Having installed Pligg, I’ve had an opportunity to give it a trial run as a user. Pligg is an open source social bookmarking application that imitates Digg. Users are able to submit stories or links to share with others with tags and descriptions. Submissions are approved by an admin, then users can vote or comment on the link.
The interface is well designed and doesn’t have a clunky feel that some software can have. There are a number of free and for-pay templates which are installed via ftp. Further customization usually involves editing files with a text editor–adding deleting or commenting out text.
There is some interesting user interactivity built in. As mentioned before, users can vote on a submission. The admin can choose either a “Digg” rating or a 5 star ranking system. It supports tagging. Ratings impact the order stories are displayed. In addition, an individual item can be commented upon and even discussed. Users can list other users as friends and friends can message each other
I believe this has a number of uses for education. If nothing else, it is an attractive way to manage and display links. The interactivity is easy to grasp and would encourage participation. Users share, discuss, and evaluate links. I could see it used by an individual class, school, or by a larger audience.
To make this work for my district, I would have to make a number of changes. First, registration would need to be disabled. As configured, anyone can create an account. While there is moderation of content, pending stories are displayed in “Upcoming Stories” found in many locations in the interface. We would need to disable the display of content before approved. Since comments couldn’t be moderated, we would need to disable that as well.
Finding help with Pligg is reasonable. There is a good forum, but documentation was uneven and confusing. I wanted to find if I could make the changes outlined above. Using the forum search generally good leads. I have been able to make most of the modifications with educated trial-and-error.
I look forward to experimenting with Pligg at school next year. While the full interactivity would be limited, I believe it will help my students learn to navigate Web 2.0 applications. I will share the modifications when I have double checked them.
Here’s a link to an unmodified installation:
And my modified Pligg:
