Syndicated
A Page By Any Other Name
A test of web html upload..
Time for This
CogDog The Blog
An early 90s builder of web stuff and blogging Alan Levine barks at CogDogBlog.com on web storytelling (#ds106 #4life), photography, bending WordPress, and serendipity in the infinite internet river. He thinks it's weird to write about himself in the third person. And he is 100% into the Fediverse (or tells himself so) Tooting as @cogdog@cosocial.ca
Blog Pile
Feed2JS Keeps Chugging Along
It still is going, almost 10 years since fiddling with some PHP script that converted RSS to javascript (and not even sure if proper credit was given to David Carter-Tod who’s earlier Wytheville News service inspired me) – Feed2JS is still motoring along, made available for free and wide open for making RSS content as […]
Blog Pile
Reusable Imagery: Half Empty or Half Full?
or perhaps the subtitle is “A Funny Thing Happened On My Way Through the Image Search” cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by Jin_sama Maybe the philosophical question hinges on how thirsty one is… welcome to what happens when the rabbit hole falls under your foot. So I am wanting to […]
Blog Pile
ds106 is a Complex Universe Full of Stars
cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by giulia.forsythe
DISCLAIMER: This is mostly a brain dump. Little coherent ideas emerge. Typos will occur. You have been warned.
This session I participated in at Open Education 2012 was proposed by Julià Minguillón titled “Analyzing and supporting interaction in complex scenarios: the case of DS106” – the idea as Julià outlined it was to try and find useful patterns and meaning in the large amount of networked activity that happens in this universe.
I’ve been interested in this for a while but ow sure how to wrap my arms around it. Because of the syndication model set up in our site, we have essentially a copy of every blog post that the site has subscribed to since before January 2011 – over 20,000 posts (unlike those other high priced enterprise systems, our open source fueled site actually keeps all of its content).
Within the wordpress database is a lot of key information- when and how often activity happens, what kind of link relationships there might be, possibly an ability to connect to twitter or commenting actions as well. But more curiously, the only way we represent the things that go on here are the old school reverse chronological listing of posts, something that is a river when there are 500 blogs the site attends to. One thing I would like to know is if there is a more visual or meaningful way to represent all of this on the front of the web site?
As Julià wrote in the abstract:
… visualizing all the activity around DS106 is not a trivial issue.
Interaction in such a complex scenario implies receiving information from multiple channels and maintaining a personal collection of resources, as the course has a very flexible structure so students can focus on a particular subject according to their interests (i.e. visual assignments exposed through flickr) and/or enter and leave the course at any moment. Regarding people, maintaining a network of colleagues implies maintaining multiple identities through the ds106 site in itself, but also twitter, blogs, and so. The totality of DS106 is a very complex learning scenario which is the result of hundreds of personal infrastructures hooked up to the ds106 blog.
We would like to discuss how interactions in this networking infrastructure can be analyzed in order to support all the elements (students, resources, comments, assignments, etc.) so additional services can be devised and implemented without interfering with the natural flow of the course.
With only 22.5 minutes, it was a quick journey through this universe- here is the prezi we used
Blog Pile
ds106 Radio Rockumentary
cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog This audio recording was created (by request) for Matt Henderson a Manitoba teacher a number of us met this summer at the UnPlug’d Conference. Matt, who has done his own projects with creating a school based FM radio station, asked us for some help with […]
Blog Pile
Remixing ds106 Assignments at Open Ed 2012
It’s been a jam full week of conference and post conference fun at Open Education 2012 – how much cooler could a conference be that has not only a night boat cruise but has a rocking jam session from participants? On the first day I had my 22.5 minutes to talk about the ds106 Assignment […]
Wordpress
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:
Blog Pile
Never Miss a Daily Create Again
cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by wilmesmom People (like me) can get upset when the ds106 server goes down, and here is another tip to help you to keep tabs on the Daily Create, so you can know the assignment even if the server is belly up and gagging. At first […]
Blog Pile, Learning Project
Harp Tripper
cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I’ve stilled not gotten very far in learning how to play my harmonica. Maybe, it is like learning… you don’t get far without putting any effort into it. But I can still have fun making noise. Tonight I have about 5 gazillion things to do, […]
Blog Pile, Wordpress
Random Post Generator
Confused? Don’t know where to put a comment on a #ds106 student blog as part of the Magnificent Seven Blog Comment Challenge? I have the link for you. With some rubbing together of magic dust and a dab of elbow grease, I have a new feature for the various “sections” of ds106- these are classes […]