Michael Webb's Blog

More about MyNewport and Facebook

I thought it worth picking up on some of the comments and discussion relating to my last posting about MyNewport for Facebook.

Comments (eg from Graham Attwell - Facebook is a closed Platform) - raise concerns about developing for what is perceived as a closed platform. This is quite a complex debate, and seems to have become bogged down in personal ideologies. Let's delve into two issues a little more:

   a) Is Facebook a closed platform?

   b) Is it bad to develop for a closed platform?

So is Facebook a closed platform?

Graham Attwell's concern is that Facebook is closed because developer can can put data in to Facebook, but can't get it out. I can understand how this view has arisen, as the workings of most applications are probably pretty mysterious to non-developers, but it's not really correct on either front. I'll try and give a really brief overview of the way Facebook apps work to explain this.

Your Facebook profile (eg which films you like, who your friends are etc) are stored in Facebook, and there are a full set up programming interfaces (APIs) to allow programmers to retrieve these. You can read more about them here:  http://developers.facebook.com/  At the moment I don't think there are any Facebook provided tools to export your information, but there is nothing to some an application developer creating such a tool.

Facebook applications don't actually store their data in Facebook in the first place - the application run on the servers belonging to the application developer, and thats where the application specific data is held - not Facebook. Facebook is only used to display the data with the Facebook interface.

So therefore, in summary - a) developers can get profile data out of Facebook, and b) they aren't risking their application data by creating a Facebook app as the application data is never held in Facebook in the first place.

Others are concerned that Facebook is closed because it uses proprietary interfaces (it's own variant of SQL and an HTML variant called FBML). This view is nicely summarised by Richard MacManuus - How open is Facebook? To me this would only be an issue if it provided a barrier to interfacing with Facebook - it doesn't. Anyone who can understand SQL (a language for querying databases) can use the Facebook variation, and FBML is just a subset of HTML for make sure your Facebook apps look good in Facebook and can't cause security problems for users. I really can't see a problem in that.

Of course, Facebook is a closed platform in the sense that you have to log in to use it. Objecting to that is completely missing the point. Part of Facebook's current success is precisely because it is a closed platform, and allows people to control who can see their profile etc.

Is it bad to develop for a closed platform anyway?

Let's get user focused here - we know lots of our users like Facebook, and maybe they'd like to access learning material from Facebook. Maybe they won't. We won't know without trying it. It seems to me utterly irrelevant to be ideologically concerned about whether Facebook is open or not.

Is MyNewport a PLE?

Just to clarify this (see comment on the Bamboo Project Blog) - I'm not claiming that MyNewport is a PLE (personal learning environment).  What I am saying is that Facebook has evolved into my PLE, and I'm sure that it has for others as well.

My definition of learning is pretty broad here - I'm not just talking about work-related learning - I mean learning in my life in general (after all, surely we are all lifelong learners now). Some of my main learning interests are IT and education (work related), reading (for pleasure) listening and playing music (again for pleasure). I'm a big fan of LibraryThing and I've got into the habit of always reviewing the books I read on LibraryThing - a form of reflective practice. I use Last.FM to note my listening habits and find other music I might enjoy (a form of reflection and portfolio). I use Slideshare to keep a record of presentations that I've given or found useful, Del.icio.us to record and order useful web resources and I keep a work related blog (this one) partly as a form of reflection. I've added applications for all these things to Facebook to create my own particular learning space. I've then added an RSS reader so I can collate other useful data sources, and I've joined a few Facebook groups related to work or leisure activities.

This just happened - I didn't plan it, but it's created a very useful personal learning enviroment for me. I think that University's need to start engaging with this sort of learning process - hence the creation of MyNewport.

MyLearning Essentials for Facebook

I'll make a longer posting about my views about the future of VLEs, personal learning environments, social networking etc in the future, as it's a fascinating area, but in the meantime though here is little practical contribution to the debate - MyNewport - MyLearningEssentials for Facebook (beta 1...)

... and you can view it here:

http://apps.facebook.com/mynewport/

It's essentially a cut down version of MyLearning Essentials (our VLE application) as a Facebook application. Anyone can see the news and blogs, but only our students can get to the course material at the moment.

It's obviously very much under development (not very feature rich, but perfectly usable). If people like the idea we'll work on the look, and also add features (eg would you like to be able to click on your course and see all your fellow students facebook profiles?)

The reason I think this is an important step is this - can we really expect students to want to keep coming to the portal/VLE we provide?   I love Last.FM, but I don't want to keep going to the Last.FM site, and I don't need to, because it provides a widget for my blog, a Facebook applications and a client application (iScrobbler).

I'm not claiming this modest application is the answer to the future of VLEs, but hopefully it will prove useful for some people, and provide food for thought.

(A little technical note - it's actually two applications, news and courses - this means if you wanted to you could just take the bits you want - the starting point of creating a true customised learning environment).

Strictly forbidden? Should students be allowed to plug their own laptops into the network?

In a recent blog posting  Brian Kelly from UKOLN drew attention to a sign at another university telling students that it was strictly forbidden to plug their own laptops etc into the University network.

Brian was really commenting on the tone of the notice, but the debate moved on to whether it was OK to let students plug their own devices into the network (the consensus being 'No, NO NOOO!', for security reasons), but it got me thinking about what the real reasons might/should be. There are probably three areas to consider:

• Inconvenience to other users
• Security Issues
• Legal/contractual issues

The first one is easy to understand. Our students occasionally unplug an open access PC so they can plug their laptop in. They don't plug it back in, so the PCs doesn't work for the next person. Why are they doing this when the area is covered by wireless? Basically because it's easier. So maybe we should either make our wireless network easier to use, or provide convenient network sockets.

Security issues are the most cited reason, and, to my mind, are completely invalid. Are our networks so flaky that the odd rogue laptop will bring them down??? Not any more I hope. What about viruses? Well, surely we've all got anti virus solutions in place? If this really is an issue then how on earth to ISPs cope? And what about the security of our applications - again, surely we've got that sorted at the application layer.

Legal/contractual issues are more of an issue, in particular how far are we responsible for identifying individual users who do things they shouldn't (in particular illegal activities, particular in the current climate with the twin fears of child abuse and terrorism).  This is the one that I think we all play it safe on, and stick to a strict 'everyone must authenticate' rule - hence not being allowed to plug your own laptop in (as most of us don't have pervasive 802.1x or whatever authentication services for our wired network).

In fact, as far as I can tell, our only concrete responsibility in this area is to ensure our network (and hence JANET) is only used by University members. This is explained in a JANET fact-sheet on user authentication. The fact-sheet states that

... the law of the land and the expectations of society do not insist that every action be traceable to an individual.

.....

The aim should be to have all users of JANET identify themselves whenever they are on the network, but in a few situations the cost or inconvenience of achieving this may be unreasonable.

It goes on to say:

Organisations should consider the risk of misuse when deciding if any groups of users and systems do not need individual identification.

So where does that leave us? It's interesting that I'm reticent about sticking my neck out on this one, but as far as I can see there is nothing actually wrong with letting students plug their laptops into our network. It would be best if we could authenticate them, but if in some circumstances we can't then it's not the end of the world...