really Simple SyndicationVersions include…• The original: 0.90, current version 1.0• 0.91, 0.92, 0.93, 0.94, current version 2.0• …and then there’s Atom

Chronology

• RSS 0.90 (Netscape, 1999) – obsoleted by 1.0• RSS 0.91 (Netscape/UserLand, 1999)• RSS 1.0 (RSS-DEV working group, RDF-based, 2000)• RSS 0.92 (designed by Dave Winer at Userland, 2000)• RSS 0.93 (discussed but never deployed, 2001)• RSS 2.0 (0.92 with optional elements, designed by Dave

Winer after leaving UserLand, 2002; RSS 2.0 spec released through Harvard under a Creative Commons license, 7/15/03)

• Atom (adopted by IETF, RFC 4287, 2005)--for a more complete history by Dave Winer, see

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rssVersionHistory

RSS Documents• Most versions are a flavor of XML• Example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?> <rss version="0.91"> <channel> <title>CCSC RSS Feed Demo</title> <link>http://sun.vmi.edu/lominac/CCSC</link> <description>CCSC RSS feed demo</description> <language>en-us</language> <image> <title>CCSC RSS logo</title> <url>http://sun.vmi.edu/lominac/screamt.gif</url> <link>http://sun.vmi.edu</link> <width>90</width> <height>36</height> </image> <item> <title>Hello, world</title> <link>http://sun.vmi.edu/lominac/cs347/hello.xhtml</link> <description>Hello, world as RSS feed </description> </item> <item> <title>Abe Vigoda</title> <link>http://www.abevigoda.com</link> <description>Abe Vigoda's status</description> </item> </channel> </rss>

RSS Advantages

• Efficiency—scan multiple sites from one place

• Always fresh—RSS reader automatically updates itself with latest items from sites it watches

• Customizable—scan only feeds of interest

What You’ll Need

RSS Reader (Aggregator)• Stand-alone

– RSSReader ( http://www.rssreader.com/ )– RSSOwl ( http://www.rssowl.org/ )– Feedreader ( http://www.feedreader.com/ )– Sharpreader ( http://www.sharpreader.net/ )

• Integrated into Browser or Mail Client– Firefox (live bookmarks)– Opera– Thunderbird– Pluck plug-in (http://www.pluck.com/products/getpluck.html ) for

Internet Explorer and Firefox• Web-based

– Bloglines ( http://www.bloglines.com )

Thunderbird

Firefox

Bloglines

Syndicating News Feeds on Your Web Page or Blog

• Feedroll (http://www.feedroll.com/rssviewer/ ) provides a free service

• A script to do the same with PHP can be obtained from http://www.feedforall.com/free-php-script.htm

• WebDevTips

(http://www.webdevtips.co.uk/webdevtips/codegen/rss.shtml)

generates RSS code for feeds for your pages

Wikis

• A wiki (wiki wiki, wiki web) is a collaborative web site whose pages can be edited by anyone

• First wiki created in 1995 for the Portland Pattern Repository (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PortlandPatternRepository)

• Most famous example: the Wikipedia (http://

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/wiki),

a publicly edited encyclopedia consisting of over 150,000 articles

What You’ll Need

• Join an existing wiki to participate

• To create your own, you need wiki software– Web server (e. g. Apache)– Wiki engine (a lengthy list can be found at

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiEngines)

My Setup

Constraints:

• Inexpensive (preferably free)

• Light- or middleweight in terms of complexity (installation and use)

• CS Apache Web Server on Solaris, so blog and wiki servers should work there

• Desirable to have clients for both Solaris and Windows platforms

What I Use

• Requirements: – Blog and wiki engine run on Solaris using its

Apache Web server– RSS Reader runs on Windows and Solaris

• Blosxom blogging software (includes RSS syndication)

• RSSOwl and Firefox for RSS reading

• The Oddmuse wiki engine

Conclusions and Issues

• Instructor blog is a convenient way to present classroom material; student blogs didn’t take off

• RSS feeds provide contemporary topics for classroom discussion in an issues course

• Class wiki is good tool for collaborative assignments• Same potential issues as standard web sites (obscenity,

libel, etc.)—easier to write before reflecting• Open wiki editing allows graffiti • Revision control on wikis allays these problems if they

surface (they didn’t for me)• Wiki content copyright ????• Not a full-blown CMS

What We’ll Use Today

• Blogging:– Blosxom

( http://sun.vmi.edu/ccscuser/blosxom.cgi )– Greymatter ( http://sun.vmi.edu/ccsc )

• RSS Readers:– Firefox ( http://www.mozilla.org/firefox )– Bloglines ( http://www.bloglines.com )

• Wiki– Oddmuse ( http://sun.vmi.edu/lominac/wiki.cgi )

Password for Today

CCSC1028

Discussion

• Questions?

• Potential topics for discussion:

Do blogs, wikis, or RSS aggregation or syndication seem of use to you?

If so, what hurdles do you foresee? Can you think of other uses?

Thanks!

Feel free to contact me at

lominactc@vmi.edu

Or visit my VMI websites at

http://sun.vmi.edu/lominac

Links for this tutorial online at

http://sun.vmi.edu/ccsc/refs.html

Tom LominacProfessor of Mathematics and Computer Science

Virginia Military InstituteLexington VA 24450

(540) 464-7493