A few years ago we created a prototype of a tool to help people make sense of video collections, by enabling them to create and annotate ‘virtual clips’, compile them into playlists and share them. The tool had a lot of promise but it was built in Flash which has declined as a technology.
Nonetheless, it inspired a lot of our more recent work exploring the use of HTML5 to create easy–to-use publishing tools for the open education movement – that work is still ongoing (more on that later). But, back to Clipper… Thanks to the kind folks at Jisc we are back on the Clipper trail again. After taking part in a competition to pitch for funding we have received a grant to develop the concept a bit further and gauge the demand from the research community. This funding is part of Jisc’s work to help UK researchers and institutions better manage their research data, for more info about that see the Research Data Spring website.
So, in this part of the Clipper story we shall be exploring how the proposed toolkit and its underlying concepts can be applied in research settings – particularly in relation to making better use of research data. If we succeed in this phase of the work, we will be in line to compete for further funding to develop the actual Clipper toolkit.