Geek Index: about 8
It’s one of my favorite blogs, John Musser’s ProgrammableWeb. But his site is much more than that. It is a directory of mashups (3,331) and APIs (907), the DNA that makes them work.
API stands for Application Programming Interface, and it is a function or procedure that can be used to extract or otherwise work the content of a web site. For instance, Technorati, the blog search engine, has a number of APIs for tying into their search engine. Their Tag Query API provides a URL that reads:
http://api.technorati.com/tag?key=[apikey]&tag=[tag]&format=rss
Many APIs require a key, which is a string of characters that represent and label your web site to serving site. You can register for and receive your own Technorati API key here.
So your key would replace the [apikey]. Then you might type the blog tag you are looking for, say, “learn2cn,” the tag for the Learning 2.008 conference. In your own web page, the Technorati API address below would result in an RSS feed
http://api.technorati.com/tag?key=[myapikey]&tag=learn2cn&format=rss
Plugged into Alan Levine’s very useful Feed2JS tool, you get a java script that can be plugged into many different kinds of web environments, such as a Moodle block, producing something like this:
…a list of the latest 10 blog posts tagged for the Learning 2.008 Conference in Shanghai this month.
This is not rocket science. But it’s also not using a word processor. But, I think that we are increasingly realizing that literacy today is much more than just reading, writing, and basic math — that its the ability to work information to accomplish goals. If this is true, then thinking about things like APIs might be something that we, some of us, should be doing, and introducing to students, some of them.
What do you think?
I think you’re right to point out that this may not be for all teachers or all students. I like the idea, though, of teaching students to use some of the awesome API resources out there.
You hit the nail on the head when you point out that this is the way we want students thinking about information: as something to play with, mold, and build something useful out of. That’s why the research paper has always been the king of the curriculum in most disciplines from middle-school on: it makes students build something new out of existing information. Mashups are sort of a research paper that doesn’t stand still.
The bigger issue with this is how much we should be teaching things like php, python, or javascript–the languages you need to be able to work with these APIs–in middle or high school. There’s a long history of advocating widespread programming instruction in k-12 (projects like logo, for instance), but they’ve never become really common.
I think, though, that maybe the easy availability of free, high-quality, and relevant data is a good reason to give heavy investment in programming instruction another look. Students can make real, valuable tools with the same amount of instruction it used to take for them to build pong.
As you point out, we want students to be information literate, to be able to think and do with data, and that’s what programming is all about. We teach everyone to write, not just future journalists; I wonder if basic programming should be the same way?