Microcontent

MicroContent

Definition

This refers to the fact that we are learning more and more through chunks of knowledge, which are easier to produce by most member of a peer community, putting them back together ourselves, rather than using prepackaged macrocontent.

"With the advent of Internet, publishing has become accessible to everyone. People have been creating and gathering content and made this content available to everyone in the world. Where web-pages and -sites as MacroContent. MacroContent enfolds MicroContent.

Completely creating and maintaining MacroContent is too hard for most people. People seem to be much better in producing MicroContent, such as small thoughts, items in discussions, comments, bookmarks, etc. Blogging allows people to write and publish such small thoughts episodically. Each blog entry, consisting just of a title and a description, is automatically merged into a web-page and this is made available to everyone." http://www.sivas.com/aleene/microcontent/index.php?id=C0_63_12

Technologies for Microlearning

1. Webfeed Aggregators

“"Webfeed aggregators offer the most obvious illustration of how the Web 2.0 enables networked learning. Sources that offer webfeeds, for instance in the form of files in the Really Simple Syndication (RSS) format, number in the millions. A learner may pick and choose from any number of such sources of information, subscribe to them, and obtain a completely customized stream of information delivered to him that he or she may consume when and how they like. The composition of this cognitive diet is entirely up to the individual, and it may incorporate input that bears the imprimatur of some authority (e.g. institutional or news sources), but the openness of the system enables anyone, and most notably learners themselves, to offer flows. We stated earlier that flows are a better framework where change is involved. Because learning is obviously about change at the personal level, the personal weblog is a natural fit. The process of documenting one's learning experiences and sharing them lets people who are along similar paths to connect to one another. By and large, weblogs are available as webfeeds and so learning logs quickly become networked as learners subscribe to each other's feeds based on commonality of interest and gradient of expertise. Webfeeds are dynamic rather than static, so the relationship results produces a continuous process of learning, which often features a conversational component. The resulting learning experience is much more self-organized and centered around the individual learner. We note that this pattern of publishing and subscribing has existed in scholarly communication, albeit more coarse-grained and with important technological and social limitations. Now, it appears that participants in the digital culture have "jumped ahead": the pattern is available to everyone now, in a more fluid form, and spreading rapidly - arguably more so among groups such as hobbyists than academics." (http://seb.jot.com/WikiHome/MicroLearningProposal?revision=11 )

2. Microformats aim to make microcontent more available and re-usable.

"In my reckoning, there are two business propositions right now in microformats: 1) Structuring data for search and business intelligence, already successfully demonstrated by technorati; 2) Structuring content for collaboration, likely monetized through a service similar to BasecampHQ.

Microformats are really just a way to combine human and machine readability in one web page. Microformats are superior to similar infrastructure plays because the average web designer can incorporate them with very little work.

So, what's the business proposition for combining human and machine readability? Right now, I can come up with two.

The most obvious is structuring content for search and business intelligence. For instance, technorati has raised its own search visibility with the reltag microformat. By helping determine the relevance of given content, reltag also enhances technorati's ability to sell its index data for market intelligence.

A less obvious business proposition for microformats is structuring content for collaboration. Over the past month, I've been having conversations with Mike Migurski of reblog fame and various others including Mark Rickerby and Lucas Gonze. In these conversations, we have focused on microformats as easily identified packets of information inside of web pages.

With the right infrastructure, people could pass these packets around and share them. Mike Migurski and his team are already doing this with full blog posts using reblog." (http://www.unmediated.org/archives/2005/08/microformats_in.php)

More Information

The Wikipedia article on Microcontent is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcontent

The Wikipedia article on Microformats is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microformat