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Stringle - Towards a String'n'Glue Learning Environment

How easy is it to pull together a presentational learning environment, I wondered to myself last week? Very easy it turns out, in part becasue of the way the web is turning into a huge logical Lego set via web services, embeddable page widgets and web feed wiring.

Take this quick'n'dirty attempt, for example, that demonstrates how pre-existing library related web feeds,RSS'ified OpenLearn content and 3rd arty widgets can be pulled together into an almost integrated environment in a dozen lines of HTML - I call it StrinGLE, for string'n'glue learning environment:

The environment has three panels:

- a sidebar navigation widget that feeds off an OPML file; when an actual HTML page web link is reached, it is opened in the main display area;
- a sidebar Widgetbox that can host one or more widgets - or as I see it, itinerant functionality (and content) from other web sites;-)
- a central main display area; in the screenshot above, I show a second embedded Grazr widget, this time displaying RSS'ified OpenLearn content, but it just as easily be a normal HTML page:

Note that this is very much a first attempt, that I had held off posting for a few days in the hope of adding a few more features - bookmarking buttons, one click feed subscription and so on, each of them no more than a half-hour hack (except searchfeedr integration, which may take a couple of hours...) - but spare half-hours are a scarce resource at the mo, so here's the very first Stringle as a placeholder and note to self to keep playing with this.

The second round of features should perhaps be integrated content editing tools, maybe something along the lines of Downes' RSS writr blogging tool.

Anyway, all to play for. All open source. All plug'n'play. All for free :-) Sort of....

Posted by ajh59 at October 31, 2006 08:08 AM