Bringing #ds106 to Wordcamp Vancouver

I got a chance to spread the ds106 mojo at Wordcamp Vancouver today, with my session on Building an Open Course/Community with WordPress, Syndication, and Duct Tape:

ds106 is an open course in Digital Storytelling that leverages platforms of open source tools, syndication, and social media in a way that makes it more community than course. At ds106.us is a wordpress powered hub that aggregates and recombines input from 500+ external blogs plus a user contributed assignment bank, daily creative challenges, even a radio station. Built by a team of educator tinkerers, not coders, ds106 is as a model of a community network that is not limited to just courses.

This was on the heels of a cross-Canada flight with a 1:30am arrival to our quarters in Vancouver, a little bit more late night slide fiddling of slides, a trailing cold, and lot of coffee. Hence, GNA’s description feels apt:

@cogdog Guess what? You are nice. You sounded both knowledgeable and like a tweaker. So good.

— GNA Garcia (@DrGarcia) October 13, 2012

First up the slides, exported from Keynote as a pDF and upped to slideshare

I also broadcast the talk to #ds106 radio, and had planned to record the audio on my ipad… but forgot to click the Big Red Button. Oh well. I also had my keynote presentation doing some auto tweeting (curious? here’s how) (yes, I have to update those instructions a bit).

Ah, but who needs an audio recording when Giulia is doing her amazing visual notes?

cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by giulia.forsythe

I really meant to do a nice web site for the presentation with links and stuff, but alas, this is a WordPress conference and why not just blog it? eh?

A few thoughts- as I guessed most people do not know nor really care about massive open courses. But they do all have the common experience of school, sitting in rows, listening to lectures, whule at the same time being part of the creative aspects of the open web.

People do not really even get or understand syndication. It feels like magic. Maybe it is.

RSS is sure lively and useful for something that is dead.

People were really interested in the Daily Create and the concept of the Assignment Bank. I spoke to people in areas outside of education who quickly saw the application potential.

Maybe I did convince them how much fun this is and I do it for reasons that ahve nithing to do with being a business success or maximizing my SEO.

Now, the links:

#ds106 lives, breathes, and runs wildly on wordpress at http://t.co/SfwyktM2 #wcyvr

— Alan Levine (@cogdog) October 13, 2012

Home of #ds106 Univ of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg VA. No one gave them $60 million to do open course #wcyvr

— Alan Levine (@cogdog) October 13, 2012

ds106 is a project that grew out of The University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, VA. They have a rich history of WordPress love, with UMW Blogs which at last count had over 7000 blogs created by 9000 users from a college with a student population of maybe 4000 (google analytic stats- 4.5 million page views, over 2 million visits by 1.5 million people). The university web site is based on wordpress and they are running a pilot of providing over 400 students their own domain and web hosting

Some testimonials I collected from people who have participated in ds106:

• “After twelve years of creative stagnation, DS106 brought me back to my soul. Truly.” @hotnzazzy
• “DS106 embodies the freedom and collaborative nature I love about the Internet. The community is greater than the sum of its parts. DS106 gives me hope that online education can be more than the top down, canned speech garbage that represents 99% of all MOOCs. This can and should be a powerful, organic community that creates lasting change and growth.” @twoodwar
• “I’ve heard before that practicing creativity regularly makes you more creative, and from participating in DS 106 I have to say that this is absolutely true. Between daily creates and projects from the assignment bank, I am constantly creating things, and I find myself taking more creative approaches to everything else in my life, from approaching problems at work to noticing the interesting angles and textures of a room. I write fiction in my spare time, and DS 106 has allowed me to step outside of my comfort zone and approach storytelling in a lot of new ways that have helped me to grow as a writer.” @madamezubidar
• “Being a current student majoring in Computer Science at the University of Mary Washington, participating in DS106 gave me a wealth of knowledge far beyond any other Computer Science class at the University. Going into DS106 I had extensive knowledge of computer programming, but did not understand how to implement my programming skills with web design. managing and creating our own blogs on the WordPress platform in DS106, I successfully learned about the WordPress platform and web design. I used the skills obtained from DS106 and combined them with my past programming skills to successfully become a Web Developer. The summer following successfully completing the course, I interned for a company as an Business Analyst and Project Coordinator. One of my tasks was to simply put language onto a newly created website that was not launched, but was successfully built by a professional web developer. Within the first week of doing minor fixes to the new website, I was asked to restart the process from scratch and fully design and develop them a new website by myself. The skills I obtained from participating in DS106 allowed me to finish the website in a month, and since it’s been fully launched.” Colin Schulz, ds106 student Spring 2102
• “ds106 has given this me the conviction that I, at 72, can make videos, that tell my story beautifully, thoughtfully, and truthfully. The community aspect gives me the security that, no how busy I am with other things, I can always “drop into” ds106 and continue to learn more.” http://Margaretherrick.com
• “The number of ways ds106 has intrigued, educated, inspired, delighted and excited me, too many to count. DS106 shows the way learning can be social and owned by the learner, students own excitements & delights are encouraged, challenged and amplified.” @johnjohnston
• “DS106 has given me the confidence to practise my art in public. DS106 and DS106 radio has helped me to connect with people around the world.” @rowan_peter
• “Ds106 plants a garden of creativity, digital media and play and harvests a transliterate cornucopia for the world.” @phb256
• “ds106 has empowered me to own my education. I’ve learned that I can create amazing things through resources I find for myself, and if I need help I know I’ll always have an amazing community of other creators to rely on.” @doodle_muse
• “This is a sentence straight from my blog post: “[participating in ds106] eliminated my fears “” my fears about my abilities, my fears about the online community, my fears about technology, and my fears about sharing ideas.” @linda3dots
• “DS106 is life-transforming. It helped me to established a digital self out in the open. The DS106 community brought me safely into a world where the web is safe, fun and yours to give and take.” @benjaminharwood
• “DS106 invigorated my thinking about what is possible when technology and real education collide. It showed me how to create a vibrant online community for distance education in the best spirit of Vygotsky and social constructivism.” @mikeberta
• “#ds106 is a superbly creative, supportive, distributed, sharing “”community of wonderfulness. #ds106 is greater than the sum of it’s parts — even greater (can you dig it?) than the sum of the Bava. Hard to believe, but true.” @aforgrave

Early ideas for ds106 as a course (Jim Groom) http://bavatuesdays.com/digital-storytelling-the-course/

Early planning for ds106 as an open course- Jim Groom http://bavatuesdays.com/brainstorming-for-ds106-course-design/

ds106 syndication bus http://bavatuesdays.com/eduglu-revisited-the-syndication-bus-2012/ based on FeedWordPress http://feedwordpress.radgeek.com/ (ds106 currently syndicates in over 600 blogs).

Perfecting Syndicated Blog Sign Up for ds106 by Martha Burtis http://wrapping.marthaburtis.net/2012/08/22/perfecting-the-syndicated-blog-sign-up/

With tags added to FeedWordPress, we can group all blogs syndicated into ds106 from one class, say mine! UMW Section 2 http://ds106.us/tag/umwfa12s2/

WordPress shortcodes create blog roll of tagged #ds106 feeds http://cogdogblog.com/2012/08/29/shortcodes-widgets-duct-tape/

ds106 Assignment Bank http://assignments.ds106.us/

Example #ds106 assignment “Messing with the MacGuffin” http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/messing-with-the-macguffin/

Remixing #ds106 assignments with random play cards http://remix.ds106.us/

Daily doses of creative challenge #ds106 Daily Create http://tdc.ds106.us/

WordPress Admin tool building #ds106 Daily Creates http://cogdogblog.com/2012/07/11/building-daily-creates/

in[SPIRE] showcases best of #ds106, idea from students http://inpsire.ds106.us/

ds106 radio http://ds106.us/ds106-radio/

Martha Burtis used #ds106 syndication structure for Entrepreneurship in Education open course http://101.edstartup.net

Syndication hub site like #ds106 for Project Community course in Netherlands http://proojectcommunity.info/

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