WordCampNotes

One problem:

• Making the case that these tools can thrive in admin

Big picture: thinking in terms of functionality, adjusted as easily as look and feel (ie course, personal portfolio, bulletin board)

• Understanding limitations of tool
  • using wikis as back-end composition tools
  • sets of functionalities that would enhance course management (archiving comments by semesters, etc...)
    • mapping learning opportunities to functionality

Tech needs:

• Need for improved student admin tools
  • Pre-populating accounts
  • mass creation of accounts (DD Import Users?)

The schism between what happens in the classroom, and in the world

• student ownership

How to manage to keep the "subversive" character of these platforms, yet doing enough to preserve their viability within institutional contexts...

• WP as student-run platforms?
• How to encourage student engagement?
• sharing resources

• Portfolios
  • Buddypress

• WordPress as CMS

Sit-down with people who have implemented WPMU?

• sclaing

Discussion/practice - how to frame openness/privacy issues

• Power dynamic when faculty compels student use on open web

Patterns

Class Blogs

• account management + provisioning (groups, etc...)
• class-wide categories and tags

Individual Blogs

• batch creating individual blogs - support issues
• how to tie "course content" together
  • tags? aggregation? wtf?
  • RSS --> netvibes / pageflakes etc...
  • del.icio.us
  • tagging
  • developing basic network literacies by modeling tagging/publishing/etc...
  • site-wide tag clouds (booleans? class tags, topic tags...)
  • prepopulated categories and tags for student to use - defined tag vocabulary
    • core set of categories used by students in a course.

General

• inviting "outsiders" into the course - give accounts separate from campus systems
• extending the classroom - "blogging invitationals"
• how to track threads and discussions? comments across different posts on a single blogsite, and comments/posts on different sites on same (or related) topics?
  • how best to manage this? should we manage this? literacy issue? tech issue?
• archive of learning over student's career - storing term papers etc... as content in a blog
  • personal content management system
  • preserving authenticity of student ownership of the content/site
    • while also being effective as part of a course?
• digital identity? does it "belong" as part of an institution? should it?
  • do students want to _own_ it? to what degree? how? where?
    • if student owns their blog, hosted somewhere else, how does that fit with archiving/assessment? (see below)

Assignments / Assessment

• how to track work? where is it?
• how to archive? (appeals, records, challenges...) - document retention?
  • export each blog into an über-aggregate blog for storage purposes
  • "export this site" button - archive exported dump?
  • revisions - who edited what? when? where?
• how to demonstrate effectiveness/properties of discourse in blogs? is it "good"? is it qualitatively different/better than "traditional" publishing? vs. Word docs as term papers?
  • nature of writing?
  • individual vs. collaborative?
  • reflection?

Afternoon

D'Arcy Norman ucalgaryblogs.ca

• http://ucalgaryblogs.ca/
• now uses the WP Carrington Theme (http://carringtontheme.com/), a free WPMU GPL'd theme for use in general content management scenarios
• using the More Privacy Options plugin (http://wpmudev.org/project/More-Privacy-Options) to give the students the option of making it private/only available to ucalgaryblogs users/only that blog's users
• just implemented WPSentry plugin (http://code.google.com/p/wpsentry/) as a way to further granularly control access control on a post by post basis
• converted the ucalgary sitewide content mgmt drupal theme into a Wordpress theme so that individual groups can get a wp-powered blog that still conforms to the institutions
• http://timeline.ucalgaryblogs.ca - WP Monotone theme
• Prologue theme used for http://tlcupdates.ucalgaryblogs.ca/

Brian Lamb blogs.ubc.ca

• http://blogs.ubc.ca/
• digitaltatoo.ubc.ca - site for students to document themselves issues with privacy, online safety etc
• http://blogs.ubc.ca/etec522/ - lists 'static' course content in a left-hand sidebar w/ links
  • use the BlogActivity plugin to aggregate discussions across the site
• michellechua.com - example of a former UBC student who "took her blog with her" when she left
• supernovak.com - wordpress as front-end to flickr
• show enej's work with http://enej.test.olt.ubc.ca/ink/ink feed combiner; hooked it up to s5 for presentations
• wiki inc - http://blogs.ubc.ca/blog/2008/11/19/append-wiki-page-plugin/
• Andre Malan plugins - AddUsers and AddRSS feeds - allow new people to add content or themselves as authors to a blog, can be password protected if needed; simple way to help people create group blogs
• feedwordpress (http://projects.radgeek.com/feedwordpress/) used to aggregate course blog feeds into a single blog - could be used as the archival tool too!

Grant Potter blogs.unbc.ca

• http://blogs.unbca.ca/
• had a dozen or so courses run through WPMU
• biology course - started to elicit responses from original researchers (who found them through web stats log); this was not a welcome thing from the students who felt 'outed' (but were talked through it by the professors
• obvious but often overlooked point - you can tell wordpress not to reveal blogs to search engines, technorati, etc

Enej from UBC (sorry I didn't get his last name

• showed wpmu stats package (nice! but specific to UBC campus wide login)
• showed resume and eportfolio plugins

Duncan McHugh, UBC Land & Food

sorry, I didn't capture many of the urls

Closing

• scott leslie
  • problem: openID provisioning via WPMU site - can a blog be an openID? needs to extend the community of campus folks playing with this stuff (blogging etc..)
  • offers: WordPress as Content Management Platform using constrained search engine - "Include It" plugin to include PHP code on any blog page by referencing a file. any page becomes able to embed functionality
• Barbara Ganley
  • problem: how to make sure the work does not go toward enabling/enforcing bad pedagogy
  • offers: experimenting with how to move out of the walls of academia - how to get students working out in The World™ - relating school to every day life, to do great things in the world
• Gerry Paille
  • problem: using HTML and extermal content to bring it into a blog post - including regular HTML
  • offers: wordpres as content management system - PageMash - an Ajax page ordering plugin
• Grant
  • problem: how to get wider adoption? how to celebrate the early adoptors while convincing others to play?
  • offers: experience with buildign on success with faculty members
• katy
  • problem: administration to look at blogs w/o concern with security/confidentiality.
  • offers: community free lectures through continuing studies - using blogs as a way to get people involved in the content before/after lectures. http://blog.uvcs.uvic.ca/foodsecurity
• • problem: wtf with blogs? scaling?
  • offers: standalone wordpress use - how to manage multiple standalone sites
• felix
  • problem: hiding that it's wordpress running things. smells like wordpress. see http://www.o-vert.com
  • offers: how to hide that it's wordpress running things. see http://www.o-vert.com
• michael
  • problem: administration, scalability, refining access levels
  • offers: remember that content is key, not code
• leslie
  • problem: how to use wordpress to collaborate with faculty. how to create a non-wordpress workflow that winds up with content being stored in wordpress? separate custom forms/apps?
  • offers: encouragement. non geeks can do this. http://trc.ucdavis.edu
• Grant
  • problem: finding a community of practice around wpmu. needing a good platform for students to host/present their work.
  • offers: ease of use - faculty blogs - how to incorporate media (streaming etc... from other central server)
• joe
  • problem: how to keep it all interesting and fresh. Feels like things are slowing down, less visible progress
  • offers: time. team involvement
• jason
  • problem: yet another thing for faculty to learn. again. - overcoming faculty resistance
  • offers: success stories with faculty and students. give them the tools and support them. digital storytelling without need for IT involvement
• duncan
  • problem: needs to know more WP tech stuff. also creating learning outcomes to make sure it's a meaningful experience for students. getting faculty to blog. modeling good behaviour
  • offers: aggregation...
• mandy ?
  • problem: to keep the learning activities valuable and relevant for students. blogging as eportfolio
  • offers: optimism. success stories with students and the learnig curve. building networks of teachers - reading each other's blogs - learning community. reflection etc.
• ron
  • problem: what IT services can provide?
  • offers: better approach community
• novak
  • problem: more structure with blogs.ubc.ca - easier to get up and running. looks too ad-hoc now. best practices? need to simplify. needs better support/documentation.
  • offers: how to bring wordpress to wider audiences. gaining acceptance. templates vs. themes - functionality not themes.
• alan levine
  • problem: constant struggle to get people to actually post stuff. spam. not the good kind.
  • offers: templates to do kickass stuff. editing templates to add custom functionality. separating code from theme so stuff can be reused w/o rebuilding it.
• Byron
  • problem: supporting lots of instructors who don't want to learn how to build websites.
  • offers: case sensitivity of URLs in wordpress - has solution for that. unfocus.com
• Brian Lamb
  • problem: THE CLOCK IS TICKING! how to solidify the tech to make it more solid while preserving the sense of adventure and subversion.
  • offers: subversion. syndication and content reuse. mashing stuff up.
• Scott
  • problem: wordpress don't get no respect. blogging platform looked down upon.
  • offers: tribeca of caching - supercache + php opcode caching + database query caching
• ahmed
  • problem: needs to learn about wp to support it. how to promote wordpress? it's going to involve some guidelines - don't try to do everything for everyone
• enej
  • would like to work on: creation of courses using wordpress - automating the process/structure? Creating a repository of wordpress courses, making them open and easy to access. Like MIT OpenCourseWare, but not at MIT. Course directory. How to find courses...
• Dale
  • observation: what you're doing is real cool. don't be discouraged.
• D'Arcy
  • problem: fostering community of faculty/students
  • offers: will explore for plugins/solutions, and document what works and doesn't.