For no good reason have I been fiddling with a silly, old web site that has no bearing or real use beyond my own amusement. Can there be ever more a reason to domain your own web stuff? To do or not do what you wish?
I’m not even sure why I even went looking at the Make a MOOC generator I slapped together around 2013. Start with a [silly] demo, it’s the law.
Yes indeed, this was spun in the height of MOOC Hysteria. It’s just a random (non artificial?) generator, that draws from a few different arrays of phrases on each reload. The different arrays are maybe 40-80 each in the format of PHP arrays:
- $mooc_subject The lead in, or the example above “Interdisciplinary Monologues on”
- $mooc_adjective The modifier, or in the example above “Blatant”
- $mooc_topics the subject, or in the example above “Curling”
- $mooc_colon a listicle like tantalizing phrase to come after the colon, or in the example above “Critical Thinking and Relationships”
It’s just a matter of getting a random phrase from each array and concatenating them together
$s = $subject[array_rand($subject)];
$a = $adjectives[array_rand($adjectives)];
$t = $topics[array_rand($topics)];
$c = $colon[array_rand($colon)];I have a little function I found that is able to make a hashtag from the words before the colon, and then append the current year.
function make_acronym($str) {
// creates a lower case acronym for a string
// thanks Stack Overflow http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9706429/php-get-first-letter-of-the-string
$words = explode(" ", "$str");
$acronym = "";
foreach ($words as $w) {
$acronym .= $w[0];
}
return strtolower($acronym);
}
// craft a hashtag
$tag = "#" . make_acronym( "$s $a $t" ) . date( 'y' );Well that’s enough PHP, not even that sophisticated. I’m sure Claude can out do me.
So each time the page is reloaded it slaps the generated stuff on the page, but at the sametime, prepends it to a text file where I keep a record of all that have been generated. This is where it get wild, look at all the birthed MOOC calves – right now there are over 13000 of them in one stupid long <ol> HTML list— and that only goes back to January 2023. I am forgetting now, but something went wrong with the ones that were there before. Or I redid the thing. Who knows? Who cares? It’s pure silliness.
The shake link on the main site gives a whacky gif I made of cows nodding in agreement with MOOCness, the rattle link opens a javascript viewer of a handful of more silly mooc mocking graphics I made in that era. Did I have too much time on my hands? Not enough?
For whatever reason, in the face of MOOC HYper, mocking it was about the most relief I could get. Heck, I am recycling the idea more recently for the current wave of hype poop (hmmm my game is slower now).
Anyhow, sometime last week I looked at the site and saw maybe a web error or warning, so I fixed something. I also took the opportunity and remove an old button that allowed the generated mooc babies to be “tweeted” and flipped that over to Mastodon.
Look, it works!
Again, you can ask my why, but nobody really does. But someone out there, not just me, has been to https://mooc.cogdogblog.com more than 13000 times in two years.
Because I can!
Updates 2025 Nov 15
Rummaging around my hard drives I found an image I totally forgot that explains the MOOC machine much better!
which lead me to search my own blog to find it, and indeed it was a response to DS106 Daily Create #tdc1493 Invention — Make an invention of your own and give it a name. Include a price and what it does. I had a full blog up summarizing other responses (I see referencing Terry Greene’s early ds106 days)
As if I need more examples to appreciate by blog as a wunderkammer.
Also, I love that Bonni Stachowiak took a play with the MOOC-er and even used the link I had for adding new words to the machine
My link for adding new words was a terrible way to go, just asking people to add things to an editable sheet in my funky format. Thanks to Bonni I have added a more friendly form – make the cows happy by using this https://forms.gle/o4WkHt3EiGdPwiCW9
Featured Image: 2016/366/133 The Machine Must Remain Where It Is flickr photo by cogdogblog shared under a Creative Commons (BY 2.0) license edited the tag in PhotoShop from “please do not move the machine” to read “please do mooc the machine”, superimposed on Massive Online Open Cows flickr photo by cogdogblog shared under a Creative Commons (BY 2.0) license – so do the license math, this remmix would be CC BY.
@barking What would be fun is if the MOOC maker pulled a set of random resources from the web (the way yours appears to pull 2013 blog posts from your website) using some sort of AI search and sequencing
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“Because I can!” Or sometimes “Because I almost can”. A great driver for learning & fun.
Few embody this spirit more than you, John!