{"id":1072,"date":"2010-01-11T14:37:30","date_gmt":"2010-01-11T19:37:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/punyamishra.com\/?p=1072"},"modified":"2010-01-11T15:16:05","modified_gmt":"2010-01-11T20:16:05","slug":"edupunking-a-course-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/2010\/01\/11\/edupunking-a-course-website\/","title":{"rendered":"eduPUNKing a course website!!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had written about the EduPunk movement earlier<\/a>, in fact had even designed a logo<\/a> for it.<\/p>\n

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A brief description of Edupunk can be found on Wikipedia (a google search will reveal many more). Wikipedia describes it as follows:<\/p>\n

Edupunk<\/strong> is an approach to teaching and learning practices that result from a do it yourself (DIY) attitude. <\/sup>The New York Times<\/em> defines it as “an approach to teaching that avoids mainstream tools like Powerpoint and Blackboard and instead aims to bring the rebellious attitude and D.I.Y. ethos of \u201970s bands like The Clash to the classroom.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, I am no expert on 70’s bands but the EduPunk title does appeal to me. It appeals to me because for the longest tie the main attraction of digital technology, to me, has been this DIY attitude, the fact that I can, over an evening or two, create a stop-motion movie with my kids (here<\/a> or here<\/a>), or mashup a commercial<\/a>, or, in this case, create my own course website. The final product may not have the finish or sheen of a commercial product but it is in some key way “authentic.” It is mine. It embodies me, my sensibility, my approach, my vision in ways that other products can not.<\/p>\n

For my entire tenure here at MSU I have constructed my own course-websites, cobbling them together with what I have often jokingly called “duct-tape and magic.” I have even written about this, long before the EduPunk moniker came along (see links at end of post). What I want to describe in this post are my current experiments (for my CEP817 Learning Technology by Design<\/em> course) using using WordPress as a learning management system, and boy am I impressed!!\"\" [My partner in crime in this is Kristen Kereluik<\/a>, a graduate student in our program.]<\/p>\n

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CEP817 is a course about design and it is important for us that this idea of design, this concern for aesthetics and usability, be reflected in the design of the site as well. The CEP817 site runs on servers maintained at the College of Education and maintained by the guru of everything, Ken Dirkin<\/a>. This website runs on WordPress<\/a> – the same software that runs this blog (though 817 has an independent installation). The design of the CEP817 site is based on a free site-template called blog.txt<\/a> (designed by by Scott Allan Wallick<\/a>). The blog.txt theme is an extremely simple theme and has been modified a bit to meet the vision we have for the course.<\/p>\n

The site uses a range of images. All the icons are from Iconfinder<\/a>, & Iconspedia<\/a> two nifty resources full of license free artwork. Other images are either created by Kristen and\/or myself or have been collated from the web. We have used pictures that have been made freely available by their creators (under creative commons) and in each case we have attempted to give credit to the creators.<\/p>\n

One of the most powerful features of WordPress is that you can extend its functionality using plugins. Most of these plugins are available free of cost and we use a large number of plugins on this site for a variety of tasks that WordPress could not achieve by itself. A full list of plugins used on this site is given below.<\/p>\n