A few months ago, myself along with friends, wrote an article to the ICWSM ’06 conference which should have take place in Boukder, USA. The titke of the article was: “E-Learning on the Social Semantic Information Sources”. We wrote quite a few pages but the paper was rejected 
The reviewers stated it was quite good, but needed to be improved.
Now, after six months we have descided to do it; we aim at 2nd EC-TEL (Second European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning). I care about the paper since it covers the topic of my Master Thesis (which, actually, has the same title). We want to redo the document. The goal is to focus on the way of integrating sources of informal knowledge (wikis, blogs, digital libraries, boomarks and multimedia sharing systems) so that they can be more efficiently used for learning purposes. We want to point out the importance of semantic annotations in such online communities; we ‘ll also present our solutions to the problem of storage and management information gathered from online communities.
The deadline for applying is the April 1st. Get back to work, then 
Here is some information taken from my Master’s Thesis (still developed)..
Didaskon is a project developed in Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), Ireland by a few students, including myself. It is a research project in the elearning field. Its main goal is to deliver a framework for assemblying an ondemand curriculum from existing Learning Objects (LOs) provided by e-Learning services.
Didaskon is an innovative solution since it derives from both formal and informal sources of knowledge. It has an access to a repository of LOs described with semantic annotations – LOM ontology. LOs are composed into a learning path for a specific student. Along with formal Learning Objects, Didaskon also uses the potentaial of Social Semantic Information Sources. It is capable fulfill informal learning postulates and create LOs from data harvested from SSIS. Consequently, a user is gets a course path prepared from information collected in both formal and informal way.
Furthermore, Didaskon composition algorithm takes into account some pre-conditions regarding a user. Each user is described with FOAF ontology. Basing on delivered user’s profile (knowledge level in different domains and goals/expectations from the course) it is capable of returning learning material customized for his/her needs. Moreover, the system allows more scalable helper features for students supervision.
At the moment, we still develop the system. One of my basic task is to adopt SSIS for its purposes. Therefore, I must create a common object model; the model should be able to map information collected from SSIS and “push” it further, to Didaskon learninig path composition mechanisms.
Now, returning to research…
Greetings from Ireland!
It’s the second time I went to Galway, Ireland. Again the Green Island welcommed us with rain…
Again, I work as a researcher, Java programmer in Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), Galway, Ireland. The main topic of my research is how to adopt Social Semantic Information Sources (SSIS) to e-Learning. Actually, this is the title of my Master’s Thesis given by DERI (though I study at Gdansk University of Technology, major Distributed Applications and Internet Systems).
SSIS are semantic blogs, smenatic wikis, social semantic digital libraries. The general idea of SSIS is that they allow users to collaborate and share knowledge. Thus, great many relevant information can be harvested from them and used in learning course composition. The main problem is, how to present the collected data… Yet, these are heterogeneous environments. Semantic Web gives many help with that. By introducing semantic annotations of the data and some ontologies, information can be mapped to a common data model. This model, then, can be used in a Learning Management System as some extra information to a lesson. And there is a place for Didaskon, the e-Learning project I take part in. But, this is the subject of future discussion…
Pandora is one of the most popular streaming services. You just type an artist’s or the song name and Pandora serves you a collection of similar music. It bases on rich songs descriptions and evaluations of songs. You are allowed to create your stations, invite friends or listen to their music.
Thus, it is an example of online community services – people collaborate, share opinions, share music. After some time of listening, for each user there is a music profile created. This profile helps Pandora choose tracks to play for him and for other with similar music taste.
Recently, I’ve noticed a very interesting post about how to boost the player and get more out of it. Look the lifehacker. I escpecially like open-pandora project, which serves stand alone player – takes its load off your web browser.
