Kyle Mathews :: Dreams With In

This was a comment I left on Jon Mott's blog post, Getting From Here to There. Jon is an Academic Technology Strategist here at BYU who shares my enthusiasm for using web2.0 tools in the classroom.

I think a critical tool to have in building and proselytizing learning 2.0 tools is a key metric. This metric would be used to guide building decisions and to measure success.

This summer I was accepted to Google Summer of Code to build a memetracker application for Drupal.

I want the Memetracker module to facilitate online conversations amongst distributed communities. For my dream to become reality, Memetracker will need help from many talented developers. This summer I'll be setting a solid foundation for future development of the memetracker module. One important thing I'll be doing is writing unit tests for all the functions of the memetracker. Unit tests, I'm convinced, is one thing Memetracker needs in order to ensure its long term success.

I recently made my first alpha release of the Drupal Memetracker module. You can download it from the project page on the Drupal community site.

An screenshot from the latest code:

I spent the morning converting my blog from Wordpress to Drupal. I figured that since I build all my sites using Drupal and I'm building a memetracker module for Drupal as part of Google Summer of Code, I should switch my personal website/blog to Drupal. Wordpress is a great blogging platform but I'm glad now to be on Drupal.

I've written before how your blog can replace your resume but I enjoyed reading another blogger's experience. I haven't had the chance yet to send my blog url instead of a resume but I have been contacted about a job once directly because of what I've written here and elsewhere.

I hated updating my resume. It is such a brilliantly inefficient medium to communicate your value proposition.

Now when situations of resumes arise, I send the url for the blog. The longer it exists the more valuable it becomes as a alternative resume.

On blogs you can’t fake it (atleast not for a very long time) and it so perfectly reflects your intelligence, your character, your values, your smarts (or lack there of) and so on and so forth. You can “fake” the piece of paper, you can’t fake a blog.

Of course the flip side is also true. If you have a great blog you might not have to go look for a job. They’ll come find you. I am sure all the bloggers in our space get at least two job offers a week. :)

And here is perhaps the nicest benefit of having your own blog (and making sure your potential new employer has it and has sent it to the interview committee): They won’t ask you silly questions.

They have a good idea of who you actually are and smart interviewers just get to the point. And that is a good thing.

Read the whole thing.

I'm very excited to announce that I've been accepted to participate in the Google Summer of Code program. I will be writing memetracking software that will enable anyone to set up a Google News or Techmeme like site on any topic. Do you want to develop a news site following economic news? You can with my software. Do you want a site that tracks the latest Facebook Application development news?

I think I'm going to start doing "link posts" more often. I run into content I think I should write about here but then never have time to write a full-blown post. Onto the links.

Clay Shirky says Internet reduces needs for "experts" by lowering transaction costs

"Experts the world over have been shocked to discover that they were consulted not as a direct result of their expertise, but often as a secondary effect — the apparatus of credentialing made finding experts easier than finding amateurs, even when the amateurs knew the same things as the experts."

Web 2.0 Is the Future of Education

Lists 10 cultural trends which is pushing education towards a web2.0 model

A world without courses

Thought experiment how universities would work without actual courses. An interesting ideas. I've often wandered if courses are the best method for learning. I know I learn far more outside of class then inside the classroom.

Vygotsky's Social Development Theory -- more here

Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals.

How to become great? Research suggests:

1. Focus on technique as opposed to outcome.
2. Set specific goals.
3. Get good, prompt feedback, and use it.

Thoughts, quotes, questions about how web2.0 is challenging traditional methods of education

Bandura Social Learning Theory

Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do. Fortunately, most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action.

Executive Summary

I propose to write two modules for Drupal as part of Google Summer of Code. One called memetracker and the other called machinelearningapi. The memetracker module will use algorithms in the machinelearningapi to intelligently filter and group content from designated content sources both internal and external. The module's purpose is to find and display to a community in real time the most interesting conversations and memes within the community as they emerge.

My current job is researching the best use of web2.0 technologies and principles in the classroom. I and the other researchers use web analytics extensively in evaluating the effectiveness of websites we build. This post is the first in a two-part series about why and how to use web analytics for your social learning website.

This first part explains a bit about what web analytics is and why you should use it.

Why web analytics

All websites have a reason for existence. Depending on the site the reason could be to make money, provide leads, provide support, teach students, etc. Using web analytics helps you achieve your site's purpose in two ways:

• Using web analytics, you can measure the experience and behavior of visitors to your website. Using what is known as KPI (Key Performance Indicators) you can evaluate if your site is meeting your goals for visitors to the website -- or not.
• Using these KPIs you can identify areas where your site is failing to meet its goals and where it's doing well

From these insights, you make decisions on what to do to improve the website. Then you evaluate the success of your changes by measuring changes in the experiences and behavior of visitors to your site, again using your KPIs (I'll write more about KPIs in Part II).

In short, web analytics exists to power the generation of actionable insights.

Web analytics seeks to measure three things

• Behavior? -- What visitors do on the website -- how often do they visit, what pages do they visit most, how long do they stay on different pages?
• Outcomes -- all websites have desired outcomes. The exact desired outcome varies site-to-site depending on its goals. Some sites want visitors to sign up as members. That's one outcome. An e-commerce site's desired outcome is a purchase. A support site's desired outcome is for the visitor to find the answer to the question they had.
• Experience -- answer why the visitor did what they did.
• Why did the customer add an item to his shopping cart, go through all the steps of the checkout process and then leave the site? Did they find the same item for cheaper on another site? Was the shipping price too high?
• Similar questions can be asked about a social learning site. Why doesn't one student ever visit the site? Why does another student visit twice a day. Why does a student do what they do?
• Surveys and testing and experimentation are some of the best ways to understand visitor's experience.

In my mind, the third thing is most important. It's nice to know that a student spent an hour looking at online learning content but we'd really love to know why they did it. Did the student spend the hour because they were studying for a test? Were they finishing an assignment? Is the material helpful? What material is most helpful? Do they enjoy learning with the material?

So behavior and outcomes give you the raw data about what's happening but experience helps you understand visitors in a more holistic manner. Understanding experience gets you into the mind of visitors to your site. Why they do what they do.

Recap

Web analytics help you improve your site in the following manner.

1. Web Analytics provides you with information to understand what visitors do on your site and why.
2. Using this information, you identify weakness you can correct.
3. You experiment with potential improvements and test your changes using your web analytic data.
4. Repeat starting at step 1

Part I explained what web analytics is and why it is valuable. Part II will explain step-by-step how to use web analytics on a social learning site. I will explain the process I'm going through to implement web analytics on a new social learning website I'm building for BYU.

I love it when someone writes what I'm thinking about writing. Saves me time.

Paul Graham posted a new essay today entitled "Six Principles for Making New Things."
Here's the juicy bit:

I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly.

Read the rest.

To add a few thoughts.
When I think of overlooked problems I think of a bell curve. Most people/companies/countries are average: thinking average thoughts and doing things in an average way. Their average thoughts/actions lead to average results. If you want exceptional results, you have to act and think in ways that are exceptional. Average=dead, the edge is where the action is at.