Walking the walk

Why this isn’t just a blog

A great deal of my research involves the use of new technologies and / or interesting representational forms.  So, I spend a lot of time thinking about each of these, as well as the points where they intersect, the points at which a new technology supports an interesting or powerful representational form.

Coupled with this general interest, I was also thinking in the summer of 2009 how to incorporate each of these effectively into some new courses that I was preparing for the fall and following spring.  While Indiana offers and supports a number of online technologies for use in courses, it didn’t give me all of the features that I wanted.  So, given a background in technology development and an interest in tinkering, I began looking into what I might host and develop on my own to support my teaching and scholarship.

To make a long-story short, I began thinking about what it might mean to re-craft my site as a wordpress blog.  Long-term, this would of course allow me to blog about a host of ideas.  Short-term, though, this would provide a handy way to support labeling (tagging) and categorizing my work in ways that relates each piece to another via the site.  And, of course, this also provides an opportunity for me to interact with others via the commenting feature.  The result is an ongoing experiment, the current iteration of which is shown here.  My initial goal was to make sure that my projects and publications were properly tagged and related to each other.  This led quickly to some interface tweaks as I began thinking about and running ideas past my audience.  Not everyone bothers to look at or click on tags, for example.  So, I made some tweaks to really make visible the tags that were most relevant to my presumed audience.  For instance, some visitors might be interested in seeing which projects make use of the BeeSign software that I developed.  You can, of course, click on the BeeSign tag in the sidebar.  However, to make it even easier to see, any entry that relates to BeeSign also has a small tab with a Bee on the left side.  Voilà!  Now you can sort my work in any number of ways and still see at a glance which items reference BeeSign.

The upshot is that this is an ongoing experiment in how to represent my scholarship using current and emerging technologies and an entry into a conversation with the “field” outside of the usual venues.  As such, please poke around, enjoy, and let me know if you have any questions, suggestions, or critiques.

– Joshua (jdanish [at] indiana.edu)

Joshua July 22, 2009

  • Hmmm. Can you set up wordpress so it lets visitors edit their posts?
  • Thanks Dan. Looking into it now. I suspect it will require some sort of login, but hopefully there is a simple solution available. Given the abundance of Wordpress plugins, I am sure I can find something handy to drop in!
  • Josh, you might consider looking at WordPress plugins for commenting systems like Disqus, Intense Debate, or even Seesmic (if you'd like to use video commenting!)

    I'm not sure if you've seen any of it but Hopkins also has some interesting work going on in terms of blogging/social media within their ITSE group. You might check out their direct site or even search for ITSE on Twitter to see some of the discussions going on there.

    I look forward to reading more about what you're doing here though. Keep up the good work!
  • Thanks Chris! I'll definitely follow-up on all of those ideas.
  • Wow, I get it. The explanation of tags and wordpress was nice, the examples were even better. Tagging is one of several things that I have been working at getting better at just in regard to references and blogs, but you show value for so much more. I second Melissa Cook's point that you have set a nice example here.
    BTW, I did not read the title of this post until I read Melissa's comment. Both of our visitor experiences suggest you should add a sentence at the beginning of the post explaining the title. I take it to mean that you want to dive in and do what it is you are talking about and recommending. It is a good example of what Learning Sciences means to me. Use the tools and resources you talk about in the context of your own work. Unlike decates of ed psych work where the "scientists" would never dream of engaging in the kinds of practices they were subjecting their "subjects" to.

    One last comment... I think it would help OnCourse and the Sakai community if you were more specific about what IU's collaboration and courseware platform does not provide you. As an open source tool, they rely on requests from faculty for continual refinment and advance. I suspect that some of what you are doing here they do support and others might be on the way.

    d

    I thought your example around BeeSign
  • Thanks Dan! That is what I had in mind regarding walking the walk, but I will definitely edit that post to make it more explicit! Also, absolutely my intention as I continue course design is to share what does and does not work in Oncourse / Sakai both here and through other mechanisms on campus.
  • Melissa Cook
    Hey Josh, this is great. I was already thinking about doing a similar thing with my professional site (which I am building this summer), and now that I have you to copy it seems much easier.

    What does "walking the walk" mean to you? I'd love to hear about that in a future post.
  • Thanks Melissa! Looking forward to seeing your site. I was going for the "I want to walk the walk and not just talk the talk" angle, but I guess I need to be more explicit about that! I'll be editing that real soon. Thanks!
blog comments powered by Disqus