xWeb
July 19, 2010
Commentary by Stephen Downes

I think we've decided it's called xWeb - "the utilization of smart, structured data drawn from our physical and virtual interactions and identities to extend our capacity to be known by others and by systems." It's what I once called the Semantic Social Network, with the addition of mobility, personalization, virtualization and presence. Rita Kop posted today on the extended web, saying "The combination of all four would lead to Web X.0 (Steve) or Web X (Stephen). I myself actually prefer the full name ‘the eXtended web' as it tells us a little more about its possibilities for learning, and George rightly asks for the lift of the debate from semantic games towards what this Xweb (;-)) means for education and learning."

[Direct Link] [Tags: Interaction, Personalization, Semantic Web]
Comments

Re: xWeb

ntd, July 20, 2010

Would you mind differentiating your envisioned Xweb from the semantic web, as envisioned by Tim Berners-Less and others? It seems to me that the key point is incorporating offline interactions, data from the environment, and putting it all in the context of learning, is that correct?

I'm not convinced that any of the six components that Rita identified at the end of her article are anything beyond tools that can be implemented with ontologies and lots and lots of metadata, which are the backbone of the semantic web. I do believe that we need to ensure that there is a free and open implementation of these tools, so that students aren't trained to use a specific vendor's tools and so that metadata is published in a standards compliant way, it seems like those are concepts that would be pushed by supporters of Xweb. [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]



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