WSU Vancouver installs a server running some Wikity-esque software on WordPress Multisite. It allows faculty (and hopefully, eventually, students) to make as many WordPress sites as they want. Faculty make wiki-like linked sites on personal interests, but also use the platform to assemble and write materials for their classes. Meanwhile UBC or UMW or NIU… Continue reading

After my presentation at OpenEd, David Wiley said he wished he hadn’t gotten a call in my session because he wanted to ask a provocative question: How was what I was doing with OER different from Pinterest for text? He said he thought he knew the answer to that, but would have liked to hear… Continue reading

Wikity is up. The join code is “peloton”. I show how you can work in Wikity in the video below. In brief, the idea is other people’s investigations or explanations of things feed into what you are exploring; you add your bit to that and feed it forward for others to use. At the same… Continue reading

I’m pleased to announce that the Shuttleworth Foundation has given me a “flash grant” to support my work. I don’t know how much you all know about Shuttleworth flash grants, but they are more gift than grant. You don’t apply for them. An email shows up in your inbox one day and says hey, we… Continue reading

OK, so I haven’t used Calypso. I don’t own a Mac, and I’ve been working on other things. But I read Matt Mullenweg’s post on the introduction of the tool and Ben Werdmüller’s excellent take on that post,  and ultimately the current experience offered by that tool doesn’t matter. What matters is the separation of concerns,… Continue reading

Those who follow this blog will know that I’ve taken a bit of time off from federated wiki in order to try to bring some principles from federated wiki into WordPress. While most days this feels like having left Xerox PARC to go work on Windows 1.0, there are other days where it feels really… Continue reading

Surprisingly good advice from LinkedIn founder: > “One of the things that philosophy is very helpful on is how to think pretty precisely about arguments, and an investment thesis is fundamentally an argument. Part of philosophical training is making you really understand how good an argument is and how to think through the alternatives. Philosophy… Continue reading

Commenter GalleryP pointed out in the comments of my last piece on OER (here) that the Calculus book can be used across two semesters if bought new and not rented. This is true, and I’ll adjust down the high end of the range down across the two semesters by $209. (Spoiler alert: it’s still an obscene amount,… Continue reading

Phil Hill continues to do some of the best data journalism in educational technology. His last piece is a tour de force, marshalling data to show that students spend much less on textbooks than the current figures bandied about would indicate. I think he’s right on that point, but I also think readers of that… Continue reading

Renewable assignments, as defined by David Wiley, are assignments that don’t get thrown away at the end of the semester (disposable assignments), but rather live on because they engage in real-world problems. Christina Hendricks, in her treatment of this practice, provides some helpful examples: Some instructors ask their students to write or edit articles on… Continue reading