BAM – Blog Aggregation Management
BAM is becoming BIM
BAM is evolving into BIM (BAM into Moodle). Mostly because my current institution is moving to Moodle as its LMS. One advantage of this change is that it will be possible for BIM to be used by anyone using Moodle. BIM will be released open source as a contributed module to Moodle.
BIM will be used at my current institution from around March 2010. I’m hoping it will be available to others by then, if not before.
What is BAM/BIM
The Blog Aggregation Management (BAM) project developed and supported a system that helped teaching staff in the use of web logs in learning and teaching. The initial focus is on an approach where each individual student uses their own blog as a reflective journal. The first use of BAM in 2006 and some small discussion of recent work is included in a 2009 paper
Other descriptions of the project are currently available in:
So what?
What more blogs? Every LMS and their dog has a blog engine. Why do this?
A main point about BAM is not the blogs. BAM does not implement a blog engine. It is expected that students will use any one of the numerous free hosted blog services available on the web. Why reinvent the wheel?
BAM provides a simple, effective management interface that integrates any blog engine (actually anything that generates an RSS/ATOM feed) with existing university systems. The integration with university systems is to provide services for staff to track, store, view and assess student use of the blogs.
BAM is a rejection of the typical LMS “one-ring to rule them all” approach to e-learning.
The ELI Guide to Blogging had the following to say about BAM
One of the most compelling aspects of the project was the simple way it married Web 2.0 applications with institutional systems. This approach has the potential to give institutional teaching and learning systems greater efficacy and agility by making use of the many free or inexpensive—but useful—tools like blogs proliferating on the Internet and to liberate institutional computing staff and resources for other efforts.
Current status
Currently BAM is based on Webfuse an information system to support e-learning at CQUniversity. Webfuse, in its current guise, will cease to exist come early 2010 as CQUni adopts Moodle as its LMS. A proposal is currently being worked on to integrate BAM like services into Moodle. If successful, it is hoped this would be available by early 2010 as an open source component for integration into Moodle.
Since development in mid-2006 BAM has been used:
- In 26 different course offerings of 7 different courses.
- By 2050+ students.
- And 16000+ blog posts.
Additional history and reflection is available on my blog.
Presentations
This first presentation was given in early 2006 and outlines some of the early thoughts, rationale and design decisions behind BAM’s initial use. Important: use the controller at the bottom to start the video at 3 minutes 50 seconds into the video. The early part shows some set up of the on-campus presentation.
This one took place about half way through the term in which BAM was used for the first time. About 3/4 months after the above presentation. Important: use the controller at the bottom to start the video at 3 minutes 30 seconds into the video. The early part shows some set up of the on-campus presentation.
February 24, 2009 at 9:24 pm
[...] Blog Aggregation Management (BAM) Project is a 3 year old project to extend some of the ideas (especially small pieces loosely joined) behind [...]
February 25, 2009 at 8:46 am
[...] an e-learning course using existing online services. I’ve been involved in two such projects: BAM and Web 2.0 course [...]
February 27, 2009 at 9:20 am
[...] papers – encouraging relection? Part of the rationale for developing and using BAM had its origins in this unpublished paper (Jones, 2005). A part of the paper talks about minute [...]
March 2, 2009 at 3:40 pm
[...] to BAM – a step towards breaking the LMS/CMS orthodoxy The initial design and use of the Blog Aggregation Management (BAM) system was, in part, designed to try out approaches that leverage the protean nature of information [...]
March 6, 2009 at 8:54 am
[...] protean possibilities of the Webfuse model. The first experiment with these possibilities was the Blog Aggregation (BAM) Project. The second was the “web 2.0 course site” [...]
March 10, 2009 at 3:37 pm
[...] feeds out of BAM – the first steps The Blog Aggregation Management (BAM) project is an attempt to be a bit more Web 2.0/SaaS in the implementation of e-learning within a [...]
March 11, 2009 at 9:13 am
[...] The Blog Aggregation Management (BAM) project now generates an OPML feed unique for each individual staff member to track their students’ [...]
April 30, 2009 at 9:22 am
[...] official BAM paper done BAM – Blog Aggregation Management is a project I started in early 2006 to play around with two sets of [...]
May 19, 2009 at 1:14 pm
[...] recording a problem with BAM Trying out a new approach to documentation of coding changes to BAM – i.e. writing it up in a [...]
June 5, 2009 at 9:47 am
[...] taught courses on information systems development. For that particular course offering I developed the BAM project/tool as a way to encourage students to keep reflective journals using their own individual blog. The [...]
July 9, 2009 at 3:14 pm
[...] BAM into Moodle – Can it be done? Blog Aggregation Management (BAM) is a little project of mine that’s been going since 2006. It’s an example of, [...]
July 26, 2009 at 9:27 am
[...] part, this is one aspect of the BAM project. One area it is trying to experiment with. Rather than require students to use blogs provided [...]
August 26, 2009 at 9:18 am
[...] 2.0 and reliability of external services BAM is a little project of mine playing at the edges of post-industrial e-learning. Since 2006 [...]
September 8, 2009 at 3:42 pm
[...] – Getting the prototype up Last time I worked on BIM I got to know weblib.php enough to get the first canned Moodle page generated. The student details [...]
December 14, 2009 at 2:28 pm
[...] and way forward The last couple of months have resulted in an absence from work on BIM (BAM into Moodle). This post is meant to be a summary of where I had gotten up to and a restatement of [...]
December 23, 2009 at 9:33 am
[...] current task on developing BIM, particularly the [...]