Tag: WordPress

Process share for Diego:

Here’s a screenshot of my thinking space, the Markdown editor Ulysses. I’m currently working on a piece about our “generation ship” house and NATiVE’s part in making it: “Our Generation Ship: Electrify all the things, Automate all the things, Backup all the things”

Screenshot of Ulysses showing my library, sheets in my inbox, the current sheet, and the dashboard.
Screenshot of Ulysses showing my library, sheets in my inbox, the current sheet, and the dashboard.

You can see other pieces I’m currently working on in that screenshot: “Accommodations in Neurodiverse Relationships”, “The Mass Transformation of Other People’s Risk Into Profit”, “Samefooding the Apocalypse”, “Crip Wisdom in the Age of Coronavirus”. Whatever’s on my mind ends up in Ulysses. Some of those thoughts are iterated into blog posts that I publish to my WordPress blogs directly from Ulysses.

Start building an anti-library of your interests. My ebook collection is pretty vast and full of highlights. I use Readwise to collect and surface those highlights. A commonplace book of quotes is a useful tool for knowledge, and ReadWise helps you mine, master, and create serendipity from your commonplace book.

ReadWise showing quotes from "A Dance With Dragons" and "Digital Sociologies"
ReadWise showing quotes from "A Dance With Dragons" and "Digital Sociologies"
ReadWise widgets showing quotes from "Loud Hands" and "Inclusive Education for Autistic Children"
ReadWise widgets showing quotes from "Loud Hands" and "Inclusive Education for Autistic Children"

whitehouse.gov is modeling transparency and open government with a legible, accessible, and informative site that runs the open source software I contributed to for years, WordPress. Wanna help? Check the Easter egg in the source.

Children Should Learn to Web

For the last few years we’ve been hearing a good many people (most of them computer programmers) say that every child should learn to code. As I write these words, I learn that Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, has echoed that counsel. Learning to code is a nice thing, I suppose, but should be far, far down on our list of priorities for the young. Coding is a problem-solving skill, and few of the problems that beset young people today, or are likely to in the future, can be solved by writing scripts or programs for computers to execute. I suggest a less ambitious enterprise with broader applications, and I’ll begin by listing the primary elements of that enterprise. I think every young person who regularly uses a computer should learn the following:

  • how to choose a domain name
  • how to buy a domain
  • how to choose a good domain name provider
  • how to choose a good website-hosting service
  • how to find a good free text editor
  • how to transfer files to and from a server
  • how to write basic HTML, including links to CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) files
  • how to find free CSS templates
  • how to fiddle around in those templates to adjust them to your satisfaction
  • how to do basic photograph editing
  • how to cite your sources and link to the originals
  • how to use social media to share what you’ve created on your own turf rather than create within a walled factory
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    Source: IASC: The Hedgehog Review – Volume 20, No. 1 (Spring 2018) – Tending the Digital Commons: A Small Ethics toward the Future –

I like that list. A good way to acquire those skills is to contribute to WordPress and other open web projects.

In essence, the open Web, while not free from governmental and commercial pressures, is about as free from such pressures as a major component of modern capitalist society can be. And indeed it is this decentralized organizational model, coupled with heavy reliance on volunteer labor, that invites the model of stewardship I commended earlier in this essay. No one owns the Internet or the World Wide Web, and barring the rise of an industrial mega-power like the Buy-n-Large Corporation of Pixar’s 2008 movie WALL•E, no one will. Indeed, the healthy independence of the Internet and the Web is among the strongest bulwarks against the rise of a Buy-n-Large or the gigantic transnational corporations that play such a major role in the futures imagined by Kim Stanley Robinson, especially in his Hugo Award–winning Mars trilogy.

Some of the people most dedicated to the maintenance and development of the open Web also produce open-source software that makes it possible to acquire the skills I listed above. In this category we may find nonprofit organizations such as Mozilla, maker of the Firefox web browser, as well as for-profit organizations that make and release free and open-source software—for instance, Automattic, the maker of the popular blogging platform WordPress, and Github, whose employees, along with many volunteers, have created the excellent Atom text editor. One could achieve much of the independence I have recommended by using software available from those three sources alone.

Source: IASC: The Hedgehog Review – Volume 20, No. 1 (Spring 2018) – Tending the Digital Commons: A Small Ethics toward the Future –

Instead of focusing so much on learning to code, children should learn to web.

This isn’t about making sure literature students “learn to code” or history students “learn to code” or medical faculty “learn to code” or chemistry faculty “learn to code.”

Rather it’s about recognizing that the World Wide Web is site for scholarly activity. It’s about recognizing that students are scholars.

Mike talks about the difference between what he describes as the “garden” and the “stream.” The stream are the other threats to the Web, I’d argue – these are Twitter and Facebook most obviously. The status updates and links that rush past us, often stripped of context and meaning and certainly stripping us of any opportunity for contemplation or reflection. The garden, on the other hand, encourages just that. It does so by design.

And that’s the Web. That’s your domain. You cultivate ideas there – quite carefully, no doubt, because others might pop by for a think. But also because it’s your space for a think.

Source: Why ‘A Domain of One’s Own’ Matters (For the Future of Knowledge)

I updated the “Blogging, Domain of One’s Own, and WordPress” section of “Communication is oxygen. Collaborative indie ed-tech.” with selections from “Word Press for Weans 2018 #pressedconf18” on Scotland’s Glow Blogs service that provides WordPress blogs to all students and teachers.

Glow is a service for to all schools & education establishments across Scotland.

Glow gives access to a number of different web services.

One of these services is Glow Blogs which runs on WordPress.

All teachers and pupils in Scotland can have access to #GlowBlogs via a Single signon via RMUNIFY (shibboleth)

Glow Blogs are currently used for School Websites, Class Blogs, Project Blogs, Trips, Libraries, eportfolios. Blogs By Learners, Blogs for Learners (Resources, revision ect), collaborations, aggregations.

Source: Word Press for Weans 2018 #pressedconf18

If I had a desert island EdTech, it would be blogging, and that is not just in a nostalgic sense. No other educational technology has continued to develop, as the proliferation of WordPress sites attests, and also remain so full of potential. I’ve waxed lyrical about academic blogging many times before, but for almost every ed tech that comes along, I find myself thinking that a blog version would be better: e-portfolios, VLEs, MOOCs, OERs, social networks. Sometimes it’s like Jim Groom and Alan Levine have taken over my brain, and I don’t even mind. I still harbour dreams of making students effective bloggers will be a prime aspect of graduateness. Nothing develops and anchors your online identity quite like a blog.

Source: 25 Years of EdTech – 2003: Blogs – The Ed Techie 

No other edtech has continued to develop and solidify (as the proliferation of WordPress sites attests) and also remain so full of potential. For almost every edtech that comes along—e-portfolios, VLEs, MOOCs, OER, social media—I find myself thinking that a blog version would be better. Nothing develops and anchors an online identity quite like a blog.

Source: Twenty Years of Edtech | EDUCAUSE

Blogging is durable, open, and democratic indie ed-tech.

https://rnbn.blog/tag/blogging/
https://boren.blog/tag/blogging/

As Ryan indicates, the planet-like features that OPML subscriptions provide are immensely valuable in general, but also solves a tough problem that some of the best minds in the educational tech space have found perennially problematic.

Source: Reply to Ryan Boren et al on the WordPress Link Manager, Calypso, and Indie Blogging

Indie ed-tech link bomb:

Bringing Safety to the Serendipity in Digital Pedagogy
http://hackeducation.com/2017/11/30/top-ed-tech-trends-intro
Communication is oxygen. Build a districtwide collaboration infrastructure and an open by default culture.
Mindset Marketing, Behaviorism, and Deficit Ideology
Default to Open: Open Education, Open Government, Open Data, Open Web, and Open Source
Hyperlinks and Education in the Disinformation Age
Feed Readers, Micro.blog, and Digital Pedagogy
Bring the backchannel forward. Written communication is the great social equalizer.

We also believe the path to becoming a better reader relies on becoming a writer. Children excel in production based literacy environments. The critical evaluation of online sources is no different. Any classroom exercise around sourcing must involve readers reflecting on their process and interacting in social spaces for reading. We believe the best way to do have students understand how the web shapes meaning is to use the web to make meaning. Part of any intervention should embrace students publishing on their own domain with parents and students in control of their privacy.

We also believe teachers should be central in educational research. Part of any intervention must encourage educators to build, share and remix resources while reflecting on their learning in the open. We can not tackle critical evaluation alone. Furthermore we must recognize that our teaching corps requires a basic understanding of how you read and write on the web and the lack of skills in our teachers is a national crisis. Students will never be ready for computer science classes in middle school and high school if they are taught by educators who can’t add a link in an email let alone build a web page. By encouraging teachers to network through the use of OER sharing we can address the lack of skills.

Source: Can the #IndieWeb Improve Better Readers and Writers Online? – INTERTEXTrEVOLUTION

@wordpressdotcom, how about some love for microbloggers? This is frustrating and unusable, especially given that after peeking at the post and closing the editor the list loses vscroll. I’m trying to have an indieweb moment here. 🙂

The posts screen for rnbn.blog on wordpress.com showing a list of posts, all of which display "Untitled". No content excerpt is shown, making each post indistinguishable from the rest.
The posts screen for rnbn.blog on wordpress.com showing a list of posts, all of which display "Untitled". No content excerpt is shown, making each post indistinguishable from the rest.

The way the soup has hit the fan with Cambridge Analytica kind of looks like a bat signal to save the open web. 

We’ve literally placed the open web behind a paywall, simply by not giving a shit.

With authoritarianism on the rise globally, now more than ever is the time to invest in a healthy, decentralised, diverse, and open World Wide Web.

We’ve forced millions onto closed platforms as we’ve built a web that’s unusable from anywhere else than our privileged urban bubbles.

WordPress has democratised screwing up 30% of the web

Companies from the WordPress industry, together with an ally no less powerful than Google, have joined forces to support contributions to the betterment of the WordPress ecosystem at scale.
A 30% chunk of the web potentially being improved by a single component.

Even though individual team members go great lengths in welcoming every new voice, and treat every concern with respect—at their current pace both Gutenberg, and AMP have struggled to build trust in the integrity of their underlying decision making within their communities.

The real problem with performance on the web is that the recipe for fast web pages is boring simple:
Load less stuff.

Performance, careful design thinking, good citizenship on the web—these things are virtues. You have to practice them.
AMP wraps all these things into a convenient package and enables you to use instead of practice. There’s no need to change, to learn, to understand, to perhaps become a better person on the way even—just use new stuff.

Apparently, we have to be incentivised into our own future, because we can’t be bothered. But it sure sucks.

WordPress is AMP’s ticket to 30% of the web.

I had thought the crisis of the open web could be solved with education, flanked by a standardised, whitelisted library of well-optimised WordPress components—Accelerated WordPress, essentially, or WordPress lite.
In both, my ignorance and arrogance towards AMP I hadn’t even noticed AMP was pretty much just what I believed was needed—only a lot more advanced.

I thought I hated AMP. I now realise that what I hated was the fact that a thing like AMP has become necessary, and that I—like you, probably—have contributed to its becoming a necessity.

Source: AMP and WordPress will scale performance on the web for millions of users, hate it or love it | GlückPress