The ideas expressed in the Reclaim Your Domain and IndieWebCamp work continue to inform my thinking about the 5th R (retain) and the notion that students should be able to “Own Your Content, Own Your Data” when it comes to online learning.
A few weeks ago I ran across Known which fascinated me but looked to be too immature to use yet. Then Jim described Tim Owens’ experiments with Known. That gave me enough confidence to dig into the code myself and see if I couldn’t get it running.
But what is Known and why is it so interesting? Known is a publication platform that uses the “POSSE” publication model, where POSSE stands for “Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere”. You can post photos, status updates, checkins, etc., to your own site and have them syndicated out to other sites if you like (e.g., push your checkins to Foursquare or you status updates to Twitter of Facebook.)
The POSSE model is just beautiful. It represents everything empowering about the Reclaim and Retain work. In fact, the more I wrapped my head around it, the more excited I got.
As a first step, I took a computer here at the house and put a clean Ubuntu install on it and set it up on the home network. Then I configured dyndns to point a new domain – http://davidwiley.social/ at the box. Finally, I installed Known on the box together with the plugins for Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare (haven’t got the Flickr plugin working yet.) Now I’m publishing all my photos, status updates, checkins, etc. to an open source system, on my own domain, running on an open source OS, on my own hardware, on my own network, and pushing some of that content out to the silos where my friends are probably expecting to find it. “Own your content, own your data” indeed.
There’s something unspeakably gratifying about owning every link in the chain of publication of your own content. The feeling of demoting the social silos like Facebook to the role of syndication endpoints may be even more gratifying. And did I mention – (friends with Known installs + RSS + Feedly) = (decentralized Facebook replacement)? What is that bell I hear tolling?
It puts the old joke about Blackboard and Facebook in a new context:
Q: What would happen if Facebook worked like Blackboard?
A: Every 15 weeks Facebook would delete all your photos and status updates and unfriend all your friends.
The question immediately arises – when will we be able to POSSE into our formal learning environments? Could it be done today? For example, could we write a Known plugin that would let us POSSE into Canvas? Knowing what I do of their API, I think we could.
How would that change students’ relationships with their courses and institutions? Maybe this is already where the Reclaim folks are going, and I’m only just catching up, but give each student (1) their own domain, (2) a Known install, and (3) the ability to POSSE into the LMS – and just think about the implications. What does “submitting” homework mean now? What does an e-portfolio mean now? How do assessments need to change when there are worked examples of assignments everywhere? And where was I ever going to point the Evidence metadata in an open badge before students had this?
And why ignore faculty? Just make each faculty member’s Known installation speak LTI (that’s your Blackboard plugin) and what happens to faculty ownership, licensing, and control of their content? Hmmm… Known speaking LTI… To paraphrase Elton John, “Goodbye, xpLOR, though I never really knew you at all.”
Perhaps I’m overly excited. But I don’t think so. Empowering people to truly own their content and own their data, on their own domain, with POSSE capabilities, will change things. Perhaps we will finally reach the point where people quit using jailbreak as a verb. I haven’t really addressed it here, but I’ll explore the relationship between POSSE and “open” more in a future blog post. I just have to unexplode my brain first.
Speaking of open-source apps, on an open-source OS, on hardware you own,
we’re working on making this easier with the Indie Box Project. We
shouldn’t all have to know how to maintain a Linux server! Known is
already one of the supported apps.
Seconding this: the Indie Box has the potential to change how servers are managed, and empower people to run their own boxes in the same way that the cloud empowered them to run applications without getting IT involved.
Seconding this: the Indie Box has the potential to change how servers are managed, and empower people to run their own boxes in the same way that the cloud empowered them to run applications without getting IT involved.
Speaking of open-source apps, on an open-source OS, on hardware you own,
we’re working on making this easier with the Indie Box Project. We
shouldn’t all have to know how to maintain a Linux server! Known is
already one of the supported apps.
Thank you for this post – we’re excited about the implications! As you may remember from my work on Elgg, education is important to me, and I’m delighted that there’s scope for Known to help here too.
I truly love the idea of learners owning their own data and syndicating into their LMS. We’re happy to work with any institution (or LMS provider!) that wants to make this a reality.
Thank you for this post – we’re excited about the implications! As you may remember from my work on Elgg, education is important to me, and I’m delighted that there’s scope for Known to help here too.
I truly love the idea of learners owning their own data and syndicating into their LMS. We’re happy to work with any institution (or LMS provider!) that wants to make this a reality.
David,
You should come to LA on the 19th and 20th for a Reclaim Your Domain Hackathon: http://lahackathon.reclaimyourdomain.org
This post rules, btw. I want to setup my own Ubuntu home network too, but given I couldn’t beat you at Super Mario Bros. I might not have what it takes. #reclaim4life
On second reading:
“(friends with Known installs + RSS + Feedly) = (decentralized Facebook replacement)”
It’ll be far simpler than that đŸ™‚
I think this is great! We (p2pu, I’m not royalty) are trying to develop things in this spirit and also address some implications like “How do assessments need to change when there are worked examples of assignments everywhere?”
While a big part of this is tooling, I feel the important part awareness and educating users about the web and some tech. What is the balance between “click a button” and “install Ubuntu and setup dynamic DNS” for wide spread adoption and impact?
Looking forward to your next post on this… Exciting stuff!
“For example, could we write a Known plugin that would let us POSSE into Canvas? Knowing what I do of their API, I think we could.”
Yes, certainly. Though the POSSE model you describe will be novel to many, I think Brian and Devlin were thinking ahead when they designed Canvas Assignments to accept URL submissions instead of just files, and the system captures a snapshot of that web page in the moment of submission without sacrificing the integrity — or authority — of the student-owned source.
This gets us part-way there, but it still was directionally reverse for how I personally envisioned students expressing their learning to the world. Recognizing the need to still operate within the “system”, a couple years I ago started writing a WP Plugin that uses the Canvas assignment submission API that lets you seamless submit your blog post’s URL to a specific Canvas course/assignment when you publish. No extra steps. Unfortunately I had to abandon this project lacking time, but the early version illustrated the essential idea: Students create in their own space with the option of also sending that into an assessment system.
Further, since the assignment submission API accepts files or text as well, you don’t have to limit yourself to the blog post’s URL — you could have it submit a copy of the actual thing.
Thanks David for this great post.
Re: “I just have to unexplode my brain first.”
It might help to think of it all in terms of “freedom” as a complementary lens to your usual “openness” :-).
I am excited about this too, but couldn’t this go a little bit further? When syndicating, don’t send back a link to the exact original publication site, but make sure to embed an additional tracker as well, maybe with yourls.org. In this way, you can obtain a cheap analytics vision of the efficacy of each syndication channel.
In other words, POSSET…
This is the question I tried to ask at the end of the chat session with the “Why Open?” crowd of P2PU. Thanks for that by the way, it was great!