Tag: smallpieceslooselyjoined

Taking Small Pieces for Granted?

I’m wondering (out loud) if I’m guilty of taking the Small Pieces Loosely Joined concept for granted. It’s one of those things that can be talked about at length, but isn’t really understood until a gulp of SPLJ Kool-Aid has been swallowed and the approach has been tried on. Conceptually, it makes sense to talk about using a set of small, directed, task-oriented tools, each doing what they do best, then integrating the various tools to produce an organic, dynamic system that resembles a custom-designed software platform.

I listened to the ETS Talk Podcast #24 on the way home on Friday, and it really hit me how the SPLJ epiphany really is an individual and personal thing. It’s not about comfort with “web 2.0” or with technology at all – it’s more of a matter of being ready to start thinking about things in a different way. Cole and co. have been living the blog/Web2.0/open life for years now, but they reached their SPLJ epiphanies “on the air” during that podcast, when they were able to connect the concept to how it could impact what they do, and how they could approach things differently. It was actually pretty cool to hear them audibly change as the SPLJ Kool-Aid was swallowed.

I haven’t exactly been very successful at walking the SPLJ walk myself – doing most of my work in content management systems that extend rather than integrate. What I typically wind up with is a rather monolithic application, tailored for a specific set of users. When a new project comes along, the customization process begins anew. How could I better take advantage of the SPLJ approach?

Upcoming presentation – (Many, Too Many?) Small Technologies Loosely Joined: Open, Connected, and Social

I was asked a while back if I was interested in giving a presentation to the MacLearningEnvironments.org group. At first, my reaction was "sure, but what on earth would I talk about?" After some thought, an initial plan was to do an updated version of the Small Pieces Loosely Joined presentation I had the pleasure of doing way back in 2004 (with Brian and Alan). What would that have looked like if it was done in 2007? How would the changes in those long 3 years have affected things?

After hanging out with Jim at Northern Voice, it was obvious that the "3 amigos" (as someone else has called us, but the name somehow stuck) is now the "4 amigos" (and hopefully more). Jim is a kindred spirit, and so I had to include him in the mix. I'd also wanted to bring in Gardo (a 5th amigo?) but alas his schedule is already full on the day of the presentation.

Long story short, the 4 of us will be attempting another "jazz ensemble" presentation/panel, as an online session initiated by MacLearningEnvironments.org (but open to everyone).

From the session blurb:

In 2004 three of us presented a concept of decentralized connecting web content with RSS — "Small Technologies Loosely Joined" (http://careo.elearning.ubc.ca/smallpieces), playing off of the book title by David Weinberger. Looking back at what we might call "Web 1.5", using RSS to interconnect blogs, wikis, and chat seem rather simple. At that time, flickr and del.icio.us were still truly unknown betas, Google was just a search engine, folksonomy might not even had been coined as a term, podcasting did not exist, online videos were relegated to basic downloading to view– what a long way the web has come since then. However, underneath the shiny hood of the new tools, RSS remains a key integration factor Now we sit in 2007 with an explosion and continued expansion, of "small tools" leaving many educators overwhelmed and excited at the same time.

In this session, like a loose jazz quartet, four presenters will "jam" on the potential for teaching and learning as well as the state of web technology in four general areas

* bliki : can we genetically recombine blogs and wikis?
* mashups – bending the internet to do your bidding
* connecting people and information – RSS, Pipes, aggregators…
* insanely social software – putting the "we" in "web 2.0"

And more broadly look at the influence of open-content, connectedness, and social networking aspects.

So, if you feel like jamming with the band, book some time in your calendar on Wednesday, April 25, 11:00am Mountain (10:00am Pacific, 1:00pm Eastern, etc…) and tune in. It's going to be as free-form as we can get away with, so please feel free/encouraged to join in. It's happening as an Elluminate meeting, so we can share the microphone and screens etc… to keep things pretty dynamic in order to respond to questions and contributions on the fly.

Really, though, I was just looking for an excuse to bash some ideas around with Brian, Alan and Jim again. We've got some (hopefully) cool and useful stuff planned, and I'm hoping it takes on a life outside of the presentation.

Update: of course, I didn't mean to leave anyone out of the "amigos" – Scott is definitely in there, as is Stephen. And a bunch of others. Not meaning to sound like a boorish elitist…�

I was asked a while back if I was interested in giving a presentation to the MacLearningEnvironments.org group. At first, my reaction was “sure, but what on earth would I talk about?” After some thought, an initial plan was to do an updated version of the Small Pieces Loosely Joined presentation I had the pleasure of doing way back in 2004 (with Brian and Alan). What would that have looked like if it was done in 2007? How would the changes in those long 3 years have affected things?

After hanging out with Jim at Northern Voice, it was obvious that the “3 amigos” (as someone else has called us, but the name somehow stuck) is now the “4 amigos” (and hopefully more). Jim is a kindred spirit, and so I had to include him in the mix. I’d also wanted to bring in Gardo (a 5th amigo?) but alas his schedule is already full on the day of the presentation.

Long story short, the 4 of us will be attempting another “jazz ensemble” presentation/panel, as an online session initiated by MacLearningEnvironments.org (but open to everyone).

From the session blurb:

In 2004 three of us presented a concept of decentralized connecting web content with RSS — “Small Technologies Loosely Joined” (http://careo.elearning.ubc.ca/smallpieces), playing off of the book title by David Weinberger. Looking back at what we might call “Web 1.5”, using RSS to interconnect blogs, wikis, and chat seem rather simple. At that time, flickr and del.icio.us were still truly unknown betas, Google was just a search engine, folksonomy might not even had been coined as a term, podcasting did not exist, online videos were relegated to basic downloading to view– what a long way the web has come since then. However, underneath the shiny hood of the new tools, RSS remains a key integration factor Now we sit in 2007 with an explosion and continued expansion, of “small tools” leaving many educators overwhelmed and excited at the same time.

In this session, like a loose jazz quartet, four presenters will “jam” on the potential for teaching and learning as well as the state of web technology in four general areas

* bliki : can we genetically recombine blogs and wikis?
* mashups – bending the internet to do your bidding
* connecting people and information – RSS, Pipes, aggregators…
* insanely social software – putting the “we” in “web 2.0”

And more broadly look at the influence of open-content, connectedness, and social networking aspects.

So, if you feel like jamming with the band, book some time in your calendar on Wednesday, April 25, 11:00am Mountain (10:00am Pacific, 1:00pm Eastern, etc…) and tune in. It’s going to be as free-form as we can get away with, so please feel free/encouraged to join in. It’s happening as an Elluminate meeting, so we can share the microphone and screens etc… to keep things pretty dynamic in order to respond to questions and contributions on the fly.

Really, though, I was just looking for an excuse to bash some ideas around with Brian, Alan and Jim again. We’ve got some (hopefully) cool and useful stuff planned, and I’m hoping it takes on a life outside of the presentation.

Update: of course, I didn’t mean to leave anyone out of the “amigos” – Scott is definitely in there, as is Stephen. And a bunch of others. Not meaning to sound like a boorish elitist…�