Interesting article from ReadWriteWeb about the release of Google Flu Trends that highlights the usefulness of aggregating information from search queries - in this case, relating to influenza. The idea is simple - by tracking search queries relating to influenza (eg queries about symptoms, cures, treatment etc), the team at Google.org (Google’s non-profit arm) they discovered that - after cross-referencing that data against information from the Center for Disease Control - they had the ability to predict flu outbreaks by monitoring search patterns. And the advantage of doing this…? Traditional flu surveillance systems take 1-2 weeks to collect and release surveillance data, but Google search queries can be automatically counted very quickly, making their flu estimates available each day, and thus providing an early-warning system for outbreaks of influenza. The ReadWriteWeb article has a cool animated graph that illustrates this point.

I came across this wonderfully easy to use search tool today after reading Jane’s Blog. Boolify provides a simple, yet effective way of introducing students to the complexities of Boolean searching.

Librarians, teachers and parents have told us how hard it is for students to understand web searching. Boolify makes it easier to for students to understand their web search by illustrating the logic of their search, and by showing them how each change to their search instantly changes their results.

It’s simple, immediate and is easy and flexible to use with your class, no matter the subject matter.

Search results are presented through Google’s “Safe Search STRICT” technology, so we’re confident that the results your students receive are safe.

While checking our the Boolify Site I also came across this video clip that explains a little of what Boolean search is all about. Useful stuff.

The uptake of web-based tools and applications in the Web2.0 world prompts a question in my mind from time to time - “where is all the information stored, and who has access to it?”

I thought about this again when I read Sue Water’s latest post in which she has published the results of a Twitter poll she conducted by asking her Twitter followers to name their favourite 3 Web2.0 applications (apart from Twitter, del.icio.us and Frirefox.)

I’m very interested to note the extent to which Google applications emerged in the favourites list from her poll. I’m a big fan and user of many of these myself, but recently have become aware of of Google’s reputation of being “hostile” towards users privacy.

This was brought home to me further recently a recent article in the Globe and Mail titled Patriot Act Haunts Google which highlights that the Google on-line services (Docs, Sites etc) are subject to the “USA Patriot” Act (in fact an acronym that stands for ” Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001) which could make the use of the sites they consider (a) a threat to academic freedom, or (b) in breach of Canada’s privacy laws - depending on what data is put there.

Certainly food for thought, I suspect we’ll see more debate on this emerging in the next few months.

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There has been discussion for years about the fact that there’s a lot more information on the Web than is accessed when we do a search using one of the common search engines such as Google. Experts consider that there may be up to 500 times the information available in the ‘invisible web’ than there is in the ’searchable web’.

One way of addressing this is to consider the federated search approach - the powerpoint above is my humble attempt to illustrate how this works from a couple of years ago.

Another way is to use specialised search engines that are designed to search the deep or invisible web - usually within a particular field or discipline. About a week ago I received a note from Amy Quinn from an oganisation called College Degree, alerting me to a wonderful list of 99 Resources to Research & Mine the Invisible Web. I’ve had a play with several of these now, and can imagine they’d be pretty useful in particular contexts. A number of them are examples of the repository-specific search engines that I refer to in my slide-show, while others are more subject specific and search multiple repositories.

In addition to the links to search engines, the list also contains examples of specific directories, catalogues and databases etc, and has a useful section on social media also. It’s worth scrolling right to the bottom for some articles and guides about the ‘deep’ or ‘invisible’ web.

Every now and then I come across something that I just sums up a lot of stuff I’ve been reading and thinking about - here’s one of those. It’s a slide presentation by Andrew Hinton titled Architectures for Conversation (ii): What Communities of Practice can mean for Information Architecture and is available on SlideShare.

Andrew’s done a great job of bringing together a whole lot of thinking about information architecture and how it relates to our understandings of “communities of practice”. I love some of the metaphors he uses - like, why Wikipedia is more like an AK-47 than like an M-16, and how he distinguishes between communities and communities of practice.

Each slide is annotated if you view it in full-screen mode, and with 71 slides make sure you give yourself a bit of time to read it all! An informative and entertaining presentation.

Here’s something worth taking a look at, a project with huge implications for education, in which scientists are creating a massive web site, called the Encyclopedia of Life. The web site aims to contain information about all of Earth’s 1.8 million known species, with the information available online to everyone free of charge, and users of the site can adjust its pages so they see information relevant for students or for research scientists. The project is described as follows on the site:

Comprehensive, collaborative, ever-growing, and personalized, the Encyclopedia of Life is an ecosystem of websites that makes all key information about life on Earth accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world. Our goal is to create a constantly evolving encyclopedia that lives on the Internet, with contributions from scientists and amateurs alike. To transform the science of biology, and inspire a new generation of scientists, by aggregating all known data about every living species. And ultimately, to increase our collective understanding of life on Earth, and safeguard the richest possible spectrum of biodiversity.

I’ve just spent the morning reading through a new report from the OECD titled “Participative Web: User Generated Content” (880kb PDF download) which describes the rapid growth of User Created Content and its increasing role in communication. The paper is the latest release from the OECD work on digital content.

I found the report very interesting, providing a comprehensive overview of the developments in this area, and identifying a range of issues that must be taken into account at the policy level as we move forward - including things such as access to broadband etc, and the old bogies of copyright, IP and “fair use” etc. These are all issues that are affecting schools and universities right now!

When I worked at NZ’s Correspondence School a number of years ago we envisaged an environment where content contributed by students and staff would be just as important in the system as the formally produced course-ware, and began developing a content management process that would embrace this as part of the work-flow. Sadly, it was an idea before its time, and the project was shelved.

This OECD report has refreshed my interest, however. It contains a useful overview of the emerging value and publishing chain of user-created content (p.21), contrasting this with the traditional media publishing value chain which they say is characterised by a number of hurdles, including the control of “content gate-keepers”.

In the past six months, having nothing better to do, I have submitted responses to several government tenders in which I’ve proposed a UCC-centric approach to the establishment and operation of online portals etc. Needless to say I haven’t been successful (yet), but this report gives me confidence that it’s the right thing to do, and the analysis provided in it will assist in future work and thinking.

My friend Stephen Marshall from Victoria University has been hard at work on his blog over recent weeks developing a submission (.pdf) on the Copyright (New Technologies and Performers’ Rights) Amendment Bill. He has just posted his draft submission on his blog for others to read and comment on.

Stephen’s focus is on the need for this bill to deal with issues relating to the digital environment that we are now living in. He begins with….

[The Bill] fails to address the significant challenges raised by the worldwide shift to a digital information economy and it places onerous and unnecessary restrictions on New Zealanders that are not shared by our major trading partners and the citizens of the United States (the dominant global publisher of digital information) in particular.

Stephen has done an awesome job in constructing this submission, and it deserves our time and effort to critique. He is inviting feedback by email or comment on his blog, and also invites those who would like to be listed as a supporter in the submission to email their name, physical address and include a clear indication of their support for the submission.

I took the opportunity on Tuesday to attend one of the presentations on the draft Digital Content Strategy. One of the things I was particularly pleased to see was the inclusion of a category of content called “informal” content (which I often refer to as “user generated content” - the sort of thing created in blogs, wikis and other forms of social software.) I’d argue that this is an important dimension of a digital content strategy given the emerging discussion about “informal learning” that is taking place in the e-learning world (see recent contributions by Stephen Downes, Juliett White and Tony Karrer for instance)

Not all would agree however. One gentleman at the presentation challenged the presenter by asking “why are we taking this (informal) content seriously?” He contended that such content was untrustworthy, opinionated, and not worth the time and effort to classify or store for the future. Such traditional views of the nature and value of content are bound to inform the way the final document is developed - which is why I guess it is important for those who regard the importance of informal content as a part of the Web2.0 should make a response to the writing group by the due date of 20 December. Response forms, along with copies of the discussion document are available on the Digital Strategy website.

I spent a morning at the Future Learning for a Networked World open seminar in Christchurch a couple of days ago at which I had the pleasure of meeting and talking with Stephen Downes about the whole idea of open content. He reminded me about the Directory of Open Access Journals that exists online, providing an amazing source of journals and articles that can be accessed free to support courses - instead of paying a premium for textbooks.

There are many good reasons for considering this - apart from the cost, textbooks and other traditional forms of published material are in danger of becoming increasingly irrelevant in our education system as emerging ways of creating, contributing, reviewing and using digital content become the ‘norm’.

With this in mind I was interested to view a video-cast by Richard Baraniuk (pictured above) on TEDtalk dealing with this very topic as he talks about a project he is involved with called Connexions. Baraniuk is a Rice University professor with a giant vision: to create a free, global online education system. In this presentation, he introduces Connexions, the open-access publishing system that’s changing the landscape of education by providing free coursework and educational materials to everyone in the world.

Baraniuk’s presentation is very easy to follow and understand, and it presents a vision of a future that I’d rather like to be a part of! (thanks to Leigh Blackall for the heads-up on this clip)