CIRIP.

EU – AN EDUCATIONAL MICROBLOGGING PLATFORM

AROUND OBJECTS2.0

Carmen Holotescu1, Gabriela Grosseck2

1
Politehnica University of Timisoara/Timsoft, 2West University of Timisoara, Romania
cami@timsoft.ro,ggrosseck@socio.uvt.ro

Abstract
In recent years, the most daring player in the social media arena proved to be the
microblogging technology, the most energetic in this field being Twitter, raising the interest
of the educational actors. A number of microblogging platforms dedicated to education
were implemented, such as Edmodo, Plurk, Cirip.eu or Twiducate. In this context, the
paper aims to provide an overall analysis of the microblogging platform Cirip.eu for
educational directions such as: information and knowledge management, courses
enhancement, delivering online courses, collaborative projects, communities of practice,
hosting different workshops, conferences or scientific events, building e-portfolios etc.
Thus, the main aspects of the paper will regard the following:
- the facilities offered by Cirip.eu recommend it as a modern and flexible mobile
Social Learning Management System (mSLMS), integrating users' Personal
Learning Environments;
- how microblogging can be integrated with other Web2.0 technologies, and into the
Open Educational Resources movement;
- how the experience and the new pedagogical approach in using microblogging can
be captured and formally represented as learning design objects;
- how learning design objects can be shared, discussed, improved, reused on the
microblogging platform.

Keywords: microblogging, education, learning design, Cirip

Note to the reader: This paper is part of a broader approach of the authors regarding the
use of microblogging in education in order to investigate the degree of integration of this
technology in didactic activities, to identify models and examples of good practices in
teaching, to identify both opportunities and disadvantages, limits and barriers for learning,
to define indicators of social interactions in the microsphere useful for a quality
management of educational activities, to identify success factors, directions and future
trends etc. (see previous papers published by the authors).

1.Facilities of microblogging platform Cirip.eu

As the technology of microblogging is adopted in a variety of contexts, its usefulness

becomes more and more compelling and appealing for educational actors (Borau et al., 2009;
Grosseck and Holotescu, 2008; Parry, 2008). As popular microblogging platforms used in education
we mention Twitter, Cirip, Edmodo, Plurk and a recent one, Twiducate, the first three of them
featuring in the Tops 100 Tools for Learning 2009/2010, compiled by Jane Hart from Centre for
Learning & Performance Technologies (Hart 2009, 2010).
Cirip.eu was launched in the spring of 2008 by Timsoft, a company specialized in eLearning
and mobile applications, under the coordination of the first author.
Besides the facilities of a microblogging platform, Cirip.eu benefits of the advantages of
being an innovative and efficient environment, with characteristics such as (Grosseck and
Holotescu, 2009; Grosseck and Holotescu, 2010):
 • Embedding multimedia objects in notes (see Figure 1): images, audio and (live) video clips,
live-streaming, presentations, files, google docs and forms, cognitive visualizations as
diagrams, learning designs as mindmaps.
• Sending and receiving messages not only via the web but also by mobile, SMS, IM (Yahoo
and Jabber), e-mail, Firefox/Chrome extensions, FF Ubiquity, API, Twitter, RSS, Adobe
AIR, desktop and other 3rd party applications.
• Creating public or private user groups. Collaboration groups can be created between the
participants in an event, members of a class or university year, for a course enhancement or
in order to run an entire online course. Groups have an announcements section (Group
News), where moderators can post notes and materials such as SCORM/LOM objects, for
group activities.
• Domain specification for microblogs and groups. This simplifies the search for microblogs
or groups of a certain domain, for example educational microblogs or groups used for online
courses or workshops.
• Monitoring RSS feeds for sites, blogs, social networks or search feeds.
• Tagging the content.
• Creating and conducting polls and quizzes (which can be answered online or by SMS).
• Visualizing statistics and representations of the users/groups interaction networks.
• Multilingual interface. The platform can be accessed in three languages: Romanian, English
and German, facilitating an international collaboration (soon Italian and French).

Figure 1. Multimedia objects embedded in Cirip.eu messages, source:

http://www.cirip.ro/status/3109554
 2.Cirip.eu as social network around objects2.0

Cirip.eu integrates a wide range of Web2.0 applications and social networks organized
around educational resources, many of them included in Tops 100 Tools for Learning (Hart, 2009,
2010). This integration is realized in order to encourage teachers and students to discover those
Web2.0 applications and social networks and integrate them in their teaching/learning activities.
The platform allows the creation of a personal profile / portfolio including ideas, projects,
research and information resources, multimedia objects created individually or collaboratively. All
users’ activities are developed in a dynamic manner and follow a continuous evaluation process by
communicating with members of groups or of the platform. Thus on Cirip each member can build
not only a Personal Learning Environment but also a Personal Learning Network (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. PLE on Cirip.eu, source http://www.cirip.ro/status/1629920

From this perspective and according to classification of (Stutzman, 2009) and analysis of
(Conole and Culver, 2009), Cirip is a profile-centric network and a social network around PLE
objects.
Furthermore, Cirip is a social network around multimedia objects, thus an object-centric
network:
• the objects are part of the communication-conversation flow of the platform;
• the objects connect Cirip with other social networking / Web2.0 applications organized
around educational objects;
• objects can be shared, reused, validated, created or recreated individually or collaboratively
- we can say Cirip offers an opening to Open Educational Resources (OERs);
 • meta-objects meaning objects of learning design can be created, specifying learning
scenarios, best practices for integrating new technologies in education etc.
By extension, public or private groups can be considered as social objects transforming
Cirip in a social learning management system (SLMS), or a social network around SLMS objects.

3.Cirip.eu as a social network around leaning design objects

According to (Stutzman, 2009), learning design aims to enable reflection, refinement,

change and communication by focusing on forms of representation, notation and documentation,
also to support teachers in making pedagogically informed, better use of technologies. The scope of
learning design is to improve the quality of the learning experience, learning outcomes and learner
support.
As (Ebner et al., 2010) note, there has been increasing research done on the use of
microblogging in learning scenarios. Therefore, a few months ago, the authors have opened a group
of learning design (LD) to share best practices (at http://cirip.ro/grup/lds). LD group members can
be teachers, practitioners in education, trainers, students, but also other persons interested to
maximize the benefits of using social media (in particular Cirip.eu) for career development or
business.
The aims of the group are:
• to support innovative strategies in order to engage and empower teachers and learners and
make learning more accessible and participative;
• to inform about the learning design domain and its importance for the educational process;
• to encourage the sharing of effective pedagogies experiences and the integration of new
technologies in education;
• to create, discuss, analyze, evaluate, improve, adapt, and reuse such best practices
represented as learning designs;
• to get learners’ feedback, empowering them as creative participants in the design of
learning;
• the scenarios refer to formal, non-formal and informal education, to educational events, to
social learning in general.
The discussions and exchange of experiences in the group dedicated to learning design both
assess the value of technology-enhanced learning and bring new resources and information in the
field.
The “Announcements” section of the group presents the Learning Design field, together
with notable projects: variants of EML, the Educational Modeling Language developed by the
Valkenburg Group, IMS-LD standard, JISC Design for Learning Program, modeling tools such as
LAMS, Reload, CopperCore, CompendiumLD etc (Conole, 2010). If other communities of practice
related to LD are hosted by dedicated platforms, the LD group on Cirip.eu is integrated on the
platform where these scenarios are used effectively, so they can be validated and improved (see
Figure 3). Thus, the possibility to communicate and collaborate around the LD meta-objects makes
Cirip similar to Cloudworks, but Cloudworks is a network focused strictly on LD (Conole and
Culver, 2009).
For the purpose of the research, the authors chose mindmaps and diagrams, with the
corresponding Web2.0 applications Mindmeister, Mindomo, Spicynodes and Diagrammr as
solution for nonformal representations of learning design. These are accessible to non-technical
users, can be collaboratively edited and can be embedded in Cirip notes.
Thus the conversation in the group is built around these learning design objects. They can
also be considered meta-objects, as they reflect scenarios for different activities on the platform. It
is useful to specify a LD for each course/educational activity hosted in a group, which can be
improved while running the activity, then share in LD group and reuse it in other similar activities.
For each complex LD is possible to open a separate group on Cirip.
 Consequently, the LD group encourages peer-working and peer-mentoring in creating /
recreating scenarios, but also in preparation and facilitation of courses and educational events. Thus,
a teacher or facilitator can apply successful scenarios, and can be assisted / helped in facilitating the
course by a more experienced colleague. Feedback will be brought in LD group, by teachers and
participants for all member’s benefit.

Figure 3. Scenario for the LD group http://cirip.ro/grup/lds, source:

http://www.cirip.ro/status/4360149

Like all communication and collaboration on Cirip, the LD group is an illustration of JP

Rangaswami's metaphor: "Conversations grow around social objects, much like pearls grow around
microscopic dust. Social objects are about growth, they are live” (Rangaswami , 2008).

4.Educational uses of the platform

Cirip.eu is a dynamic, user-centred environment that engages participatory experiences,

collective learning, transforming the traditional, online and blended learning spaces in many ways
(see Figure 4):
 Figure 4. Learning / Training / Practising contexts on the microblogging platform Cirip.eu,
source: http://www.cirip.ro/status/1629510

In the last two years, on the microblogging platform Cirip.eu, formal and informal courses
and trainings (hosted in private or public groups) for pupils, students, teachers, trainers, employees
in schools, universities, companies have been organized by different institutions or during European
educational projects. The statistics, timelines, network sections and different visualizations of these
groups proved a high interest and involvement of participants.
Usually the interaction in this groups and on the platform continues after the
courses/trainings ended. The members continue to learn and to practise the knowledge gained
during the courses (the continuous activity being illustrated by the timelines of the participants'
microblogs). The learning community built in each group is enlarged with Cirip members such as
students, trainers, teachers, and specialists, becoming a real community of practice.
Many of those who participate in formal activities build their own Personal Learning
Environment / Network (PLE/PLN) on Cirip to connect, communicate, collaborate and/or share
ideas and resources with the users they follow. PLEs/PLNs (can) contain also (see Figure 2):
• groups for national and international conferences, workshops, events, project management;
• sites / blogs / networks feeds and search feeds;
• social networks providing educational objects / OERs (Open Educational Resources), which
can be included in messages etc.
A special attention is directed to the meta-learning contexts as spaces through which
Cirip users become aware of their learning and knowledge growth. Thus, in the special group on the
platform dedicated to learning designs (The Learning Scenarios group - lds), the teachers/trainers
discuss, validate and improve the scenarios of learning activities and courses they develop,
formalizing them as mindmaps embedded in Cirip notes. Another advantage is that they can also
find peers for peer-mentoring their courses.
However, for the large category of learning activities on the platform we tried to readapt the
taxonomy of Bloom (Churches, 2009):

Table 1 Bloom taxonomy rewritten for the on-line environment of Cirip

Level / Category Key words / Examples of activities

- Retrieving: messages can be sent and received online through
Web, email, mobile, SMS / IM / Jabber / Gtalk / mJAVA, firefox
extension CiripFox / iGoogle cGadget / ciripAIR, FF Ubiquity,
Twitter account / from RSS2cirip.
- Listing: widgets on sites, notifications by email, SMS,
iCIRIP.
- Basic search on different criteria; for each search an RSS feed
REMEMBERING is generated:
 search messages - in all public messages, in personal
messages, in accounts / feeds / current groups or in followed
feeds / groups;
 search users after different criteria at Users page (name,
gender, location, microblogging domain);
 search groups after criteria - at Groups page (name,
moderator, type);
 search feeds – at Feeds page (name, URL).
- Social networking - each microblog has a network section,
displaying followers and followed users, groups and feeds.
- Highlighting through Real-Time Wall and Timeline (Figure
5).
- Locating/finding with maps (see also
http://www.cirip.ro/cirip/map).

Figure 5. The timeline section for a microblog

source: http://www.cirip.ro/u/Gabriela/timeline
UNDERSTANDING - Advanced searching with Twingly.
- Categorising and tagging (see TagCloud sections for
microblogs, groups, feeds).
- Commenting (see reply messages with @ and RC and email
for an entire group).
- Annotating: bookmarklet button Cirip (Send on Cirip).
- Subscribing (RSS2cirip, monitoring RSS blogs, other sites).
- Twittering - Twitter integration (cirip2twitter, twitter2cirip –
at message level, user (authentification) or for import to/from
groups).
- Classifying/comparing (with TOP statistics, Network from
each user microblog menu).
- Summarising: collaborative documents (voicethread, dotsub,
mindmeister).
- Collection/explanation: mindmapping in courses strategy (in
collaborative or individual settings) – mindmeister, mindomo,
spicynodes, diagrammr.
- Show &tell: audio/video recording tools – vocaroo, seesmic
and lifestreaming – qik.
APPLYING - Loading: any type of file (pdf, doc, xls, odt, etc).
- Illustration: capzles (historic tale construction application).
- Screencapturing: screenr, screenjelly, screencastle.
- Presentation with prezi, glogster, authorstream, capzles,
notaland.
- Interview: any audio recorder – > mp3 files are embedded in
messages; vocaroo, lifestreaming.
- Uploading: flickr, picasa, photopeach, youtube, vimeo,
slideshare.
- Sharing: links (shorten), audio (eok, deezer, blipfm, trilulilu),
video (youtube, vimeo, 220.ro, myvideo), presentation (slideshare,
photopeach).
- Editing: dotsub, google docs (students can work in
collaboration).
ANALYSING - Polls and surveys (polls and quizzes can be created and
responses can be sent through Web and SMS, and poll facility from
Photopeach and Google Form).
- Mindmaps: mindmeister, mindomo, spicynodes, diagrammr.
- Graph – any image (by URL) can represent the result of a
graph utility, google drawings.
EVALUATING - Commenting: @ replies and through RC.
- Testing (Quizz and Polls, google forms).
- Moderating, collaborating, networking – the user is turning
into content creator / group facilitator.
CREATING - ALL of the multimedia objects embedded in messages.

Furthermore, by valorizing the mobility parameters of the Cirip.eu platform we expand the
learning towards ubiquitous spaces – available to anyone, anywhere, at anytime and from any
anything (read device/technology/apps). Thus, through an approach based on mobile technologies,
multimedia (embbedd) objects and microblogging we adopted a m3 learning strategy for the purpose
of increasing knowledge and learning in authentic environments.
 The Cirip specific features for mobile learning presented in Table 2 are based on the (Patten,
Arnedillo Sanchez and Tangney, 2006) framework, having particular meaning and implementation
(Holotescu and Grisseck, 2010):

Table 2 M3-learning features

Category Cirip specific features

Administration • joining groups can be realized by using a mobile browser or the
mobile version m.cirip.eu or via SMS;
• mobile number or username can be issued for authentication
• recover password via SMS;
• after sending a SMS with the group name and a keyword, the learners
receive a response via SMS with courses or exams schedules, or their
grades;
Reference • using a mobile browser, students can access course materials
published as RSS-LOM objects in groups space;
• also they can access multimedia resources (open educational resources
) embedded in messages;
Interaction • share and ask opinions from peers or other members using a mobile
browser or via SMS
• students can follow members, groups and feeds via free SMS; they can
specify the time interval for SMS delivering, also when these alerts
should be stopped or restarted, by texting Cirip on/off;
• during the f2f courses and activities, if teachers agree, students can
send SMS including questions, comments in groups, for future reflections;
also their observations during activities outside universities;
• send feedback / comments / questions via SMS to dedicated groups,
during workshops or conferences;
• participate via SMS in polls and quizzes operated during courses or
events;
Multimedia • create collaborative multimedia objects in groups dedicated to courses
Collaboration or to teamwork;
• comment videos by sending SMS in courses/teams groups; the
messages are exported as a .srt file and used to subtitle the video clips;
• send images, (live) video / audio clips during events, activities
Meta- • by communicating with members and groups, in a continuous
Collaboration evaluation process, integrating (search) feeds and collaborative
activities/resources from other social networks, members can build and
manage mobile Personal Learning Environments;
• scenarios for teaching and learning represented as mindmaps are
discussed/improved by using a mobile browser, in a group dedicated to
learning designs;
Localization • using a Cirip mash-up implemented on the augmented reality browser
Layar, one can geo-locate, find information and join different groups; the
mash-up is important especially for finding groups for workshops, events,
trainings, being a valuable facility for educational marketing;
Facilitation • groups moderators can send alerts via SMS to groups members,
announcing news or updates with a high priority;
• by following users, groups and feeds via SMS, teachers / trainers
receives updates related to courses in real-time; thus they can participate
 in discussions, give feedback via SMS, being present even when they
don't have access to internet;
• groups moderators can create dynamic responses to administrative
aspects asked by members via SMS (see Administration).

5.Final remarks

Our activities and research in the last two years on the platform allow us to state that
Cirip.eu has facilities for delivering successful and quality online courses, trainings, workshops,
international projects’ meetings etc. The communication, authoring, monitoring, statistical facilities
foster Cirip.eu as a modern, free, mobile social LMS which integrates many Web2.0 technologies,
and also allows users to develop their PLEs/PLNs. Furthermore, if Twitter and other
microblogging platforms offer mainly the practice context, we point out that Cirip could provide
formal training frameworks and meta-learning contexts which can be adapted to any type of
learning activities. These facilities position Cirip.eu within the spectrum of educational services for
an efficient continuous education, training, learning and personal development.
However we do consider that the success key in using microblogging platform Cirip.eu in
education is to be aware of the fact that there is a relationship between the user, the technological
environment and his learning activities and also to avoid the risk of emphasing the technology and
not the pedagogy.
Although we refer explicitly to Cirip.eu, our remarks may also apply to other microblogging
platforms / services like Twitter, Identi.ca, Plurk, Edmodo, Yammer etc. „Think of it this way:
Microblogging is the way in which you choose to speak, while Cirip.eu is the tool you use to talk to
the world.” (apud Livingston, 2010).

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