Here is an image of the old version of the site, cobbled together with loving care from a basic template. This shiny new WordPress version will usher in a whole new era of experimentation, probably-maybe. It is what will happen around this site that I am most excited about, of course: computers, learning, the Web, and digital culture. Would that the digital Humanities had come into vogue in time for undergrad! Here we are, though, and there is yet time enough.
Learning by doing is…hard
After many, many months of playing with various ways to “roll your own” on the Web — including using Google Drive as a site host, installing a slew of open source scripts to my local machine, and running a few websites from my desktop for an audience of exactly one — I have taken the plunge into a hosted server environment.
What a weekend. The image of the hand-coded index page reveals more of what I cannot do than of what I can. I managed to knock at least some of my server properties out of commission for still-mysterious reasons (but clearing the cache and refreshing the DNS entries at least did not make it worse, whether or not they helped). The past couple of days have held a lot of uncomfortable learning, which is simultaneously the very best and least welcome kind.
At least I accomplished the choosing of a server and the spinning up of this very WordPress blog. Advantages of the server company I chose include “unlimited” this-and-that, a “free” domain renewal each year, and especially monthly billing, so that I can throw in the towel any time I like. Disadvantages, however, include a relative dearth of one-click script installs, the benefits of which are quickly becoming evident.
Environment
- One domain, two sub-domains (so far)
- Apache, PHP…the usual — but no ability to customize the server environment because it is shared
Software
MediaWiki
This is the same software familiar to those who use Wikimedia properties. Configuration is a bit frustrated for a layperson, but using it as an end-user is easy enough. A Wiki is both simple and flexible; achieving that can result in alienating casual users, since “simple” does not necessarily mean “easy”. There is a reward on the other side, however.
WordPress
Still one of the best, and with Jetpack, even a self-hosted instance (like this one!) can take advantage of a bunch of quick integrations — social sharing, Markdown, basic stats, and so forth.
Known
After asking to be one of the Beta kids, and after receiving my invite, I promptly put off signing up until a couple of days ago. Known offers both free and paid accounts, but also is available as an open source script. My attempt to install it — and then trouble-shoot the installation — was unsuccessful, unfortunately; unlike both MediaWiki and WordPress, this script was not a supported one-click installation. Known is social networking that caters to the person rather than to the platform, encouraging both individual ownership and considered openness.
Moodle
Ah, Moodle. Almost as prickly on the back end as MediaWiki, and every bit as robust. I have run this on my local machine, but have yet to try for a proper installation.
Some things that make me sad:
Ghost runs on Node.js and is generally not supported in a shared server environment. Meanwhile, the hosted version offers no freemium. Ghost is a beautiful, elegant, simple, Markdown-driven blog platform, but one that eludes me. At least one WordPress theme mimics the front-facing glory of Ghost, if not the back-end joys, but, alas, does not quite offer the menu I want without PHP fiddling.
Some things that make me happy:
Markdown syntax in the WordPress editor? Nice! Moreover, users of Draft get a small win in being able to create WP posts and pages in the comfy Draft editor and send the content back to WP with a minimum of fuss.
Next up…
GitHub
To be learned!
Known
To be re-attempted!
Omeka
I am a curator without a collection…or am I?
PHP!
Clearly, I will never get anywhere without this…
A Beginner’s Guide to Open Textbooks
I have published a page on open textbooks (which is not to say “open books”); it is available in the blog sidebar and here.
My page is neither the best nor the worst such page you will see, but I do believe it is among the more convenient, dealing briefly with the what/where/why of open textbooks, including:
- What is an “open textbook”?
- Where to find open textbooks
- Problems with open textbooks
- Tools for remixing and re-authoring open textbooks
- Resources for learning more about open textbooks
Old pros will not find much new here, while neophytes should find a sufficiently friendly and concise introduction. Indeed, the page was written as an aid to a professional acquaintance and I am sharing in the hopes that it may be more generally useful.
Comments and critiques are certainly welcome.
Achievement Unlocked: HTML and CSS
Today, at long last, I have completed Saylor Academy’s PRDV251: HTML and CSS for Beginners course (CC BY 3.0 wrapper, comprising both open and closed resources).
Whew!
The course requires some light hacking; in particular, figuring out how to use a text editor and browser to create a cohesive website from local files is largely up to the student, but there is no shortage of help available from the Web. In any case, I regard this friction as a good thing, driving learning and retention.
Rather than take notes in an outline format for this course, which is my wont, I decided to create a website that would serve as both sandbox and documentation for what I learned. The result, written in a series of lightweight text editors and published via Google Drive is this:
PRDV251: HTML and CSS for Beginners | Demonstration Site
Overall, the course is very good and recommended not least for its introduction of other useful resources. Finally, a confession: the code is messy and not really all good HTML5; one develops best practices along the way and earlier work is inferior to the later stuff. So it goes. Some things got fixed, some things got commented out, and some things are there to stay as a permanent reminder of what not to do in the future.
Where I learn (and what)
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| Via here and here. |
Overview
This post is simply an introduction to what I’ve been up to lately. Active courses are highlighted.
All of the following courses fall under the heading of “free as in beer”. I’m not completely averse to paying for learning; I’ve paid for non-degree Mandarin courses at Northern Virginia Community College and at Graduate School USA (a sort of pretend-sounding name, but love what they do).
The courses below can be divided by whether they constitute OER or not and how course-like they really are. I’m painting with broad strokes; I’ll likely go into detail on some courses in the future.
Full Courses
The full course distinction is somewhat arbitrary, but in my definition includes multiple types of learning materials (textbooks, lectures, exercises) intended to produce particular learning outcomes
Saylor.org*
*Disclosure: I work for the Saylor Foundation, so this section is offered largely without comment.
The Saylor Foundation is a non-profit provider of free online courses. Its materials are self-paced (“asynchronous”). Although comprised of both openly-licensed and rights-reserved learning materials, the syllabi are CC BY licensed and the courses are consistently nudged in a more open direction. I’ve taken a few courses here:
Completed
Ongoing
The Mechanical MOOC
The Mechanical MOOC, hosted by Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU), is presented in cooperation with MIT OpenCourseWare, OpenStudy, and Codecademy. Because it is scheduled through email and pulls together learning materials from different sources, there is no single course page to link to. The blog is informative, though.
The course is offered in eight-week cycles, which begin when a critical mass of students is available. This is my second run through the course; I dropped off in the fall after the Thanksgiving holiday. As it happens, I’m about to beat my earlier distance record.
P2PU uses a CC BY-SA license for its materials, while both OpenStudy and MIT OCW use CC BY-NC-SA licenses for parts of their content. Codecademy is free to use and involves some open source materials.
UnCourses
Not a pejorative term; I consider “uncourses” may be somewhat less formal, robust, or diverse than a full course, but provide excellent opportunities nonetheless.
Duolingo
The darling of the moment, I am still willing to suggest that not enough people (e.g. my friends) know about this site. Duolingo offers free, addictive language learning with social and gamification elements. The pedagogy incorporates spaced repetition, oral, aural, written, and read materials, and the opportunity to try one’s hand at real-world translation. Not OER per se, Duolingo does rely on openly-licensed materials as a source for translation and is sticking close to its free-of-cost promise even as it continues to add function.
I’m working on French most seriously, while dabbling in the early lessons of Spanish and German.
Codecademy
Yep, them again. Codecademy, put simply, provides a free, interactive introduction to programming and markup languages, with gamification elements. Originally, I fell in with Codecademy as part of their CodeYear program, which launched in early 2012. I didn’t get very far, but I am back for more. In addition to the Python course that I am following for the Mechanical MOOC, I’m working on the following:
Completed
- Web Fundamentals
- Web (Original)
Ongoing
- jQuery
- Javascript
Workshops
OER-101: Locating, Creating, Licensing, and Utilizing OERs
Run (at least in part) by Open SUNY, OER-101 is a self-paced, community-driven course that more or less does what it says on the box. I took it for a number of reasons:
- I wanted to document and share what I know about OER
- I wanted to meet other people interested in or already working with OER in various contexts
- The course uses Mozilla’s (et al.) Open Badges framework, and I was eager to experiment
- The course is run on Blackboard’s CourseSites platform, which I was curious about
- Something to do!
Sadly, I have not finished this course, but Goonies never say die. Because it is asynchronous, I can dive in again when I wish. The course uses a CC BY license.