A “Story Genome” Project

January 26, 2019 by Brian Hughes

random.genome — A visual representation of a human genome.

How do the stories we read, hear, or come to know make us who we are?

What if we could track and annotate how these stories constitute our identity and behavior? (Or perhaps rather our rational deliberations?)

If we had a map of that similar to the mapping of genomes, could that be a useful educational tool? Or a tool for better understanding others?

I think we’d want to know and highlight the biggest influences and to see “storied” context of why they are our biggest influences—why they are meaningful to us.

The resulting map would constitute a different “story genome” for each person. It would be a quantified self tool that would require constant updating and revising. I think we could learn a lot about ourselves and others.

Designing Learning Futures

March 16, 2011 by Brian Hughes

Here I am giving an Ignite-style talk two weeks ago at The Digital Media and Learning Conference in Long Beach, CA. It was my first time (both giving this style talk and attending the DML conference), and I really liked the format—20 slides auto-advancing every 15 seconds for 5 minutes. They’re supposed to be fun and thought-provoking, which was a good challenge in the context of a conference about “designing learning futures.” I tried gently poking fun at the audience by suggesting that we’ve all dreamed about being the person who, once and for all, creates a “Facebook-for-learning.”

The main point of the presentation was to think through how we’d go about building it—with a focus on development choices. Based on a simple rubric of what characteristics such a learning-centered application would have, I asked the audience to consider four diverse models of “social” apps (Facebook, Amazon, Moodle, and the SATs). I suggested the image of an Okapi neatly summarized the development conundrum, and concluded that such an application should be complementary to Facebook—not its replacement.

Well, there’s no guarentee my talk was substantial enough for the audience, but I enjoyed putting it together and delivering it. Several of the other speakers shared heartfelt, personal stories, and I couldn’t help feeling a bit upstaged. Deservedly so!

But the subtext of my talk—which I hope I sparked in at least a few of the couple hundred people in attendance—was to consider the necessity of developing niche applications for educational contexts. That is, it’s glorious that Facebook has a community of 600MM+ users, but it’s unlikely that learning communities will benefit much from being part of such a large-scale project. Sure, it would be great to preside over such a massive community as a software designer, and there are many feats that could be accomplished with data that it would throw off, but I’m skeptical it could serve learners more powerfully than smaller, more focused tools.

So, though I asked people to think about development issues, I hoped they walked away thinking about a learner’s “user experience.” I am cautiously optimistic that at least one person did so, as she tweeted:

“Facebook for learning. Okapi problem.”

Building a better institutional archive

April 7, 2010 by Brian Hughes

“How do you make an institutional archive more social?”

This question was put forth by EdLab in early 2006. It’s kind of a strange question – it makes more sense if you consider how “Web 2.0” had settled in as a useful framework in our collective imagination. We faced the task of creating a digital repository for the first time at Teachers College, and we wanted to do it with style.

We created PocketKnowledge (PK), and launched it later that fall to the College community. Phil the Pocket was born. In theory, PK did everything DSpace did, but better. The community could upload and tag items. A folksonomy could emerge. Uploaders could set different permission levels to control access to their content. And so on. From the project documentation:

[We] formed a multi-disciplinary team of students, designers, software developers and institutional representatives to implement a digital archiving solution for Teachers College, Columbia University. After an analysis of existing archiving tools, our interests pushed us in the direction of developing a custom tool to serve a set of functions that was not possible with existing archiving tools, but which we determined was possible with available technologies.

Existing digital archiving software – such as the widely implemented DSpace – did not offer a “social” solution for arching. DSpace employs “gatekeepers” who oversee the uploading of new material into the archive – often librarians who grant permission to upload materials, organize the materials into established categories, and tag the material with standard keywords.

PK was designed to overturn this librarian-centric model, and put power (and responsibility) in the hands of content creators. It is different from DSpace in many ways, and is successfully social to a discerning eye.

Was PK social enough? Probably not. And the definition of “social” has only steepened in the past four years. Here is a shortlist of ideas about how it could be more social that I’ve been able to collect:

Tag any document on the fly (currently only content owners and admins can do this)
Curate new collections of items (currently only content owners and admins can do this)
Create a personal “profile” page with favorite PK items
See “popular related” items for any item
Simple versioning control for items (to better facilitate group work)
Available email updates when users interact with items and collections

I wonder what ideas others might have now. And, should we continue down this path at all? Is it time to give up on the idea of a social archive? After all, we’re social in many ways… why should my archival materials extend my range of social interactions further? (And aren’t there already better methods for this?)

In spite of these worries and concerns, I think it is still a seductive opportunity. The best answer to the question may be a relatively simple one:

“Give me an extremely lightweight publishing opportunity that supports and is supported by (and is partially obscured by) an educational institution to which I have accepted as a platform and community for intellectual work.”