Lesley Anderson

Aggregation, syndication and the social engine

Explain how the Elgg social engine works on a Web site where it is installed?
Is this the type of application you want on your Web server in the workplace?

Elgg is built on LAMP[i] it is open source software, released under the GPL[ii].  Elgg has its own system of plug-ins and also supports RSS, OpenID, FOAF and XML-RPC for integration with most blogging sites.

Elgg provides each user with their own blog, file repository, online profile and RSS reader and their content can be tagged with keywords - connecting them to users with similar interests and giving the ability to create their own PLN(Personal Learning Network).  It is different to other blog facilities or commercial Social Networking sites such as Facebook in the amount of control users are given over who can access the content they publish. Each individual profile item, blog post or uploaded file can be assigned its own access restriction, ranging from being fully public to only readable by a selected user or group of users.

New Elgg users begin by creating an identity which says who they are and what they are interested in. Published items can be tagged and the software uses these tags to connect other users with similar interests.

A user can also start a community for others to join and Elgg also includes the ability to publish a podcast a system for users to subscribe to other web content.

Elgg is not a centralized service. Most commercial networks are one space branded in one particular way whereas Elgg allows organizations to host their own systems customized to specific requirements, but still retain connectivity from site to site.

Presently, our school group uses the SINA based intranet - MyClasses across all schools. MyClasses is extremely secure and I have used it to set up project work for my Grade 5/6 students with a small amount of success. It is “clunky” to use though and requires a reasonable amount of technical knowledge to set up properly.  There are reasonable attempts at Social Networking with some groups being formed around common subjects and an ability to share ELF’s (Electronic Learning Folders) across the schools. Recently our pages have included a wiki facility - an attempt to include some web 2.0 functionality but to date it isn’t used that much and there only seem to be a handful of users of the pages.

From what I have looked at with Elgg, it seems a huge step forward with regard to setting up social networking in an educational setting. Its versatility is something that is capturing my imagination. Elgg can be used in the same way as a commercial social networking site such as Facebook or installed on servers to be used as a closed intranet facility - with a variety of options in between.  The features I particularly like are the ease of connection to other user sites combined with the ability to decide exactly who sees your information or postings.  I have joined Elgg’s community space, online, so that I can further investigate, for myself, exactly what it might offer me, in my educational setting. 

 [i] LAMP is an acronym for a solution stack of free, opensource software, originally coined from the first letters of  Linux- the operating system, Apache - http server, MySQL - database software and PHP - web scripting language, which are principal components to build a viable general purpose web server. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAMP_(solution_stack)   

[ii] The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU project. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL