From its earliest days the internet has pitted a philosophy of sharing against more consumer-driven models of content consumption. Usenet, mailing lists, websites and file transfer services facilitated the easy exchange of ideas and information.
Activities
2018/11/21 12:00 Conversation with Sukaina Walji and Cheryl Hodgkinson-WilliamsSynopsis
From its earliest days the internet has pitted a philosophy of sharing against more consumer-driven models of content consumption. Usenet, mailing lists, websites and file transfer services facilitated the easy exchange of ideas and information.
Since those early days the web has been increasingly locked down, and the once-seamless interaction between people and data has been locked more and more behind paywalls and content silos. Web3 is to a large degree a reaction against this, and developers across the internet are working on a new infrastructure that will defy the efforts to enclose the commons.
These technologies build on some of the ideas underlying the file sharing networks of the past but add elements that address their vulnerability to centralized control and regulation. One example of this is the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) and its cousin Interplanetary Linked Data (IPLD). Instead of relying on internet addresses to locate content, these new file sharing systems use the hash of the data or content as an address, enabling the data to be distributed across the cloud, accessible from the nearest convenient source.
We have already seen more transitional contents, such as books, media and music, being distributed through IPFS. Similar technologies are being deployed to support more complex content, for example, distributed applications (dApps), subscriptions and lists, contract networks, and even distributed organizations such as the DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization). With no central point of origin, there is no means to control these types of content, which raises questions about both their legality and their vulnerability.
These concepts are used to introduce a new type of Open Educational Resource, Content Addressable Resources for Education (CARE) along with the associated concepts of CARE Packages and CARENet.
These resources - which may be anything from courses and programs to event access and recordings to some of the advanced learning applications described above - will be packaged and distributed across a content-addressable network, whereupon they become permanently open, with no possibility of being enclosed by commercial services, both by virtue of their immutability, and by virtue of the fact that the process of hash addressing guarantees that the content that was created is the content that was received.
The concept of Content Addressable Resources for Education addresses the question of the sustainability of open educational resources, as it is the distributed network of teachers and learners that sustains them through their use.
It also creates mechanisms for the creation of resource graphs linking data, media, software and people, redefining our idea of an open course (and open pedagogy) as something dominated not by licenses and institutions, but by people and practice.
Tasks
Create a Content-Addressed ResourceCreate a resource (for example, a web page) using IPFS, Beaker Browser, Fritter, or any other distributed web application (see some of the examples here). Provide a link to the resource using any method you wish.
To help prepare for this task, watch the video 'From Repositories to the Distributed Web' as well as these videos on IPFS and Beaker: installing IPFS, making a website with IPFS, installing Beaker.
Media
How Open Education Can Change the World Nov 19, 2018 video I define and explore the application of open education and open educational resources (OER) to peace, reconciliation and development in Colombia. I describe how new technologies have made possible new ways of learning, and how we can work together as a community to teach ourselves, thus allowing each person the voice and opportunity to play a meaningful role in society. Slides are here.
From Repository to the Distributed Web Nov 20, 2018 video In this presentation I outline developments in the emerging distributed web (or dWeb), starting from content distribution networks, peer-to-peer networks, and through to Beaker Browser and IPFS. Slides are available here.
Conversation with Sukaina Walji and Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams Nov 21, 2018 video We look at the topics of open educational resources and open practices, consider some of the challenges around reuse of OERs, and discuss the potential of new resource networks (like the distributed web) to address those challenges.
How to Install IPFS on Windows Nov 22, 2018 video This video demonstrates how to download and install IPFS on windows using PowerShell. For the Resources Module of the E-Learning 3.0 course.
How to Add a Website to IPFS Nov 22, 2018 video This video shows how I used my previously-installed IPFS node to upload a website to IPFS. It also explores the IPFS Companion plugin a bit more and shows how now everything is working perfectly just yet.
Installing Beaker Browser and Creating a Page on the Decentralized Web Nov 22, 2018 video In this video I install the Beaker Browser, a browser that accesses the decentralized web using the dweb:// protocol. After installing and exploring a bit we create our own site on the dweb using the Beaker browser.
Sharing Dweb Content with Dat Nov 22, 2018 video In this video I work with Dat, a node application that creates a Dweb node and shares files, websites and data across the distributed web. A bit long, not everything works, but a way to watch the process in action. This video is an hour and 24 minutes - I could have made it a lot shorter but I wanted to show the thinking process as I worked with this.
Resources
Feature Article E-Learning 3.0, Part 5 - Resources[email protected], Nov 25, 2018.
Instead of being stored on a single server, content is stored on multiple servers. And when a web user requests that content, it is served from the nearest server. The only difference is that, in the distributed web, these servers are each others' computers. These are called 'peers' and the system as a whole is called a 'peer-to-peer' (P2P) network.
Have you heard about Open Educational Resources (OER) and want to know more? This module presents an overview of what they are, why they matter to post-secondary education, and how to get started on your OER journey.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]2018/11/19
A couple years or so ago UNESCO launched an OER mapping project. It has now come to fruition. "Using local knowledge to describe the OER ecosystem, the OER World Map will visualize the world of OER and support a range of widgets and tools, including powerful statistical analysis." Here's the OER World Map blog.
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It "seems clear that the sustainability of OERs – in a fashion that renders then at once both affordable and usable – requires that we think of OERs as only part of a larger picture, one that includes volunteers and incentives, community and partnerships, co-production and sharing, distributed management and control.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]Thomas William King, Cheryl-Ann Hodgkinson-Williams, Michelle Willmers, Sukaina Walji, Open Praxis, 2018/11/21
Using the Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) project as an example, this paper attempts to demonstrate the interrelation between ideological, legal, technical and operational openness; the resources that conducting Open Research requires; and the benefits of an iterative, strategic approach to one's own Open Research practice.
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What's the "D" in Dweb?! The "d" in "dweb" usually stands for either decentralized or distributed. A few examples of decentralized or distributed projects that became household names are Napster, BitTorrent and Bitcoin. Some of these new dweb projects are decentralizing identity and social networking. Some are building distributed services in or on top of the existing centralized web, and others are distributed application protocols or platforms.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]2018/11/20
Beaker brings peer-to-peer publishing to the Web, turning the browser into a supercharged tool for sharing websites, files, apps, and more. Beaker adds support for a peer-to-peer protocol called Dat. It's the Web you know and love, but instead of HTTP, websites and files are transported with Dat.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]2018/11/20
IPFS is the Distributed Web, a peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol to make the web faster, safer, and more open. Each file and all of the blocks within it are given a unique fingerprint called a cryptographic hash. When looking up files, you're asking the network to find nodes storing the content behind a unique hash. Every file can be found by human-readable names using a decentralized naming system called IPNS.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]Cheryl Ann Hodgkinson-Williams, Henry Trotter, Journal of Learning for Development, 2018/11/22
In this paper, we endeavour to move beyond social change and social inclusion to develop a framework to make apparent the relationship between social justice and the adoption of OER and OEP. Drawing on examples from the ROER4D project, we propose a slightly adapted version of Fraser's (2005) social justice framework as a way to map how and under what circumstances the adoption of OER and OEP by students and/or educators may counter economic inequalities, cultural inequities and political exclusions in education.
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This is try-dat, a tutorial that teaches you how to work with datasets using dat. In this tutorial you will play around with data versioning and syncing workflows, and play with some awesome tools to publish or share data over the peer-to-peer web.
A bit more about Dat... Core pieces of the web shape how we communicate and organize. However, these pieces are increasingly controlled by large monopolies. In building Dat, we envision a future of community-driven tools backed by nonprofit organizations.
Nov 30, 2018
I explored this after the link was passed along to me on Mastodon. The idea is that you can log into the service and quickly launch any of a large number of open source applications. It was set up by a group of people in British Columbia (Grant Potter, Tannis Morgan Brian Lamb, Clink Lalonde. The choices range from RocketChat to EtherPad to Wordpress and more. I signed in with Google, click once to open the app marketplace, and clicked one more time to install and launch a fully functioning WordPress site. The service runs on Sandstorm, an open source application, and you can install your own version for your own school or university.
Here's what Grant Potter says, "If we did not have Sandstorm, we would be significantly limited in the range of applications we could offer to BC faculty and be burdened by layers of required administrative and technical oversight." Lovely. For more on this whole idea, read this page about Open ETC. Brian Lamb comments, "We have gotten this underway in a low-key, organic way... but we're growing steadily and we have some cool stuff seeded and ready to sprout."
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Posts
ioannouolga, connecting data to information to knowledge, 2018/11/19
Here are some thoughts about the previous post I’ve made. I’ve been thinking about the decentralized web and its repercussions. Having tried networked learning for some years now, I’ve noticed how despite the multiplicity of resources available for each course, learners always tend to seek the arguments that ground their own research objectives. There is […]
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David Wiley in his blog, Iterating Towards Openness, wrote a post on the Commons metaphor and OER: “…is the commons the right metaphor for our work with OER? There are incredibly important – some might argue fundamental – differences between commons and … Continue reading →
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I watched with great interest the latest video from Stephen Downes, who is facilitating the online E-Learning 3.0, or EL30, as he walked us through the concept of the shift from a Centralized Web (central server, many users) to the Decentralized Web (many servers, many users) to the prospects of the Distributed Web (no […]
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Roland, Learning with Moocs, 2018/11/22
One of the great aspects of the course E-learning 3.0 (#el30) is the interaction between the participants. A network of blogs is discussing various elements of e-learning and the decentralized web. In my previous post I expressed a concern about using the blockchain in the context of managing your identity in a decentralized way. The […]
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For the past few weeks, I have been participating in Stephen Downes’ cMOOC, E Learning 3.0. So far, the course has addressed some really interesting and, I think, important topics, such as Data, Cloud, Graphs, and Identity. And Stephen has been addressing them in ways that are surprising and provocative. For instance, he discussed Identity […]
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One task was a content-addressed resource, and the other was explaining Jupyter notebooks to 4 different personas.
Continue reading →
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This week, Stephen tasked us with creating a Content-Addressed Resource on the distributed web or Dweb. Create a resource (for example, a web page) using IPFS, Beaker Browser, Fritter, or any other distributed web application (see some of the examples here). Provide a link to the resource using any method you wish.To help prepare for … Continue reading "#EL30 – Resources Task"
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dogtrax, EL30 – Kevin's Meandering Mind, 2018/11/25
I like that along with learning about the potential of the peer-to-peer Distributed Web concept in our EL30 course, with Stephen Downes, he is also providing us with ways to engage with the DWeb concept. One of his suggestions is to use the Beaker Browser, which is a peer-to-peer browser using a technical underpinning called […]
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jennymackness, e-learning 3.0 – Jenny Connected, 2018/11/25
In this video, posted for the fifth week of the E-Learning 3.0 MOOC, Stephen Downes makes the case for open education. He claims that open education can change the world and is a kind of social literacy that can transform… Continue reading →
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jennymackness, e-learning 3.0 – Jenny Connected, 2018/11/25
Montaigne’s opening words in his essay ‘Of Books’, seem so apposite to my experience of trying to engage with the task of creating a content-addressed resource for this week’s E-Learning 3.0 course. I quote them here to serve as a… Continue reading →
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I took my youngest son to see the movie Ralph Breaks the Internet yesterday and it was enjoyable entertainment with an Internet theme. Not as good as Wreck-It Ralph, the original that surprised with its knowing insider’s look at video game culture, but still, the new movie is plenty of fun with lots of inside […]
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Course task for E-learning 3.0 (#el30): use The Beaker Browser – an experimental browser for exploring and building the peer-to-peer Web – or the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) to put up some document. IPFS is a protocol and network designed to create a content-addressable, peer-to-peer method for storing and sharing hypermedia in a distributed file […]
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Where are we today? – Open Educational Resources (OER) Having focused on the ‘wiring’ of eLearning/web 3.0 for the past few weeks, I am delighted to now be moving into areas where we consider how that ‘wiring’ might be used … Continue reading →
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jennymackness, e-learning 3.0 – Jenny Connected, 2018/11/26
Stephen Downes has once again written an excellent summary for the work we did last week on open educational resources. He has tweeted: Downes  @Downes Friday’s #el30 newsletter is now available. el30.mooc.ca/archive/18/11_… If you are at all interested in the future… Continue reading →
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Despite the inference in the title of this post, I don’t imagine the movement towards Open Educational Resources battling it out on the stage with profit-driven spaces like Teachers Pay Teachers. I am not sure it even has to be one (profit-based) versus the other (free-based). I just want to put both models side by […]
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I am behind in #el30 and these notes are for the videos for the Resources topic (which is just being wrapped up now). I have watched the two videos posted by Stephen as part of the main course materials and I'll dive into the task videos next – hopefully before tomorrow's new topic conversation begins!
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post] Introduction to Week 5: Resources This post is part of my reflections on week 5 topic, Resources #resources, on Stephen Downes’ E-Learning 3.0 MOOC #el30. The first thing that I thought when I saw the word “Resources†on week 5 was that since I was familiar with this topic, I would be able to catch up. But pretty …
Sigue leyendo Week 5: Resources
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Week 5 Task Week 5 activity consisted in creating a resource using any distributed web application (IPFS, Beaker Browser, Fritter, for example). Then, we had to provide a link to the resource using any method you wish. To help prepare for this task, I watched the recommended videos ‘From Repositories to the Distributed Web’ (which …
Sigue leyendo Week 5 Task
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After becoming completely frustrated with the MS-DOS command line I walked away and bought my first Mac in 1985 – the computer for the rest of us – with its point and click substitute of the command line and a What you see is What you get (Wysiwyg) user interface. This weeks Resource task brought … Continue reading "E-Learning 3.0 Resource Task"
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Roland, Learning with Moocs, 2018/12/03
I try to create a test site using the Interplanetary File System (IPFS). Since this involves using the command line, I use this command line cheat sheet. Stephen Downes published instructional videos for the course E-learning 3.0 (#el30), however the instructions are Windows-only. Fortunately course participant Davey Moloney translated Stephen’s instructions into Mac-language. After some […]
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