CC Flickr image by Rakka

Here’s another entry to the D-Ed Pool and it’s an interesting one as it’s a service I quite liked but also is a good example of one of the main pitfalls of using web2.0 tools for education.

Fliggo was a build-your-own video sharing site which I originally viewed way back here. The applications for education were plentiful. You could in effect create a TV channel for your school or class and protect it the same way you could protect a wordpress blog (controlling who can upload or view, add comments etc) with the added bonus that you could import videos from YouTube thus getting round most education ISPs’ filters.

A few weeks ago it stopped allowing me to upload videos and now it’s not even allowing me to login. In November Fliggo was “rolled into” Vidly a Twitter video service and the create-your-own aspect of the site was quietly put to bed. Have a read of Fliggo’s blog post – it’s quite illuminating.

Why is it important for educators?

It tells us somethings about the nature of the web2.0 at a time when it’s really taking off for teaching and learning.

  1. Services like Fliggo take time and resources to build and then maintain. There is a lot of altruism on the web but it’s not limitless. People need to eat. I think I remember @dougbelshaw saying in a blog post that the web2.0 “free lunch” was a but of an illusion (sorry if that’s a misquote, Doug). In Fliggo’s case they needed to make a commercial decision and that didn’t include keeping Fliggo going.
  2. The 2nd point is related. In the 11months or so since Fliggo was released the nature of the social web has changed. Twitter seems to be where the people are(and therefore, the money). Fliggo was catering for a need that appears to have vanished with alarming speed.

It’s one of the principle risks of using many web2.0 tools that there is no guarantee that it will be there when you want it. Many services are still in beta. Some may never come out of beta and slowly die a death as the venture capital funding runs out or you’ll find that features that were once free are now charged for.

I talked about this previously and Fliggo is a case in point. The way we as educators use web-based technology needs to take this fragility into account and we have to be more agile and flexible than some people have been used to.

RIP Fliggo (no flowers, please)