Hapgood

Mike Caulfield's latest web incarnation. Networked Learning, Open Education, and Online Digital Literacy

  • Ning Death Syndrome (a.k.a the Dead Shark Problem)

    I’m a big fan of Ning, and lately I’ve been gearing up to launch an Alumni site in it. The first email invites will go out tomorrow. Well, not exactly the first invites. And therein lies a story. See, before I launched this, I tried a little experiment and invited a few of my alumni… Continue reading

  • If a Columnist Calls a Tail a Leg…

    There was yet another Andrew Keen inspired article last week bemoaning the age of “wikiality” — an age of supposed gullibility of us internet sorts. It begins with shocking news — people are getting quotes wrong, and Web 2.0 is at fault: Truth: Can You Handle It? Better Yet: Do You Know It When You… Continue reading

  • The Meaningless Homepage

    [Cross-posted in part at the Online Communications Blog] Good article today forwarded to me by Jenny Darrow asking whether sites like keene.edu are becoming increasingly irrelevant as marketing tools. The answer is obvious to anyone that’s ever looked at their Google Analytics: yes, absolutely. You can see this clearly in the statistics — students come… Continue reading

  • Forums vs. Blog Posts in Ning: A Plea for Unification.

    The amount of stuff Ning gets right is impressive, but they’re still blinded by tradition — and few things demonstrate this more than their forum/blog division. Want to know the question my members on my local Ning site ask me most often? “Should I do this as a forum or a blog?” And all I’m… Continue reading

  • Salamander Crossing

    So it’s weird moving from managing a high-profile political community to managing a local information site. One minute you’re spinning your way into the front page of the Washington Post or Wall Street Journal, and the next you’re talking about salamander crossings. But there is a point here, trust me. Salamander migrations occur here in… Continue reading

  • Citizen Keene

    After a very confusing vote on a local school bond, I’ve stepped down from my old project Blue Hampshire, to start a local information site, called Citizen Keene. There were an number of other reasons for stepping down — as a newly promoted Director at a public college, I wanted to move away from being… Continue reading

  • Defining the Online Communications Office

    I’m a week or so into building our new department here at Keene State, which I am proposing we call Online Communications. I actually like some of the more trendy names, but sometimes it’s good to use the idiom common in the field. Makes a lot of things simpler. Now to the hard part —… Continue reading

  • Promoted

    So starting today I’m the new Interim Director of Technology, College Advancement, Keene State College. I was promoted Friday afternoon to the new position. I have mixed feelings about this. I was hoping my next major career move would be back into net-enabled learning. It’s been almost five years since I left Cognitive Arts, and… Continue reading

  • SPACEWAR Is Still My Metaphor

    It’s important sometimes to realize that while we are blazing new trails in mainstream education, we are really dealing with the dam of industrial culture finally breaking. We’ve been paying attention enough to know why it’s breaking. We deserve credit for that. In fact, we’ve been waiting for it to break. But the ideas that… Continue reading

  • Flexible, User-Constructed (non-metaphorical) Spaces

    From email from my co-worker, Jenny Darrow: I’ve done some thinking about the physical space that we will need to promote and support technology and engagement pedagogies. I’m concerned that our emphasis has been so focused on learning, teaching, and curriculum that we’ve been delinquent in addressing physical space requirements…. She goes onto link to… Continue reading