Herbert Simon, a Nobel Laureate known for his work in too many areas to count, used to tell a story of two watchmakers, Tempus and Hora. In the story Tempus and Hora make watches of similar complexity, both watches become popular, but as one watch becomes popular the watchmaker expands and becomes rich, and as Continue reading

Wikity 0.31 is released. Download 0.31a here. New installers and curious tourists will also want the Wikity Guide, and the 0.30 release notes. Usual disclaimers about free code people give you on the internet apply. Wikity 0.31 is a bug fix release to 0.30. There is no new functionality, and it fixes only one small but incredibly Continue reading

I’ve mentioned before that the impulse many people have about OER — that we need a central high visibility location where we can put ALL THE OER and everyone will know to go there — is flawed. We know it’s flawed because it’s failed for 15 years or so (more if you count early learning Continue reading

It feels a bit silly sharing reflections on Prince when so many people have done it better. I’m particularly moved by the glimpses we have gotten over the last day of Prince, the person, a guy who loved to laugh and saw his mission in life as helping others. I’ve loved the meditations on both Continue reading

I’m releasing Wikity 0.3 today. There’s some neat updates to this version. Current users can replace your old theme directory with this one. New users should read the Wikity Guide and follow the install directions there, but use this newer folder (we’ll eventually get the documentation updated). The biggest change is the “pathways” feature. The pathways Continue reading

More fascinating research out of China on social media, this time directly related to my obsession with the Garden and Stream models of social media. Roughly, the finding of the study is this: when readers have the option to retweet a message their comprehension of the message falls significantly. The researchers found that: …“repost” did Continue reading

Leigh Blackall, who was an early advocate of using wiki in education and proponent of projects like WikiEducator, asks the million dollar question: You started out describing a project where you are setting up a WordPress wiki template, to host what I’m presuming to be student-generated-content activity. Without knowing any of the details that led to Continue reading

I disabled my Facebook account yesterday. Don’t worry, this isn’t quitlit: I’m sure I will return to Facebook sometime in the future, and I’m not going to go off on some long self-righteous rant that I will have to walk back in a month. But the reason I disabled Facebook, roughly, was because in this Continue reading

I write a lot of things in wiki nowadays, and it’s good. I think better in there, and get away from the web’s echo chamber of endless reactions to reactions. But occasionally wiki is a bit too under the radar. About a year ago I started following a thread of stories on opioid addiction in Continue reading