I moved all of my class materials off of Moodle several semesters ago to a straight HTML-based site and I was quite happy with the results. However, I decided to move all class material yet again to a dedicated URL just purchased for this purpose. I guess I was inspired by the recent Web 2.0 Expo and the site housecleaning that I was doing elsewhere as it’s going to be a Drupal site!
It’s actually a perfect project for me, still a Drupal newbie: It’s a project with clear goals, the material is already written and organized in terms of taxonomy and I don’t need to do anything fancy with user participation in the short term.
The project is located at XHTML Teacher dot Org.
Another advantage is that I’m really thinking that the Department website idea I was discussing with Suzie is best suited on Drupal, so no time like the present for getting more familiar with what has been, in the past, my nemesis.
I’ve been meaning to revive this blog for some time. At one point I found it essential for tracking the progress I was making in web design, the problems I was having with coding, content management systems, hosting and other related things. I don’t have a “readership” and I really don’t want one. This blog was for me, to track my progress, albeit publicly.
However, blogging is hard work. It’s a hard habit to maintain. I sometimes rail against this idea that everything must be tracked in some way. In some ways I think that all that really matters is the experience; who really cares about my work, the work that will eventually fade into eternity like my memories and my bones. (This kind of thinking keeps me far away from Twitter at times.)
Yet I’ve enjoyed the conversations I’ve had here with people. I know some have found a few of my posts helpful. I’ve even used my own posts to help me remember some technical issue I’ve solved but long since forgotten how. In the end, I believe the effort is worth it. I think that one of the most valuable things a budding web designer/coder can do is keep a blog…a living diary of creative attempts, gray hairs, and successes to enjoy and learn from. Maybe you will even help someone else out along way.
I’m making this post in honor of the students in the summer session of my XHTML class…as some of them said in the intro forum: maintaining a blog is hard work. Well, that class is hard work! Hard, but worth it. 
The Sci Fi channel has redesigned their name and logo. As someone who actually watches this channel, I have to say that this is a fail of epic proportions. Who are they trying to appeal to, the “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” crowd?
 Redesign Epic Fail!
I haven’t been paying much attention to my own sites over the last year or so. Which is why it just so happened that all of my sites on one server were hacked! I think I had an insecure password, and they made a mess of everything by inserting Javascript trojans in every .php and .html index file in first and second level directories. I’ve lost a couple of posted in the database mix-up, but I think I can continue on from here. Ugh.
I don’t have any experience teaching, but I have been learning the ins and outs of web design over the last seven years or so. So far, I have had the experience of learning both in online classes and, more recently, through online communities. These online communities are comprised of a loose-knit combination of bloggers, commenters, forum posters, IRC and other chat users, and even pod- and video-casters. I have personally been involved in communities that talk about coding, open-source software, digital photography, and even religion, both as a passive reader/listener/viewer and an active participant. To say that this informal discourse is helpful and facilitates learning is an understatement! In fact, especially in the arena of software development, information technology, and web design, I would say that it is absolutely essential.
So, how can these new discourse communities be used to inspire new techniques in the online classroom? Well, first let me share what developing and maintaining my own blog has given me:
- I had to learn to use a new technology, i.e., blogging and content management systems.
- A place to keep my discoveries, be they techniques, websites, tools, or even my own insights. I have found myself referring back to certain posts more than once because they contain information I use again and again.
- A way to track my progress.
- The lovely surprise of meeting people who are interested in the same things I am, and were willing to help me!
I felt that something fundamental changed once I started my own “conversation” with the wider world, although it’s difficult to describe what exactly that was. I do think it had something to do with the fact that I had gained the immediate benefits of social capital, which as defined by Wikipedia means that I gained an “advantage created by a person’s location in a structure of relationships” by defining my location in the first place. It is important in that it is public, it is fresh, it is uncensored, it’s my little corner of this brave new world. It is also difficult to maintain, but is worth the effort.
So, back to my original question: How can I, as an educator, encourage the development of social capital in my students? Well, the first thing is to be a good example. I can share my own blog, encourage comments and participation, and continue to interact with the world at large through the blog. I can also encourage (but probably not require) students to start their own blogs as they begin their educational journey; as I will be teaching students primarily interested in web design at some point having a blog really becomes a professional necessity. Starting this kind of public conversation sooner rather than later is a good thing to do. And I can definitely share with them all the resources, in terms of other blogs, podcasts, and personalities, that I have found absolutely essential to my own professional development. My motto to them would be: Get out there, say something!
This habit, like that of life-long learning, is one well worth fostering in students. Like being able to think logically and analyze information from different resources, it’s a survival skill.
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Learning from the students
I’ve been meaning to revive this blog for some time. At one point I found it essential for tracking the progress I was making in web design, the problems I was having with coding, content management systems, hosting and other related things. I don’t have a “readership” and I really don’t want one. This blog was for me, to track my progress, albeit publicly.
However, blogging is hard work. It’s a hard habit to maintain. I sometimes rail against this idea that everything must be tracked in some way. In some ways I think that all that really matters is the experience; who really cares about my work, the work that will eventually fade into eternity like my memories and my bones. (This kind of thinking keeps me far away from Twitter at times.)
Yet I’ve enjoyed the conversations I’ve had here with people. I know some have found a few of my posts helpful. I’ve even used my own posts to help me remember some technical issue I’ve solved but long since forgotten how. In the end, I believe the effort is worth it. I think that one of the most valuable things a budding web designer/coder can do is keep a blog…a living diary of creative attempts, gray hairs, and successes to enjoy and learn from. Maybe you will even help someone else out along way.
I’m making this post in honor of the students in the summer session of my XHTML class…as some of them said in the intro forum: maintaining a blog is hard work. Well, that class is hard work! Hard, but worth it.