[HacktionLab] Feedback from sessions on Duct Tape Uni & FLOSS manuals at hacktionlab

[Mick Clearerchannel]

Hello Free Software lovers of learning out there,

I wanted to do a super quick feedback on the couple of sessions that we
did at the weekend  at the Hactionlab meet in Bradford on FLOSS Manuals
and Duct Tape Uni.
http://hacktionlab.org/hacktionlab/index.php/Winter_2014_Hacklab

The whole thing was very intimate and I was able to get some good
feedback and suggestions.

I uploaded a technical report of the Duct Tape Uni project at the
weekend here.
http://blog.ducttapeuni.org/technical-report-implementation-duct-tape-uni/

It's not very complicated more of a celebration of what can be done
using the Django framework and javascript bits by a novice coder in a
short space of time.
It also has some info about using microdata in the form of LRMI
(learning resource metadata) to make learning resources more discoverable.

There is another report on the process which is inspired by book sprints
which may be more interesting for non-techies - 
http://blog.ducttapeuni.org/duct-tape-uni-process/
and a more formal report here -
http://blog.ducttapeuni.org/report-co-design-process-duct-tape-university-project/
The Duct Tape Uni project was supported by JISC - Thanks!

As far as FLOSS manuals side was concerned...
The main tech question I had was what is the best way to get summaries
of resources from FLOSS Manuasl out to sites that want to link back to us.

An example is the site created by the DTU code which is here -
http://doitacademy.flossmanuals.net/ - site still in progress.
For that Do It Academy site  - I would like to include metadata and
links back to particular FLOSS Manuals that are relevant to this project.

This would including the metadata that the FM community recently created
here -  http://piratepad.net/DYUQT3iDX1 - (Thanks everyone for that again)

 I can imagine this would be useful for the various communities - 
crypto party - libre graphics fans - open video sites (v4c.org) - free
audio peeps (@80c ) - community media - etc etc

In short, creating these kinds of showcase sites of FM manuals (together
with other resources), as shop windows for trainers and communities who
do stuff with Free Software has been cited as being vital for us to
attract active editors to keep the manuals updated.

Great, but the question I asked my fellow computer enthusiasts was -
What is the best way to create these sites without having to copy and
paste it a lot of metadata and keep them updated?

The suggestion by Charlie from NI was to add in the relevant data
somehow at the source in Booktype in the database. And then provide that
data in various ways via an api providing json files containing the
metadata.
This ways could be as individual manuals, manuals grouped by category or
maybe by tag.
Json seems to be a favoured solution over creating XML feeds.

The process of pulling these json files into pages which are and
formatted in a pleasing fashion is not known to me but it seems a sane
solution. Hey, everyone seems to be doing it. 

I was later thinking about this and wondering if there is a possibility
to link this with an existing project which already works with LRMI
metadata. The project is called Learning Registry - more info here. 
http://learningregistry.org/

I'm going to give this some thought investigate a bit and come back with
more ideas. In fact I would be very interested if others had thoughts on
this too.

I would love to know, what would be the pros and cons of using Learning
Registry over creating your own simple api in this use case.

It strikes me that this is a good goal to work towards in the medium
term for FLOSS Manuals when current migrations and publishing issues are
sorted. (I've been enjoying the recent updates on that btw which are
here. http://team.flossmanuals.net/ )

Ooof - sorry that was a dense email. I just wanted to make a record of
the conversation.

nice one
Mick


-- 
Mick Chesterman - mick at flossmanuals.net
mickfuzz [skype]
@onefuzzyduck [twitter]

http://clearerchannel.org - training and freelance work
http://flossmanuals.net - Free Manuals for Free Software