Learning and Knowledge Analytics

One thing has surprised me a bit: people refusing to sign up for Hunch because it would require a Facebook or Twitter sign-in. Do you all realize it is also possible to create a hunch account without using those things? They did manage to hide it well, but it is there.

For the truly paranoid:

• Make sure you sign out of Facebook and Twitter and delete all your cookies
• Create a throw away email address
• Sign up to Hunch and play around

For the truly truly paranoid:

• Dress up as somebody from one of the other two genders than yours (thanks Ignatia)
• Go to a public Internet computer and wear gloves
  

Indeed the complete US-centricness of the service was the first thing that I noticed. I believe it asked me at some point on what continent I am living. How come it still asks me questions to which I would never have an answer? Are these questions crowdsourced too? Do we get them randomly or do we get certain questions based on our answers? It feels like the former to me.

The recommendations that it gave me seemed to be pretty random too. The occasional hit and then a lot of missers. I had the ambition to try out the top 5 music albums it would recommend me, but couldn't bear the thought of listening to all that rock. This did sneak a little thought into my head: could it be that I am very special? Am I so ecclectic that I can defeat all data mining effort. Am I the Napoleon Dynamite of people? Of course I am not, but the question remains: does this work better for some people than for others.

One other thing that I noticed how the site seemed to use some of the tricks of an astrologer: who wouldn't like "Insalata Caprese", seems like a safe recommendation to me.

In the learning domain I could see an application as an Electronich Performance Support System. It would know what I need in my work and could recommend the right website to order business cards (when it sees I go to a conference) or an interesting resource relating to the work that I am doing. Kind of like a new version of Clippy, but one that works.

BTW, In an earlier blogpost I have written about how recommendation systems could turn us all into mussels (although I don't really believe that).

Moodle only creates sensible RSS feeds for forums with a post in it. This post will allow me (and anybody else) to add the RSS feed to my reader.

Moodle only creates sensible RSS feeds for forums with a post in it. This post will allow me (and anybody else) to add the RSS feed to my reader.

Moodle only creates sensible RSS feeds for forums with a post in it. This post will allow me (and anybody else) to add the RSS feed to my reader.