a platform for peeragogy

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Joe Corneli

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Jun 23, 2020, 4:30:01 AM6/23/20
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This message is motivated partly by a pain I am experiencing.  Presently we're using various chat apps (Telegram, Keybase, Hangouts) and none of these are giving me a satisfactory experience.  Messages disappear quickly and remain locked in "silos".  The problems could be partly solved by persistently archiving old messages so that we can find them again (like they do here: https://leanprover-community.github.io/archive/).

But I am also motivated by a more positive vision and broader potential 'gain':

Thinking back to PlanetMath: we combined an encyclopedia, automatic linking, bug reports, Q&A, and open forum discussions into a single reasonably-well-integrated whole.

Most of the original features of PlanetMath now exist in stand-alone systems that work very well for their separate tasks, but that don't have the integration that made PlanetMath attractive in the first place.

The site was first built in 2000 and went online before Wikipedia, Stack Exchange, and so on.  We rebuilt it in 2013 in Drupal, which was a lot of work, and frankly not a huge success partly because we didn't have the workforce needed to maintain what we built.  But also because our Drupal solution didn't actually integrate with the places where the action was happening.

Now what I am wondering is whether we could create a platform using mostly off-the-shelf components and APIs, hooking them together in such a way that they serve the needs *not just of the peeragogy project* but of other peer learning groups.  For example, we might even reboot PlanetMath a third time using this platform!

One challenge is the "workforce" question: even if we use off-the-shelf components and APIs, setting them up will take work.  I think we can solve this, though.

I'm motivated by what I'm working on in my startup: our present focus is making a software tool that supports people in learning how to program. Users will want many of the old PlanetMath community features. This time around, we also want to incorporate some AI software — but that is to augment not replace collective intelligence!

All told, I'd like to ask for your help in *envisioning*, *designing*, and ultimately *building* a platform for peeragogy.  Perhaps we can start by talking more about the strengths and weaknesses of the tools we're currently using.

Analua Dutka-Chirichetti

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Jun 23, 2020, 10:33:03 AM6/23/20
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Hi Joe, hi everyone together, 

A tool that can save messages and then order them into separate folders might be interesting. (I couldn’t open the link for some reason. Is this what lean pullover does?) It would also be interesting to save pictures/videos and audio files within folder topics with the option of nesting (like in the computer)

Would also be interesting to have both synchronous and asynchronous chat options for both chat and video. 

Such a tool would definitely be useful for other organizations who can use this for peer to peer learning and grow a start-up education ecosystem with a variety of perspectives and in various subjects. Having such a tool I would be excited to take peer health a step further (lacking this and the technical skill/ capacity to build this is what is lacking for me to proceed here... )Here too AI would be interesting for support. Maybe it’s a matter of perspective but it seems logical to me that AI should not be a replacement to the collective intelligence any more than the collective Intelligence should replace personal reasoning and intuition. 

Current tools: 

Strengths zoom: synchronous video
Strength of udemy, coursera: asynchronous courses
Steregth of telegram, WhatsApp, slack: synchronous chat 
Strength of jira, confluence, google docs, email: asynchrous chat 

Weakness: all silos in their specialty and do not offer all options needed in one platform which can save together and keep things „tidy“. Things do get lost and it is indeed a pain to find, when even possible. 

So find options need to be integrated to all functions and „save or star“ options too for the things you don’t want to drag and drop into a separate folder but do want to mark. (Privately)
Telegram would be much better just by incorporating a private „pin“ to find messages later, like what’s app‘s „star“ function. 

Also would be cool to have signals like „emojis“ for synchronous videos so people can all respond as a voluntary emotional landscape tool without interrupting the flow of discussions. 

What exactly is the workforce challenge? Is it a lack of workforce or interpersonal challenges? I am currently excited about designing and experimenting with different methodologies with peer to peer support to help groups increase resiliency and cooperation. We will utilize traditional evidence based and alternative methods to develop a positive HR system. will work with team members to support growth and development, higher ikigai alignment and flow, communication skills and systems for conflict prevention and post conflict healing/ reconciliation. The idea is to foster higher individual and organizational resiliency while also investigating how to foster higher collaboration. 

Would love to collaborate and would truly appreciate everyone‘s support in hacking a new system based on positive incentives, a non-punitive way to support people to grow and help each other develop and heal in groups instead of punishing symptomatic behavior of personal and collective conditioning, shifting paradigms, building resiliency. 

What are some benefits to and challenges/ inefficiencies people have encountered (in leadership and in employee or team member positions) in the current system? 

Imagine a system that would feel more positive, healthier and motivate you more. What would be necessary from leaders? From colleges? What would be necessary in terms of systemic or values realignment? What would be rewarded? How could hard work and cooperation simultaneously prevail (collective intelligence and peer to peer learning style) in the greater society? What motivates YOU? 

I’d like to investigate these meta patterns to collectively design systems that will encourage more of this cooperation I have seen in Peeragogy in future also in other organizations and situations. 

Thank you! 

Lua 

On Tue 23. Jun 2020 at 10:30 Joe Corneli <holtze...@gmail.com> wrote:
This message is motivated partly by a pain I am experiencing.  Presently we're using various chat apps (Telegram, Keybase, Hangouts) and none of these are giving me a satisfactory experience.  Messages disappear quickly and remain locked in "silos".  The problems could be partly solved by persistently archiving old messages so that we can find them again (like they do here: https://leanprover-community.github.io/Archiven/).

But I am also motivated by a more positive vision and broader potential 'gain':

Thinking back to PlanetMath: we combined an encyclopedia, automatic linking, bug reports, Q&A, and open forum discussions into a single reasonably-well-integrated whole.

Most of the original features of PlanetMath now exist in stand-alone systems that work very well for their separate tasks, but that don't have the integration that made PlanetMath attractive in the first place.

The site was first built in 2000 and went online before Wikipedia, Stack Exchange, and so on.  We rebuilt it in 2013 in Drupal, which was a lot of work, and frankly not a huge success partly because we didn't have the workforce needed to maintain what we built.  But also because our Drupal solution didn't actually integrate with the places where the action was happening.

Now what I am wondering is whether we could create a platform using mostly off-the-shelf components and APIs, hooking them together in such a way that they serve the needs *not just of the peeragogy project* but of other peer learning groups.  For example, we might even reboot PlanetMath a third time using this platform!

One challenge is the "workforce" question: even if we use off-the-shelf components and APIs, setting them up will take work.  I think we can solve this, though.

I'm motivated by what I'm working on in my startup: our present focus is making a software tool that supports people in learning how to program. Users will want many of the old PlanetMath community features. This time around, we also want to incorporate some AI software — but that is to augment not replace collective intelligence!

All told, I'd like to ask for your help in *envisioning*, *designing*, and ultimately *building* a platform for peeragogy.  Perhaps we can start by talking more about the strengths and weaknesses of the tools we're currently using.

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Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Best regards, 

Analua Dutka-Chirichetti

Charlotte Pierce

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Jun 23, 2020, 10:58:37 AM6/23/20
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My experience with communication platforms is that it takes a critical mass of engaged people to make it relevant, and newcomers are often put off by some of the friction points. I'm up for improvement but not at the expense of engagement.

Analua Dutka-Chirichetti

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Jun 23, 2020, 11:52:26 AM6/23/20
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What has made other successful platforms successful in the past vs those that resulted in less engagement? 

Are there meta-patterns which can be identified and repeated to promote desired outcome?

On Tue 23. Jun 2020 at 16:58 Charlotte Pierce <charlott...@gmail.com> wrote:
My experience with communication platforms is that it takes a critical mass of engaged people to make it relevant, and newcomers are often put off by some of the friction points. I'm up for improvement but not at the expense of engagement.

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Joe Corneli

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Jun 23, 2020, 1:03:28 PM6/23/20
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On Tue, 23 Jun 2020 at 15:33, Analua Dutka-Chirichetti <analua.ch...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Joe, hi everyone together, 

A tool that can save messages and then order them into separate folders might be interesting. (I couldn’t open the link for some reason. Is this what lean pullover does?) It would also be interesting to save pictures/videos and audio files within folder topics with the option of nesting (like in the computer)

Hi Lua,
I'm not sure why the link didn't work but here's another example of a similar archive site:

The source code they use to make the archive is here:
The original live discussions are going on here:

Would also be interesting to have both synchronous and asynchronous chat options for both chat and video. 

If I remember correctly Zulip is basically real time.

By the way, Stephan has been working on an interesting demo of a threaded *audio* mailbox that we could use to share "voice mail" messages.  That could be faster than typing and reading in many cases.

Such a tool would definitely be useful for other organizations who can use this for peer to peer learning and grow a start-up education ecosystem with a variety of perspectives and in various subjects. Having such a tool I would be excited to take peer health a step further (lacking this and the technical skill/ capacity to build this is what is lacking for me to proceed here... )Here too AI would be interesting for support. Maybe it’s a matter of perspective but it seems logical to me that AI should not be a replacement to the collective intelligence any more than the collective Intelligence should replace personal reasoning and intuition. 

(1) Yes, it would be great to have an easy-to-set-up tool for people who aren't programmers.  That's a good design goal.
(2) I like your analogy relating CI, AI, and personal intelligence (Emotional Intelligence?).

Current tools: 

Strengths zoom: synchronous video
Strength of udemy, coursera: asynchronous courses
Steregth of telegram, WhatsApp, slack: synchronous chat 
Strength of jira, confluence, google docs, email: asynchrous chat 

Weakness: all silos in their specialty and do not offer all options needed in one platform which can save together and keep things „tidy“. Things do get lost and it is indeed a pain to find, when even possible.

Thanks for this summary!

So find options need to be integrated to all functions and „save or star“ options too for the things you don’t want to drag and drop into a separate folder but do want to mark. (Privately)
Telegram would be much better just by incorporating a private „pin“ to find messages later, like whatsapp‘s „star“ function.

I don't think I even knew about the WhatsApp functionality. 

 Also would be cool to have signals like „emojis“ for synchronous videos so people can all respond as a voluntary emotional landscape tool without interrupting the flow of discussions. 

Whereby has that feature!

What exactly is the workforce challenge? Is it a lack of workforce or interpersonal challenges? I am currently excited about designing and experimenting with different methodologies with peer to peer support to help groups increase resiliency and cooperation. We will utilize traditional evidence based and alternative methods to develop a positive HR system. will work with team members to support growth and development, higher ikigai alignment and flow, communication skills and systems for conflict prevention and post conflict healing/ reconciliation. The idea is to foster higher individual and organizational resiliency while also investigating how to foster higher collaboration.

I was initially thinking "lack of workforce" but that unfolds to several sub-factors:

- Are people motivated to work on this?  (Example: With PlanetMath, most people wanted to do mathematics, if they wanted to participate at all! — and 99% weren't very interested in code to support the site.)

- Of those who are motivated, how can they work together effectively?  (I like what you said above about increasing resiliency and cooperation, and will join you tomorrow to talk more about that, I hope some others might come along too, thanks for the invite and ideas here!)

For our current needs:

- I'm working on a tech startup so there's *some* motivated workforce available (me).

Would love to collaborate and would truly appreciate everyone‘s support in hacking a new system based on positive incentives, a non-punitive way to support people to grow and help each other develop and heal in groups instead of punishing symptomatic behavior of personal and collective conditioning, shifting paradigms, building resiliency.

It seems to me that learning and healing are linked.  Healing ≈ making whole.  What does learning have to do with this?  I think it's fair to say that in Simondon's philosophy (a lot of which is taken over by Deleuze as well) learning is linked to the process of 'individuation' and the growth of form.

« Simondon put forward an original theory of information as that which 'informs' - or has the capacity to inform - individuation. This is a bit like Bateson's idea of information as based on differences that make a difference. »

What are some benefits to and challenges/ inefficiencies people have encountered (in leadership and in employee or team member positions) in the current system? 

Imagine a system that would feel more positive, healthier and motivate you more. What would be necessary from leaders? From colleges? What would be necessary in terms of systemic or values realignment? What would be rewarded? How could hard work and cooperation simultaneously prevail (collective intelligence and peer to peer learning style) in the greater society? What motivates YOU? 

Relative to my comments above, this makes me think that "motivation" isn't a fixed quantity.  We could have presented the task of coding for PlanetMath in a way that would be *more* or *less* motivating for people using the site.  OK, this is just one specific user base and one specific kind of task, but sticking with the theme: the people in question may have learned that mathematics is what's exciting and what gets rewarded.  Some *other* group would likely have learned that programming is what's exciting.  A simple technique that might boost motivation and interaction could be to bring members of these groups together for some dialogue.

I’d like to investigate these meta patterns to collectively design systems that will encourage more of this cooperation I have seen in Peeragogy in future also in other organizations and situations.

Maybe we could bring some of those "other organizations" together with some members of the peeragogy project to test the motivation-building-in-dialogue idea.

Howard Rheingold

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Jun 23, 2020, 2:40:25 PM6/23/20
to peer...@googlegroups.com, Sam Rose
I’d like to weigh in on this. First, I agree with Charlotte that critical mass of engaged participants is important and that small friction points can put off newcomers. Analua mentions an application that can sort messages into relevant folders. I’ve thought about a social media platform with multiple media for a while. In 2008, I created the Social Media Classroom with my developer partner, Sam Rose: https://clalliance.org/blog/the-social-media-classroom/  Some of the participants in this group used it with one of my online courses. It has some problems — Drupal is clunky to troubleshoot for non-experts, the procedure for posting images is arcane (it should be drag and drop). And it’s 12 years old. Some of the principle characteristics of the SMC speak directly to this conversation about a platform for peeragogy. The forum does two things that are important: It enables conversations to sort into multiple threads that continue over time; the system remembers what threads each individual participant is following and on every login shows only new responses in those threads (a forum where participants have to figure out where they left off is one of those pain points Charlotte mentions). The forum serves as a voice of the group. Another tab enables each participant to have a blog (individual voice) and to read and comment on other participants’ blog posts. The wiki enables collaborative editing.

Sam is working on a new version that is a framework that ties together different social media via APIs under a single sign-on. Discourse, for example, is a far better forum. Drag and drop images, video players embed with a simple URL, very rich administrative controls that can sort participants into groups, and any thread can be turned into a wiki. We’re working on integrating Big Blue Button, an open source videoconference application that I used with my courses and which is popular with educators. (Discourse, Wordpress, BBB are all open source).

If interested, we could alpha test as a group.


Howard Rheingold 
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On Jun 23, 2020, at 7:58 AM, Charlotte Pierce <charlott...@gmail.com> wrote:

My experience with communication platforms is that it takes a critical mass of engaged people to make it relevant, and newcomers are often put off by some of the friction points. I'm up for improvement but not at the expense of engagement.

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Roland Legrand

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Jun 23, 2020, 6:02:03 PM6/23/20
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Seems very interesting...

Outlook voor iOS downloaden

Van: Howard Rheingold <howard.r...@gmail.com> namens Howard Rheingold <how...@rheingold.com>
Verzonden: Tuesday, June 23, 2020 8:40:21 PM
Aan: peer...@googlegroups.com <peer...@googlegroups.com>
CC: Sam Rose <samue...@gmail.com>
Onderwerp: Re: [peeragogy] a platform for peeragogy
 

Analua Dutka-Chirichetti

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Jun 24, 2020, 12:38:45 AM6/24/20
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Amazing you are already working on this solution! How does Big Blue Button compare with Zoom? I have never used it personally, but have heard from some open source advocates that it doesn't always perform well, so they turn to zoom for video conferencing. Could BBB be improved so that the integrated platform is efficient? What would be necessary for this? I personally would be interested in testing and offering a user's perspective in helping to determine how to optimize solutions. 

Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Best regards, 

Analua Dutka-Chirichetti

Howard Rheingold

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Jun 24, 2020, 2:52:50 PM6/24/20
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I found BBB to work as well as Zoom. Same affordances. But open source and edu-friendly.

Charlotte Pierce

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Jun 24, 2020, 3:14:25 PM6/24/20
to The Peeragogy Handbook
Does it have virtual backgrounds as well?

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Howard Rheingold

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Jun 24, 2020, 4:33:53 PM6/24/20
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No virtual backgrounds.  Here is a recording. I don’t know what it takes to get the attention of Zoom management, but I found BBB to respond nearly instantaneously  when I had a problem or question.


Joe Corneli

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Jun 24, 2020, 5:54:05 PM6/24/20
to Peeragogy, Samuel Rose
Hi Howard,

From my point of view it would be great to join an "alpha test" in the version of the new disaggregated SMC.  We were using the old SMC for version 1 of the Handbook so it would be like coming home!  I'm also pleased to know that Sam is involved with this new effort!  Some of us (including me) may also be able to contribute directly to development activities; and we could also do a bit of recruiting effort if more hands are wanted.

As I mentioned before, I'm imagining a platform that could eventually be useful even for a reboot of PlanetMath, and any other peer learning community, though that would likely be a long-term prospect.  Perhaps a new platform can help us bootstrap a further system with more features.

Presently, for the contemporary needs of the Peeragogy project, I'm imagining a platform that would:

 - on an opt-in basis, keep track of the things that people are doing — so that we could index messages from various platforms in one place;
 - keep track of our pattern catalogue and semi-formal Action Reviews — and can help us diagnose patterns and anti-patterns in our activities;
 - use that collection of content to us detect learning and better understand our productivity — and accordingly give recommendations;
 - and above all support interaction with other learners and co-workers.

Some of that may just be nice-to-haves — after all, we have gotten by without many of these features so far — but nevertheless I think they could massively potentiate our work.  With peeragogy as a hub I think we could ultimately provide all of the features of a mainstream university, but so far we have been taking a slow and by-hand route in that direction. Some power tools could help us make more rapid progress.  This is inspired by my work in the early-stage startup world, and I don't know just how or how much much this vision overlaps with what you and Sam are working on now.

Maybe we could set up a call to discuss further ?

On Wed, 24 Jun 2020 at 21:33, Howard Rheingold <how...@rheingold.com> wrote:
No virtual backgrounds.  Here is a recording. I don’t know what it takes to get the attention of Zoom management, but I found BBB to respond nearly instantaneously  when I had a problem or question.

By the way, I think dealing well and quickly with service queries is a big selling point!  Zoom has not been responsive to requests for help.

Also, incidentally, I installed Jitsi on one of my virtual servers (but could have opted for BBB instead).  If it's useful I can de-install that and switch to BBB so that we have some redundant installations.

Howard Rheingold

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Jun 24, 2020, 6:03:04 PM6/24/20
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Howard Rheingold 
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SUPPORT ME and get a juicy flow of knowledge and art on patreon.com/howardrheingold
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On Jun 24, 2020, at 2:53 PM, Joe Corneli <holtze...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Howard,

From my point of view it would be great to join an "alpha test" in the version of the new disaggregated SMC.  We were using the old SMC for version 1 of the Handbook so it would be like coming home!  I'm also pleased to know that Sam is involved with this new effort!  Some of us (including me) may also be able to contribute directly to development activities; and we could also do a bit of recruiting effort if more hands are wanted.

As I mentioned before, I'm imagining a platform that could eventually be useful even for a reboot of PlanetMath, and any other peer learning community, though that would likely be a long-term prospect.  Perhaps a new platform can help us bootstrap a further system with more features.

Presently, for the contemporary needs of the Peeragogy project, I'm imagining a platform that would:

 - on an opt-in basis, keep track of the things that people are doing — so that we could index messages from various platforms in one place;

A forum thread would be good for that

 - keep track of our pattern catalogue and semi-formal Action Reviews — and can help us diagnose patterns and anti-patterns in our activities;

A collaborative platform such as a wiki or Gdoc for that

 - use that collection of content to us detect learning and better understand our productivity — and accordingly give recommendations;

Not sure what medium would work for that

 - and above all support interaction with other learners and co-workers.

I like the combo of forum and blogs — group voice and individual voice (and they can link to each other)


Some of that may just be nice-to-haves — after all, we have gotten by without many of these features so far — but nevertheless I think they could massively potentiate our work.  With peeragogy as a hub I think we could ultimately provide all of the features of a mainstream university, but so far we have been taking a slow and by-hand route in that direction. Some power tools could help us make more rapid progress.  This is inspired by my work in the early-stage startup world, and I don't know just how or how much much this vision overlaps with what you and Sam are working on now.

Maybe we could set up a call to discuss further ?

Sure. 


On Wed, 24 Jun 2020 at 21:33, Howard Rheingold <how...@rheingold.com> wrote:
No virtual backgrounds.  Here is a recording. I don’t know what it takes to get the attention of Zoom management, but I found BBB to respond nearly instantaneously  when I had a problem or question.

By the way, I think dealing well and quickly with service queries is a big selling point!  Zoom has not been responsive to requests for help.

Also, incidentally, I installed Jitsi on one of my virtual servers (but could have opted for BBB instead).  If it's useful I can de-install that and switch to BBB so that we have some redundant installations.

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Charles Blass

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Jun 24, 2020, 9:56:34 PM6/24/20
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super excited to witness this thread unfolding here and now
!!!
cicolab also down for alpha testing 
(and aloha testing :-)
aloha 
cb

Analua Dutka-Chirichetti

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Jun 25, 2020, 8:06:46 AM6/25/20
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Great! I can’t wait to try it out. 

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Samuel Rose

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Jun 25, 2020, 10:07:07 AM6/25/20
to Joe Corneli, Peeragogy
Hi Joe!

my replies inline

On Wed, Jun 24, 2020 at 5:54 PM Joe Corneli <holtze...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Howard,

From my point of view it would be great to join an "alpha test" in the version of the new disaggregated SMC.  We were using the old SMC for version 1 of the Handbook so it would be like coming home!  I'm also pleased to know that Sam is involved with this new effort!  Some of us (including me) may also be able to contribute directly to development activities; and we could also do a bit of recruiting effort if more hands are wanted.



Thanks and I am glad you're interested in this!


 
As I mentioned before, I'm imagining a platform that could eventually be useful even for a reboot of PlanetMath, and any other peer learning community, though that would likely be a long-term prospect.  Perhaps a new platform can help us bootstrap a further system with more features.


My first reaction is that planetmath could be well  managed for a very long time on Mediawiki, or Semantic mediawiki, and also integrated optionally with SMC 2 tools. I'd be happy to talk about this more. But the advantage is a huge community, existing mature solutions in the mediawiki open source software community. I am planning on supporting mediawiki with https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Real-time_collaboration  for SMC2





 
Presently, for the contemporary needs of the Peeragogy project, I'm imagining a platform that would:

 - on an opt-in basis, keep track of the things that people are doing — so that we could index messages from various platforms in one place;


I am now working on a central authentication/aggregation/dashboard that also acts as a "blog" for the SMC tool kit. But it will also just be able to be an "aggregator" for the tools we support



 
 - keep track of our pattern catalogue and semi-formal Action Reviews — and can help us diagnose patterns and anti-patterns in our activities;


Media wiki/Semanticmediawiki are great for this. It's got a built in API and lots of choices of automation in various programming languages. 

 
 - use that collection of content to us detect learning and better understand our productivity — and accordingly give recommendations;

This is also where I think semanticmediawiki/LinkedWiki extensions can be useful (content can be enhanced with RDF, queried across repositories, recommendations can emerge based on many different types of rules)

 
 - and above all support interaction with other learners and co-workers.


Yes, these are the features that are important based on what people are doing in the digital medium as collaborative learning. I think technical outcomes could end up being things like bots for chatrooms/forums, browser extensions, mobile applications, or extensions to existing apps and their existing alerting/notification/etc apparatus



 
Some of that may just be nice-to-haves — after all, we have gotten by without many of these features so far — but nevertheless I think they could massively potentiate our work.  With peeragogy as a hub I think we could ultimately provide all of the features of a mainstream university, but so far we have been taking a slow and by-hand route in that direction. Some power tools could help us make more rapid progress.  This is inspired by my work in the early-stage startup world, and I don't know just how or how much much this vision overlaps with what you and Sam are working on now.



I can't speak for Howard, but in my mind personally there is a lot of overlap. 



 
Maybe we could set up a call to discuss further ?



Possibly later in the summer for me. I am currently directing a project that is developing local food solutions for people affected by Covid19, and this is dominating a huge amount of my time. But I do intend to keep pushing forward with this work, and I will report back here when ready to really engage on it.

 
FWIW currently the toolkits I am working with are:


Nixos is the operating system I am supporting, or applications running on docker, which can then be run on Nixos
Mediawiki/Semanticmedia wiki with various extensions
Discourse forum
Zulip
Bigbluebutton
Custom dashboard and group blog/processing services
Apache Jena for publishing RDF and SPARQL query support

There will eventually be a github repo with all of this, and the status etc. Right now, I am sponsoring myself working on it, so I am keeping it close to manage the communication I will be responsible for.

I am hoping late summer to really open it up

Samuel Rose

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Jun 25, 2020, 10:23:38 AM6/25/20
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I should also add: I am currently working with OpenLDAP (due to it's wide and flexible support) for authentication

Also, I am not planning on supporting self hosted hypothes.is at this time, but just using the service they offer and integrating with their API (including their authentication system, which is not LDAP based)

Charlotte Pierce

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Jun 25, 2020, 11:08:10 AM6/25/20
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In all this amazing experimenting and testing, can I advocate for the newcomer, the person who could benefit from collective intelligence and collaborative platforms, but has only heard of Zoom or Skype, and for whom a user interface is extremely important for initial onboarding and continued engagement?

melan...@gmail.com

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Jun 25, 2020, 12:10:00 PM6/25/20
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Hi Joe,
In reply to: 
“I am wondering is whether we could create a platform using mostly off-the-shelf components and APIs, hooking them together in such a way that they serve the needs *not just of the peeragogy project* but of other peer learning groups.”

I’m personally search for an augmentation tool that api might be able to address.

I’d like to be able to grab/snap/archive materials for both personal scholarship & to share with groups I serve. hypothesis.is is useful, but the data I annotate is visual or artifact based, in addition to text-based. I also don’t want to be constrained in what I can archive and capture. During Covid closures, I had 2 computer challenges and began exploring the capacity of my phone as an augmentation tool. Inspired by a friend that facilitated TechStar startup weekend hackathons. You might be interested in talking to him, he has a handful of frameworks that he’s developed alongside early stage entrepreneurs.

Melanie


On Jun 23, 2020, at 7:33 AM, Analua Dutka-Chirichetti <analua.ch...@gmail.com> wrote:



Robert Best

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Jun 25, 2020, 12:59:22 PM6/25/20
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> Now what I am wondering is whether we could create a platform using mostly off-the-shelf components and APIs, hooking them together in such a way that they serve the needs *not just of the peeragogy project* but of other peer learning groups.

This is pretty much exactly what have been doing, and calling Open Learning Commons... Except I am thinking of it as an ecosystem, because to me the word "platform" sounds like a new silo in itself... and each learning group will want to use a unique set of tools and practices together (though, maybe they start out using a basic/default set at the suggestion of other co-learning groups).

I've realized over the past few weeks that I must have been doing a horrible job of explaining what I am trying to do with OLC, because even the people who have been playing most closely with me on these sorts of things, and in some cases even using the infrastructure that I am self-hosting/paying for under the umbrella of OLC, don't have the project come to mind in situations like this.

Anyhow, I've explored the affordances of a lot of different software.. and have been doing a lot of research into how to integrate them all together in a coherent way, and in a way that doesn't trap each new co-learning group into a new silo of their own... I like the idea of federated systems, where groups are distinct, and yet they have mechanisms for sharing/cross-pollinating with each other.

One open source software I am hosting for OLC is Discourse, and I mentioned this thread in that forum too (which some of you are already using)

> Telegram would be much better just by incorporating a private „pin“ to find messages later, like what’s app‘s „star“ function. 

Hey Lua, Telegram does have a "saved messages" area where you can forward messages to yourself. The feature I wish Telegram had is a "Mark as unread", for the situations where you want to read every message in certain groups, and you accidentally click into a group when you don't actually have the time to read everything. (So you lose your place in the way that Howard says we need to try and avoid)

>We’re working on integrating Big Blue Button, an open source videoconference application that I used with my courses and which is popular with educators. (Discourse, Wordpress, BBB are all open source).

>If interested, we could alpha test as a group.

 The Online Meeting Co-operative is an interesting group, and a recent collaboration between a group of cooperatives, who are hosting a BBB server to serve as an alternative to zoom. (Open.Coop recently ran their online conference on their servers) If we want to test things together, this demo server is available and is hosted by our friend Jim Whitescarver (Who's participating in Open Learning Commons, MetaCAugs, and Digital Life Collective)

I hosted a BBB server not too long ago too, its fairly easy to get up and running, though all of these "off the shelf" solutions aren't free-as-in-beer... They would require us to pool some resources together to pay for the hosting costs. How an international group shares the costs of software infrastructure is something that needs figured out.

Roland recently, and very generously, gave a donation to Open Learning Commons on the Open Collective account that I set up a while back.

But this points to a much bigger conversation about how we do self-governance, i.e. commoning, and also the issue of how we also don't become a silo... Things are made simpler if all the content we create is effectively Open Educational Resources/ Free Cultural Works (For example, with Creative Commons Licenses https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/freeworks/).. But I get the sense that many peer learning groups, doing the commoning, would also appreciate having the ability to make some of their conversations/content a little more private. (i.e. we enable meaningful membranes within the ecosystem) How to create permeable membranes seems to be how something like a commons, that wants to be as open as possible, can avoid becoming yet another silo.

> I am now working on a central authentication/aggregation/dashboard that also acts as a "blog" for the SMC tool kit. But it will also just be able to be an "aggregator" for the tools we support
I'm curious Sam ,if in your recent exploration of Semantic MediaWiki and other API related things, if any of these systems use an Object-capability model . That seems more in the direction of permeable membranes.

Samuel Rose

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Jun 25, 2020, 6:51:13 PM6/25/20
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Robert,

I am starting with simpler protocols for access control needs/authentication needs like LDAP. But I am open to eventually expanding that into various protocols for various uses.

skreutzer

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Jun 25, 2020, 8:03:37 PM6/25/20
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I'm lately realizing that it appears to be largely unknown or confused what interoperability is, how it works, what it looks like in computing and programming, apart for system programmers. Integrating existing silos into another larger silo, each being rigid off-the-shelf monoliths without interoperable architecture, what can you do with them as they weren't designed to avoid their lack of interoperability in the first place? In the worst case, if they're proprietary, you're entirely at their mercy as they can break their API, change terms/demands or remove functionality/access, and at best, you have to invest a lot of effort to make the pieces work together while the main project may potentially moving into an entirely different, conflicting direction.

Usually interoperability means that you have certain components/capabilities work inside some other components/capabilities, but each doing their own thing independently (and well, ideally), which are also very flexibly rearrangable into other constellations -- the different, separate parts operating together as if they were a well-integrated whole (which they then are, in effect). By now, it got to a point where the popular opinion seems to be that something of that nature might not have existed in the past, doesn't at present, and can't in the future, despite some of the infrastructure we currently enjoy couldn't even remotely work if it weren't designed/built this way.

For the simple example of chat apps, considering Telegram, Keybase, Hangouts: at earlier times, applications like Pidgin took care of that before it became fashionable (for no good reason I managed to comprehend) to burry messages + contacts in even more closed silos, for which it remains to be seen if one will be able to retrieve his/her very own material out from them again, with some reasonable recreation of connections or functionality.

Pragmatically speaking when it comes to Peeragogy and similar groups, once the content is already spread and stuck in certain places with no hope to organize it differently (dependencies/reliance on existing affordances of the siloed environments that are), vertical integration and bridging is probably indeed the way to go as a matter of expediency, in comparison to research/recovery of approaches for doing things based on principle, for which big, polished, off-the-shelf monoliths tend to be less/readily available. Just don't see how today's dominant way of building could possibly be expected to lead to a noteworthy degree of interoperability if not at massive expense.

I also happily conclude of course that the wants/needs of some kind of online learning university are significantly different from text, publishing, hypertext, data, media, hypermedia concerns, all of the latter not really themselves being tools to run a course or manage the administrative tasks like user management, permissions, etc. (not that crucial for OER or digital peerness anyway).

Along these lines, could this be a chance to revive the Peeragogy Dashboard and/or revisit the earlier discussions around MOOCs, if that's somewhat aligned with what the new platform is planned to do? Furthermore, with


> Presently, for the contemporary needs of the Peeragogy project, I'm imagining a platform that would:
>
> - on an opt-in basis, keep track of the things that people are doing
> - keep track of our pattern catalogue and semi-formal Action Reviews
> - use that collection of content to us detect learning and better understand our productivity — and accordingly give recommendations;
> [...]

> threaded *audio* mailbox that we could use to share "voice mail" messages

the currently existing affordances are of little use, therefore would benefit from a/the platform integrating + managing them.

Graziano Maino

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Jun 26, 2020, 1:18:58 AM6/26/20
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I am interested!
The discussion and the experiments are so helpful to understand and to develop fundamental digital culture.
The tools broaden my skills.
Thanks to everybody.
I hope to become able to bring contributions.
Now I follow and I try to stay in (which is an issue in peer learning).

Thanks!
Graziano :-)


c.f. MNAGZN64C25M052G
p.iva 04491430965
c.u. TULURSB

#pares.it 






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Analua Dutka-Chirichetti

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Jun 26, 2020, 5:18:59 PM6/26/20
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Hi everyone! 

I am on par with Graziano. I thank everyone for the information. I am trying to synthesize and get a better understanding. 

@ Robert Best thank you for the Links. I was now able to sign up and check out the groups. I will check it out in more detail later. 

Probably I fit Charlotte's description of the newcomer who has only heard of mainstream software like zoom or skype. From my point of view the UI is important. Since our last conversation, OpenLearningCommons is much easier to access. Being able to synthesize and make sense of information easily also makes a difference to the user with little to no tech background... Is the OLC target the general public?

@Skreutzer 

> Presently, for the contemporary needs of the Peeragogy project, I'm imagining a platform that would:
>
> - on an opt-in basis, keep track of the things that people are doing
> - keep track of our pattern catalogue and semi-formal Action Reviews
> - use that collection of content to us detect learning and better understand our productivity — and accordingly give recommendations;
> [...]

Recommendations for future outcomes will be again, for what target group? Those involved in the peer to peer learning and production? general public? specific segments? Probably I am missing much of the background and context.

Thanks everyone for your patience. I hope I will also be able to make a meaningful contribution/ support the team. 

Lua


skreutzer

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Jun 26, 2020, 8:06:52 PM6/26/20
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> Presently, for the contemporary needs of the Peeragogy project, I'm imagining a platform that would:
>
> - on an opt-in basis, keep track of the things that people are doing
> - keep track of our pattern catalogue and semi-formal Action Reviews
> - use that collection of content to us detect learning and better understand our productivity — and accordingly give recommendations;
> [...]

Recommendations for future outcomes will be again, for what target group? Those involved in the peer to peer learning and production? general public? specific segments? Probably I am missing much of the background and context.

Thanks for asking as I usually tend to get excited about these topics, so would try to provide background + context to the best of my ability :-) Just to avoid any confusion, these are not my suggestions for what the platform should do/offer/support, but Joe's (I'm citing). These themes themselves are not new however, but in the Peeragogy Handbook for a long time already, only with the difference that they haven't really been implemented in software to greatly support/enhance the practice.

> - on an opt-in basis, keep track of the things that people are doing

The Peeragogy Handbook has a pattern called "Wrapper" (originating from Howard Rheingold) which is about producing a summary about an activity, so others can more easily learn about or catch up with what happened, also as an invitation to get involved. Our attempt to apply the pattern struggled somewhat, and the new chance of its integration into a platform likely can do a much better job at it. Ideally, those who are where the action is could easily right there contribute/collect their notes, and these would automatically flow into a feed for those who want to follow/subscribe to it. The Peeragogy Dashboard looks like it remained functional enough to present such updates for a quick overview. Tracking progress on/in GitHub too didn't work out that much, as it's a place separate from where most of the work is done. Other Peeragogy patterns like the "Roadmap" could be implemented as software in the platform, so based on the updates from the activity wraps, the current situation and future plans could be represented as a visual aid (to get everybody on the same page where things are currently at, and what interesting future topics one might choose to join learning about or contributing to). The Peeragogy "Heartbeat" pattern, maybe the most prominent/applied one of regularly holding meetings, would be the steady source for new material that doesn't need to be artificially produced with extra effort + likely would also be highly relevant as a basis for the next beat/meeting. Even the Peeragogy "Newcomer" onboarding pattern could be supported by the platform with a brief guided tour through the affordances (or basically just the dashboard as it would continue updating itself about past/present activities, and the Roadmap with opportunities/invitations to jump in). In my mind, the particular patterns mentioned above are all interrelated and essentially the same thing, so I was hoping that it would potentially eventually be built, and maybe it's now a good time for it with the united effort of OLC and Peeragogy contributors (and why not a whole bunch of more groups too if they arrive here as well, like CICoLab or others I hesitate to list here in lack of them expressing enough of an interest).
 
> - keep track of our pattern catalogue and semi-formal Action Reviews

It makes a lot of sense to start managing them with software, wasn't done before, so only good if the new platform will take care of that.
 
> - use that collection of content to us detect learning and better understand our productivity — and accordingly give recommendations;

That's then how and where the learning about peeragogy happens. Otherwise, what would be the chances and/or costs for trying to avoid remaining in the dark, especially if it gets to scale?

Analua Dutka-Chirichetti

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Jun 27, 2020, 4:38:34 AM6/27/20
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Thank you for taking the time for the detailed explanation! 

That sounds brilliant! Since I am pretty new to tech in general I will rephrase to verify my comprehension. 

The future “algorithm” will then allow for the project to scale at a much higher level, allowing for more automatisation, leading to higher collaboration possibilities with the group and ability to grow the ecosystem on a mass scale basis though integrating other groups with similar values, (increasing the collective intelligence goals) 

The patterns will reflect the learning process in the wrapper, heartbeat and on boarding patterns and be used to optimise the project and automise “smarter collaboration” with less human time investment. That seems great use of patten recognition, BOTs, AI for increased cooperation. Just a word of caution in line with Robert’s earlier comments about silos: maybe it is important (if the goal is mass adoption to this co-creative learning style) to remember that  in terms of group and individual health, that the pattern recognition, AI elements would be most effective for human benefit generally in terms of augmenting the human capacity but not replacing the human element. (Strong bonds and human connection is something that would be a pity if lost with unwanted consequences of alienation and silos effect/ highly homogenous groups, unbalance) 

Have you considered using the pattern recognition and futures predictions for other areas as well? Once the machine has collected enough material for peer to peer learning maybe this could expand expand and the collective intelligence/ peer engagement could support machine learning and futures predictions in “x” situations. (Maybe that’s already the idea?) 

I will take some time in the next days to read thorough the previous material in more detail for better understanding and hopefully better capacity to effectively collaborate in future. 



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skreutzer

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Jun 28, 2020, 7:50:57 AM6/28/20
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Quick reply: algorithms as a series of instructions to be performed on variable input (= parameters) like cooking recipes or software code or math formulas, sounds somewhat similar to patterns (but not necessarily a pattern language) and in that respect, Peeragogy (despite not necessarily exclusively so) could be seen as a project for trying to discover and design algorithms/patterns for peer learning. If an algorithm/pattern is discovered/designed/specified, it can be applied to a number of situations and also helps with pattern recognition.

Using the computer as a tool to carry out repetitive tasks automatically as instructed by software code algorithms/patterns/instructions is supposed to free human learners/teachers from wasting their valuable time on executing the same actions manually, and therefore award them with more time to focus on what they really want to do, which is the learning. Just imagine what would happen if the Peeragogy course or any of the other activities would be joined by 100 peers, for whom we probably wouldn't have the Carrying Capacity to Newcomer-onboard them or manually update the channels/feeds with what they're contributing, so we + them would not be able to keep track of what's going on in terms of a collective/collaboration/coordinated fashion, basically activities becoming unmanageable. The job of the proposed platform would likely be to take care of whatever works to support such a scenario as well. Not just a hypothetical speculation about some future, we're right in it with Peeragogy being conducted online in a global network, and peer learning happening everywhere, and tangible wants/needs today of how to do it better than schools/universities do it already electronically for some ~2 decades now.

Apart from automatization, the computer can also be a great aid to support learning/teaching (not in the earlier sense of the somewhat naive/simplistic Computer Assisted Instruction) if equipped with a readily available toolbox for data gathering/visualization, games customizable for a certain context, multimedia, etc., and here in particular co-designed by/for peers themselves.

Scaling is an interesting + popular topic, but there's actually some lesser known stategy to it. Usually it's easy to just assume an increase in numbers and then have a look at what problems it might cause and how to possibly ad-hoc/agilely fix them. Some people on this mailing list however might know about Douglas Engelbart, Alan Kay or Eric Schmidt's Blitzscaling interview. Engelbart early in his career worked on maintaining a wind tunnel to test the aviation properties of model airplanes and wondered how it's possible to infer conclusions from the model once it's scaled up to the real plane, and was told that in engineering, it's well known that there can be certain factors/properties that are scale-independent, behave the very same way no matter how small/big something was scaled to, and on the other hand there are factors/properties that break/conflict/stop and are scale-dependent. For scaling a model airplane to full size, the effects of certain sizes of bodies of living beings, scaling businesses, technology, communities, one would want to identify the factors/properties that are scale-dependent and those that aren't, potentially already taking these into account in a design (to not get surprised if it turns out to not work), ideally intentionally designing for/towards it to exploit the effect. Moore's law for the development in the field of semiconductors is a great example, and plenty of cases where a concept broke down completely once gotten to a larger or smaller scale. Wonder if such systemic analysis/thinking/principles are also in scope or of interest for Peeragogy patterns or patterns in general. To close, a little example/illustration from game development/programming/design (far from just being some theory, it's everyday practice in some places): trying to build a large game with a long story all on your own, one might not have the time to do that and even if, the release of the result might then be way too late to be relevant/contemporary, as it's a lot of work to create all the content, etc. Therefore, one can get cleverly around that constraint by using generative design elements that'll automatically populate a world, generate a wide range of items (within certain limits), fill the environment with characters/places, biomes in Minecraft, avoiding scale-dependent game elements that need to linearly or exponentially grow with the size of the world/story, and you can get out a relatively convincing game experience on the cheap (which doesn't prevent the developer to then start adding the more expensive, non-auto-scaling stuff).

skreutzer

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Jun 28, 2020, 8:45:45 AM6/28/20
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Forgot to mention a lot of things, won't try to cram all of them in here as this medium is inherently inadequate for scaling, so what would be the point of even trying? Just the ones that might be most relevant. Joe proposed one or several projects that are about discovering learning patterns in external data that's not our own:

    https://github.com/orgs/Peeragogy/projects/4

Some of these things might not be candidates to be integrated into the platform, but maybe a source or of conceptual influence for the latter. Would assume that this project can be picked up independently from the platform, or maybe people are prepared to do both in parallel, or include it as part of the platform.

To avoid any confusion, the stuff I write is just one perspective as from another random peer, not necessarily representative or related to what's going on with/in the Peeragogy project.

skreutzer

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Jun 28, 2020, 1:02:05 PM6/28/20
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Another thing I forgot: the initial proposal in this thread was about uniting several different chat applications into a united interface, which indeed might help correlating messages and avoid the need to sign in (authenticate) in several places/services. If that's part of the platform, then it'll be the streams of chat messages in there as well, just as they are in the existing different chat products (but maybe with better control to augment/enhance the messages/chatting as the platform interface code would be under our own control, with the results being compatible or incompatible with the several products they're originating from for feeding them back).

The wants/needs listed later for the Peeragogy project in terms of activity tracking/coordination seem to be somewhat separate from that, except you're already doing them via chat messages and that's why current tracking is largely inaccessible. Or the plan is to update/notify people who are in one of the chat products about news from the platform.

It's perfectly conceivable to integrate both functions into the same platform, or maybe these are planned as two platforms (that may or may not exchange data), just usually the main point of having some kind of project management software for coordinating Peeragogy activities would be for trying to avoid/reduce the noise and mine condensed, clear, actionable signals, while chat tends to be used for all kinds of dialogue/discussions. Of course it's always a good idea to use both and more of such tools in conjunction, but depending on the specific context/mode or job at hand, there's a reason why such functions are carefully optimized for either one or the other, as the results/effects one is expecting from them tend to conflict somewhat.

Wouldn't be uncommon to go for what's called "feature bloat" - one big platform (or "portal", remember?) which does everything for everybody, as maybe the big apps by Facebook and Google demonstrate, but then, it's a lot of work and there would be a substantial risk of failing to do any single function of it well or well enough.

Luckily, if serious with building it from off-the-shelf components, maybe one could try to interface with the API to get tasks/activities from/to GitHub Issues as well as commits if they arrive there from Floobits or can obtained/published in some other way, and/or updates could be received or created from the tools the OLC is using, and maybe internally use GitHub Projects to organize it into a Roadmap in the platform, and also have chat feeds from multiple sources in there, and MOOC co-learning environments attached, and multimedia interaction/conversation spaces, with a shared UI or several areas in the platform, and adding some single-sign-on with permissions and access tokens replicating to each of the connected components, essentially what DigLife and OLC are doing.

Typically, one would draw up a quick plan of all the parts that need to be integrated, then investigate each of them if/how they're integratable, do a proof-of-concept for each of them, then built out the entire platform (only as cheap glue in between the components, in contrast of developing them from scratch). Sounds like several participants already have practical experience with some of these parts as an additional benefit.

Feels like stating and repeating the obvious from what's already in the thread above :-)

Joe Corneli

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Jun 28, 2020, 3:29:57 PM6/28/20
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Hi everyone,

I'm pretty sure this is the longest thread in the history of the
Peeragogy forum. Thanks very much to everyone who posted their
thoughts and concerns! Since I started the thread, I'm also happy to
"facilitate" the ensuing discussion, and begin to translate this into
an action plan. I'll circulate a draft that we can then improve
together.

Joe

Analua Dutka-Chirichetti

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Jun 28, 2020, 4:39:00 PM6/28/20
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I’m looking forward to the clear plan. Hope I can also help carry it out with simple tasks not needing technical expertise. 

I can’t wait to test out the “product” 

Lua 

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