In the fall of 2013, I will co-teach a 12 week MOOC version of ”The Hyperlinked Library” for San Jose State University’s School of Library and Information Science. Find out a bit about my motivations for working on this project and how you can participate as a student.
28
Jan
Slides from ALISE 2013 – “Beyond the Walled Garden”
Attached are the slides Michael Stephens and I put together for our ALISE 2013 presentation entitled “Beyond the Walled Garden: Distance LIS education in an era of participatory culture.” There’s much to be said beyond the 20 minutes or so we had. So, if you had questions, comments, or ideas regarding what we spoke about, [...]
27
Mar
Blackboard Buys Open-Source. Surprised?
Blackboard has purchased the leading open-source learning management system support organizations: Moodlerooms and NetSpot. Why am I not surprised?
22
Feb
Digital Learning and Badges
I’m in the midst of prepping my syllabus for a summer course entitled “Digital Tools, Trends, and Debates.” One of my modules – in fact, one I’m most excited about – is focused on digital learning and digital literacies, so I think it’s relevant in this week’s worth of material to include in our conversation [...]
17
Dec
New Journal: Journal of Learning Spaces
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro campus just launched the Journal of Learning Spaces with support of the University Libraries. First off, it’s great to see a university library system hosting their own open access journals and, secondly, the interdisciplinary focus of the publication, I think, will allow for some pretty interesting intersections of topics: [...]
21
Oct
The Power Shift in Patron Privacy
In response and extension of Sarah Houghton’s livid take on the patron privacy in the wake of the Overdrive and Amazon eBook agreement, I suggest that we use the opportunity not to reform commercial privacy issues but instead to educate library users on the issues at hand.
14
Oct
Matt Mullenweg (of WordPress) & Dries Buytaert (of Drupal) Have a Chat
It’s a long interview but enlightening (see SCHIPUL for more info). I appreciated the candor from both founders on how their historical roots influence how their products continue to run and be influenced by past decisions for better or for worse. Mullenweg on how his focus on usability continues to dominate some of the design decisions [...]
12
Oct
No, Libraries cannot be Netflix
Library Renewal asks a provocative question in their post responding to the recent UCLA case regarding streaming of DVDs: If streaming isn’t copying, can libraries be Netflix? It’s a question that I’d bet many libraries would love to have answered in the affirmative. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
10
Oct
Introducing “Library Custom Post Types”, a WordPress Plugin Pack
With the proliferation of custom content types sprouting in a variety of WordPress projects these days I thought it would be an interesting side-project to create a pack of custom post types meant solely for libraries. So, three custom post types have been created and packaged into one handy plugin pack. Check out “Library Custom [...]
03
Oct
Watch Out for Welcome Pack 3.0
The great Paul Gibbs (@pgibbs / BYOTOS), BuddyPress core developer and plugin developer, is working on an update to his Welcome Pack plugin for BuddyPress with a nifty new administrative layout, message creator, and HTML e-mails. I really appreciate his use of the native WordPress UI. I’ve used his current version minimally in other projects [...]
27
Sep
Theory Finding
Unless you are building theory, you are most likely adopting someone else’s fine handy work. But encountering that piece of theory that really gets you motivated and helps to frame your questions can be a struggle.
16
Feb
Learning Analytics in Four to Five Years
According to the always engaging and usually accurate annual Horizon Report put out by the New Media Consortium, learning analytics should be expected in four to five years: Learning analytics promises to harness the power of advances in data mining, interpretation, and modeling to improve understandings of teaching and learning, and to tailor education to individual [...]
16
Feb
LIS Students: Seek a Challenge
Fellow co-author and friend Michael Stephens recently wrote a poignant piece in his “Office Hours” column in Library Journal wherein he challenges LIS students to take control of their learning and be their own advocate for their education. He asks: Students—are you doing the bare minimum in your LIS program? Are you turning in “good [...]
07
Jan
A Reflection on the Fall Semester
The fall semester has come and gone, and I begin afresh in the spring with new classes building off of a successful first semester pursuing my PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in their School of Library and Information Studies. The past months have proved trying at times while always reaffirming my belief that higher [...]
05
Nov
UW Gets a New OPAC
UW-Madison and UW extensions are working in cahoots on Forward, a new OPAC for the UW system. In their own words, Forward is a Resource Discovery experiment that builds a unified search interface for library data. Today Forward is 100% of the UW System Library catalogs and two UW digital collections. The project also experiments [...]
13
Jul
What You Need to Know about LMS Alternatives
Educause recently published “7 Things You Should Know about LMS Alternatives” that reflects many of my practices with and values about using WordPress as an alternative learning management system (LMS). You can find this quick read as a PDF here: http://bit.ly/7thingsLMS On how instructor use of an alternative LMS may impact the traditional LMS: By [...]
05
Jun
Open System, Open Learning – WordCamp Chicago 2010 Presentation Slides
Many thanks to those 150 plus individuals in attendance today at my presentation at WordCamp Chicago. I had an amazing time speaking to a community I’ve come to consider an honor to be a part of. Please feel free to contact me with any questions in the comments below or at Twitter (@thecorkboard). View more [...]
28
May
A WordPress as LMS Mockup
Background After reading Stas’ proposal for a WordPress as LMS or course management system based on BuddyPress on the WP-Edu threads, my mind started to turn. What would I want a real WP as LMS site to look like and what features might it include? Below are the mockups that I came up with. I [...]
01
Feb
WordPress as LMS Interview at WPMU.org
If you didn’t pick up on the chatter on Twitter, WPMU.org gave me great questions for our interview on using WordPress as a learning management system. See the full interview here: bit.ly/wpmuwplms —– More: Joseph Ugoretz profiles his thoughts and uses of WordPress as LMS here and here Jim Groom, the Rev himself, puts in [...]