These posts document experiments in hacking and tweaking Wordpress; I hardly call myself expert, but I do like to tinker under the hood. If there is something I can do for you, bark my way or visit me at http://cogdog.it
cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by The Rocketeer This may be a niche case but I am just making note for myself. If you ever feel the urge to change the Permalinks setting on your WordPress site, keep in mind you will break any old external links that point to […]
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:
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 […]
We are just sampling the success we have had with not only ds106, but many other classes at University of Mary Washington, in getting students going with their own domains and web sites under Domains of Ones Own. One niggling issue is on the wordpress installer, it is set by default to install the blog […]
and covering up our questionable practices… It’s been a few days since I fanned the flames of how a big time edu consultant was republishing from other bloggers as their own. Its so easy to sweep your shit crap poop Numero 2 under the rug. It just smells a bit, but most people just walk […]
I’ve written some before about a mod I made to the Graphpaper Press Full Screen Theme for my photo showcase site, Barking Dog Studio. I dig this theme for many reasons, it features large photos on single pages, it has an attractive grid on the front. It feels less bloggy: The mod I made was […]
Even cats know that duct tape is useful cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos (ClintJCL) It comes in handy for PHP work on WordPress sites as well. You should know that the main internal organ that makes the magic of the ds106 site do what it […]
Woah, retro! I was contacted by someone with an innocent WordPress question, and in the confusion of email (“I don’t have that option”) it became apparent this person was running a older version of WordPress. I quickly thought migrating it would not be all that complex… Till I started. Her site is in WordPress 2.6, […]
cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by hermitsmoores This is a last little bit of code I wanted to bang out today (for more on this statement, see my next blog post). We have over 3800 examples that people have shared for the ds106 Assignment Bank. The way these get here […]
cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by psd It’s sweetly ironic that despite the almost consistent reprisal of “RSS being dead” maybe that’s in terms of outward perception. Down at the bowels of the systems of internet flow, and I see plenty of it in highly functional action via my own small corner […]
