cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Sasquatch I I’m pretty sure which trail I am… My progress on finishing the beta ds106 Assignment Bank as a WordPress Theme proceeds in slow lurches, no need to reach for the glacial metaphor. But it should be nearing a more public ready beta test at […]
cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by epSos .de I’ve been sleeping on my development work to finish out a WordPress theme that gives someone the functionality of the ds106 Assignment Bank but for any kind of content. But I’m back in the game (track the prototype at http://bank.ds106.us/ the content is meaningless). […]
I grossly, grandly, and greatly underestimated the development of a WordPress theme for a customizable version of the ds106 assignment bank — I want it to be very flexible, and am finding the creation of the admin screens for configuring it to be more complex than I expected. Jim and I had planned a session […]
Some updates on the construction of a WordPress theme that will give you the features of the ds106 assignment bank. Bottom line- there’s a lot to account for to make something flexible. With a few more pieces to add, I hope I can make an alpha version available next week. And yes, the look is […]
cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by Alan Levine It’s such a burden to remain fashionable, especially in web technologies which rise and fade faster than the latest in sweater swim wear… In assembling future lessons for the Headless ds106 course, I’m on the section for storytelling, and find myself hand editing […]
Here is a summary of tweaking made for the prototype of the theme to make a ds106 assignment bank for your own uses. I managed to do this Friday afternoon while waiting for my truck to be serviced; I have to return tomorrow, so maybe the Ford dealership in Star Valley, Arizona is good for […]
Here is what an assignment looks like (today) on the development version for a theme that will ultimately give other people a way to build something like the ds106 Assignment Bank This nonsensical example may or may not be here tomorrow, click at your own peril. A screenshot does not give an indication about what […]
Brace yourself for another 10 mile long blog post; much like the recent one on the Harvard Future of Learning site, this one focusses on another syndication driven wordpress site. Brian Lamb approached me in mid June about working on this project, and coming on the heels of the Harvard one, I was able to leverage bits of that site’s framework– but it is still nowhere near a copy/paste/go operation. These sites are hand crafted.
Art+Reconciliation addresses current issues in Canada dealing with the history of residential schools and the ongoing work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The idea is (I might be wrongly paraphrasing) to examine how art and artists can both create awareness of the issues and help generate communication around the issue.
As conceived by Ashok Mathur, this would be an open experience where online participants could be part of the August activities at TRU, where artists were invited for a residential experience in Kamloops, and leading up to a national TRC gathering in Vancouver.
A driving part of the design was an effort to forefront the media that would be part of the activities, as well as infuse the syndication of content from twitter, flickr, blogs, etc. The “MOOC” part of rmooc is open to question- it was not a course per se, but a series of events and performances. It’s not massive, bit was open and parts were online. Who cares, the media shows some amazing gatherings and art making.
For some numbers on what happened (and keep in mind, this is the midway point), the site accumulated:
So if you just look at numbers, you would say “obviously not massive” but numbers are not the whole story, and the goal of the first phase of rmooc was in the events that took place in Kamloops.
Lost in the numbers are thing like a message from Leslie Lindballe, who was following RMOOC from Saskatchewan
hey #rmooc people… are you familiar with http://t.co/NVRMqLbGbj I just made a tile that will go to a #residentialschool survivor
— Leslie Lindballe (@onepercentyello) July 28, 2013
And again, rmooc is only halfway through its course.
As before, I will attempt to review the design elements, the WordPress customizations, and the setup and implementation of the syndication parts. An additional (and new for me) element was using Mailchimp for managing email communications.
Much of what follows paralleled the work I did previously on Harvard’s Future of Learning Institute site.
Here we go…
It could be I am just out of coding shape or there is more to this reshaping of the ds106 Assignment Bank than it seems. I’d hedge money on the former, but not for ling. This afternoon was spent doing more inside shuffling and some important theme adjustments. But now at least we have a […]
Last June I was approached by Justin Reich from Harvard (and newly with EdX) about building a site for the Future of Learning Institute, that is part of Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education- he was looking for the syndication/aggregation features I had created for the ETMOOC site’s blog and twitter hubs. Apparently, their local CMS (iSites) was a bit cumbersome before to use, but it also sounded like they wanted to extend people’s participating in social media (read more from Justin on the needs for the site).
Harvard calling?
Oh yeah. They wanted to be on the Syndication Bus (Magic Bus! Magic Bus!)
Groovy.
Syndication seems to be in the air, given the amazing stuff Mike Caulfied is doing with Water106. There was also I understand today a ds106.tv episode with Jim Groom, Tim Ownes, and the hatted one, Howard Rheingold, going over how syndication bus works with WordPress (drats to Gila County for having me inside all day for jury duty).
I have grand plans here to document how the Future of Learning site was built, and as I pulled through my notes and the theme code, I got depressed as there are a lot of parts, so I hope I cover everything:
A difference for this event from the previous syndication projects I have done is that it was for a shorter time span (a week institute) rather than a course. Since I was brought in to build the site, not be part of the institute, I did not see much directly of how the site was used and presented.
This is one giant ever scrolling post. You have been warned.
