REST-Based Mobile Web Learning Collaboration Tools

using Twitter , bit.ly , and twitpic APIs

Panggi Libersa Irawan Afrianto
Indonesia’s Computer University (UNIKOM) Indonesia’s Computer University (UNIKOM)
Jalan Dipatiukur 112-114 , Bandung Indonesia Jalan Dipatiukur 112-114 , Bandung Indonesia
root@malcoder.info Irawan_afrianto@yahoo.com

ABSTRACT
Microblogging is a new form of communication in which users • Tweet – something written on Twitter
can describe their current status in short posts distributed by • @ - a symbol written before the username to make the
instant messages, mobile phones, email or the Web. Twitter, a tweet appear in the username’s “Mention” page
popular microblogging tool has seen a lot of growth since it
• Reply – the reply to specific status message
launched in October, 2006. In this paper,the author presents his
observations of the microblogging phenomena and show the • Following – other user which their tweet will always be
ability of this to become the learning collaboration tools by shown in our timeline
combining the power of some REST-Based APIs available on the • Follower – other user which our tweet will always be
Internet. shown on his/her timeline
• ReTweet (RT) clasic and new ReTweet
Keywords • Direct Messages – Personal message that can only be
Twitter, Social Media, REST Architecture, Learning viewed by specific user.
Collaboration Tools. • Favorites – save a favorited tweet
• Hash Tags (#) – a symbol written before the particular
1. INTRODUCTION topic to make the topic searchable in other tweets in
Twitter is a social-networking and microb-logging service Twitter
developed in San Francisco and first launched in October 2006. • Trending Topics – topics that are being talked about
Twitter posts, or, ‘tweets’, are no longer than 140 characters in most on Twitter in particular time
length and can include hyperlinks. One becomes a Twitter user, or
twitterer, by creating a personal account and by posting tweets to
a personalised online news feed, or, as it is more commonly By default twitter don’t have Picture upload for the tweets and
known, a 'timeline' which displays them in reverse chronological URL shortener features , so we add one using Twitpic API for the
order (i.e. most recent at the top). The default setting for Twitter Picture Upload and bit.ly API for the URL Shortener.
accounts is that user timelines are public unless the account holder
decides to make them private, in which case, they are only
accessible to approved followers of that account. If a Twitter user 2. EXAMPLE OF THE USAGE IN CSI
decides to follow another twitterer, then they will receive that CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION
person's tweets on their timeline. Twitter timelines, therefore,
comprise of both tweets by the account holder as well as the users
they are following. Part of Twitter's popularity is its ease of use The good example taken from Langwitches Blog:
and versatility; although Twitter a was developed initially as a
web-based platform, tweets can be sent via a computer or via a
mobile phone as an SMS message. On some mobile phone Approach :
networks in some countries, users can receive tweets from
selected users they are following as text messages. In Indonesia, • took images of skeleton with the Cellular Phone
for example, both AXIS, allow tweets to be received as SMS • uploaded to Twitpic, which sent automatic tweet to
messages. There are now many free desktop clients (i.e software Twitter network
users download and install) for Macs and PCs (e.g. Tweetdeck,
Seesmic ) and mobile ‘apps’ (e.g. UberTwitter, Snaptu) for
various types of 'smart' phones (e.g. iPhone,BlackBerry, Nokia)
that make sending, organising and reading tweets easier. Due to
their brevity, tweets have much in common with the short text-
making practices associated with SMS messages, instant
messaging or Facebook status updates. However, it is blog posts.
Unlike blog posts, there are distinct categories of tweets, each
with their own user generated conventions:

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REST-Based Mobile Web Learning Collaboration Tools using Twitter , bit.ly , and twitpic APIs

Figure 2. Tweet Suggestion

After the upload :

comments were left by other Flickr users

Figure 3. Comment

Another Flickr user can tag the picture with captions

Figure 4. Tag Picture

The Twitter network also jumped in and retweeted (RT) the

request for help onward to their network:

Figure 1. Example Pictures Figure 5. Retweeted

Over the next three hours the “shout out” for help in identifying Guesses and further questions :
the skeleton received over 50 Twitter responses with

• links to resources to further investigate

• guesses on what it could be
• help to get experts involved
• questions to help further narrow the answers down
• advice where else to publish questions and take
advantage of the power of social networking

The Tweet suggested to upload the image to ID-Please group on

Flickr:

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Figure 6. Question

Suggestion of getting in touch with experts who could help our

investigation along or expert’s guesses:

Figure 9. Aplication at a glance

Figure 7.. Suggestion of getting in touch with experts

Links to more Resources:

Figure 8. More Resources

3. APPLICATION AT A GLANCE Figure 10. Work Of System

This the user interface of application The Application is made using PHP programming language that
can be supported in most web servers so it can be installed almost
anywhere .

RESTful Web Services

A RESTful web service (also called a RESTful web API) is a

simple web service implemented using HTTP and the principles
of REST. Such a web service can be thought about as a collection

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of resources. The definition of such a web service can be thought REST example in twitpic
of as comprising three aspects:
METHOD: http://twitpic.com/api/uploadAndPost
• The base URI for the web service, such as
http://example.com/resources/ Use this method to upload an image to TwitPic and to send it as a
• The MIME type of the data supported by the web status update to Twitter.
service. This is often JSON, XML or YAML but can be
any other valid MIME type. Fields to post in
• The set of operations supported by the web service (post data should be formatted as multipart/form-data):
using HTTP methods (e.g., POST, GET, PUT or - media (required) - Binary image data
DELETE). - username (required) - Twitter username
- password (required) - Twitter password
REST example in Twitter API : - message (optional) - Message to post to twitter. The URL of the
image is automatically added.
Method : trends
Sample response:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
Returns the top ten topics that are currently trending on Twitter. <rsp status="ok">
The response includes the time of the request, the name of each <statusid>1111</statusid>
trend, and the url to the Twitter Search results page for that topic. <userid>11111</userid>
<mediaid>abc123</mediaid>
URL: <mediaurl>http://twitpic.com/abc123</mediaurl>
</rsp>
http://search.twitter.com/trends.format
REST example in bit.ly
Format:
/shorten
json
Given a long URL, /shorten encodes it as a shorter one and returns
HTTP Method: it.

GET Additional Parameters

Requires Authentication (about authentication): • longUrl

false A long URL to shorten, eg: http://betaworks.com

Note: Long URLs should be URL-escaped.
API rate limited (about rate limiting):
Examples
1 call per request
• http://api.bit.ly/shorten?version=2.0.1&longUrl=http://c
Response (about return values): nn.com&login=bitlyapidemo&apiKey=R_0da49e0a911
8ff35f52f629d2d71bf07
JSON example (truncated):

{"trends":[{"name":"#amazonfail","url":"http:\/\/search.twi
tter.com\/search?q=%23amazonfail"},... truncated
...],"as_of":"Mon, 13 Apr 2009 20:48:29 +0000"}
Usage examples:
cURL (about cURL):
curl http://search.twitter.com/trends.json
4. POTENTIAL EDUCATIONAL USES OF
TWITTER
In this section, we’ll explore some pragmatic issues (the benefits,
the drawbacks, the logistics) about Twitter as an educational tool,
based on literature and some of our own experimentation with it
[Gabriela GROSSECK Carmen HOLOTESCU , 2008]:
Classroom community. Twittering in class or outside of it is
about learning.

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Exploring collaborative writing: it promotes writing as a fun
activity, it fosters editing skills, develop literacy skills; it can give
our students a
chance to record their cognitive trails and then use them to reflect
on their work.
Reader response: students can use tweets to send out questions
and observations to the group while engaged in classroom
activities.
Explore the potential of microblogging in formal and informal
settings:
Twitter linked to a course/class blog can offer our students
opportunities to discuss different kinds of asynchronous online
discourse, considering voice, purpose, audience, to organize ideas,
reflect, send notes, manage meet-ups, promote serendipitous
discovery etc.
Collaboration across schools, countries (for example, students
can leave phone-tweets as they come across real-world examples
of what they are
studying in class).
Project Management: if you set up a group working on a
project the tweets can be picked up on cell phones (as can email)
A tool for assessing opinion, examining consensus, looking
for outlying ideas. Twitter also could be used in an academic
setting to foster
interaction about a given topic.
A viable platform for metacognition (the practice of thinking
about and reflecting on your learning) has been shown to benefit
comprehension and retention.
Conference or as part of a presentation or workshop. Twitter
can provide a simple way for attendees at a conference to share
thoughts about
particular sessions and activities with others at the event and those
unable to attend. Twitter works well for an undercurrent
dialogues, being a way
to organize, give quick updates, and rapidly point to resources.
For reference or research (almost the entire edublogosphere is
connecting via Twitter). Higher education (especially) is using the
technology to relay important information to students in a more
timely manner.
Facilitating virtual classroom discussion by using
@username. It directs the ‘tweet’ at the intended recipient whilst
allowing every student to also see it.
Creating a learning experience (Twitter can be used to impact
on the student’s learning).
Twitter facilitates a Personal Learning Network (PLN) in the
edublogosphere. In this context students can ask questions of
those they
Proceeding - ICOSic2010 UNS Solo Indonesia
only know online [Belshaw, 2007].
Exploring the language that students have used in the session,
that other people would naturally use to describe an event’s
probability.
Reference services (in libraries). People could "follow" a
Twitter account to learn about library events, new books, or get
responses to library user
questions.
5. CONCLUSIONS
Twitter can be an effective tool for professional development and
for collaboration with students, that can change the rules of the
courses and models good pedagogy responsive to student's
learning needs. And with that ability of twitter and some
additional features we discuss before , it will make the learning
process becomes better.
6. REFERENCES
[1] Leonard Richardson and Sam Ruby, " RESTful Web
Services ", O’Reilly, 2007.
[2] Kevin Makice, " Twitter API : Up and Running ", O’Reilly,
2009.
[3] Twitter Developer (10 February 2010), “Welcome to the
Twitter API wiki. What are you coding?” , URL:
http://apiwiki.twitter.com
[4] bit.ly Developer (10 February 2010), “API Libraries and
Documentation for bit.ly” , URL:
http://code.google.com/p/bitly-api/wiki/ApiDocumentation
[5] twitpic Developer (10 February 2010), “API
DOCUMENTATION”, URL: http://twitpic.com/api.do
[6] Langwitches(10 February 2010),” CSI Twitter- Crime Scene
Investigation” ,URL:
http://langwitches.org/blog/2009/12/04/csi-twitter-crime-
scene-investigation/
[7] Gabriela GROSSECK Carmen HOLOTESCU (16 February
2010),” CAN WE USE TWITTER FOR EDUCATIONAL
ACTIVITIES”, URL:
http://adlunap.ro/else/presentations/Grosseck_Can%20we%2
0use%20twitter.ppt
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