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Openedweb by Stephen J. O’Connor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Education and Technology
Openedweb by Stephen J. O’Connor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Recent Articles
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starQuiz for Data Driven Instruction
December 27, 2011 in DDI
Some of my colleagues and I have been looking ways to implement Data Driven Instruction (DDI), one of the components of the educational reform being implemented by NYSED’s Race to the Top. We had looked into packages such as LinkIt, but these comprehensive services are only interested in working with schools rather than individual teachers. [...]
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Oxwall: Ning Alternative?
August 22, 2010 in open source, Social Networking
I recently found another social networking server app through Twitter. As we know Ning recently changed its terms of service and is no longer offering free social networks. This sent a wave of panic throughout the educational technology community, accustomed to having “free” apps at their disposal. People immediately sought alternatives to Ning. Of course [...]
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Graphics to support learning
August 16, 2010 in multimedia, pedagogy, presentations
This is one of a number of posts exploring multimedia learning. I have been reading research on this topic with an eye toward improving my presentations and other multimedia instructional material. Here are earlier posts in order of creation: Text and graphics in Multimedia Presentations Multimedia Researcher Mayer on Slideware Graphics in Instructional Presentations In [...]
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Graphics in Instructional Presentations
August 10, 2010 in multimedia, pedagogy, presentations, Technology
As I grapple with research trying to improve my instructional presentations, I have learned about Richard Mayer’s assertion that people learn better with words and graphics than just words alone. As a result, I have been investigating information about the role of graphics in learning. One natural extension of the reading that I have done [...]
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Corporate Web 2.0 in Education
August 9, 2010 in open knowledge, open source, Technology
Jim Groom just got me fired up again. Groom, in conjunction with Brian Lamb, wrote an important article in Educause entitled Never Mind the Edupunks; or, The Great Web 2.0 Swindle. The article laments the corporatization of Web 2.0 in education. The authors acknowledge the appeal and power of free online services offered by Google and [...]
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Critique of Timeline Lesson
July 19, 2010 in multimedia, open knowledge, pedagogy, presentations
The animated Chinese timeline shown my previous blog post was a demonstration of a workflow using proprietary software to make a stand alone animated timeline. While viewing the timeline several times, I started examining it through the prism of the research on multimedia learning that I have been reading–particularly that of Richard Mayer. One learning [...]
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Create animated timelines as OERs
July 17, 2010 in multimedia, open knowledge
This is a fairly specialized procedure for users of Keynote and TimeLine 3D, both proprietary Mac programs. The important thing is that it results in something that could be a high quality OER. I had a couple requests for a how-to on building a timeline like the one shown below. Bee Doc’s Timeline 3D is [...]
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How to turn a Flickr image into an OER
July 12, 2010 in multimedia, open knowledge
If you have a Flickr account, one of the easiest ways to to contribute open educational resources (OERs) is to Creative Commons license your images. Once you have done so, your photographs will appear on Flickr’s Creative Commons search page according to the license that you have designated. This is quick and simple to do. [...]
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How about a summer of OER?
July 10, 2010 in open knowledge
In general, teachers love freebies and actively seek them out. These free things range from blogs to web apps to lesson plans. I’d like to challenge teachers to go beyond just consuming freebies to producing them as well. Teachers create great resources all the time in the course of their practice. We could go a [...]
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Multimedia Researcher Mayer on Slideware
July 7, 2010 in multimedia, presentations
Richard Mayer is one of the leading researchers on the impact of multimedia on learning. However, in his two books, Multimedia Learning and e-Learning (coauthored by Ruth Colvin Clark), slideware is not often mentioned. Multimedia Learning he simply mentions PowerPoint presentations as an example of multimedia. Since I have ben exploring his research as a [...]
CommentPress
February 24, 2009 in open source, Social Networking, Technology, wordpress | 5 comments
I recently came across CommentPress. It’s a WordPress plugin that allows readers to comment on a post paragraph by paragraph. CommentPress looks like a very promising collaboration tool. CommentPress is on the cusp of a major upgrade from version 1.4.1 to 2.0. We will look at features in the current version, and preview Version 2.0.
Currently, CommentPress is a WP theme. Install it and activate it.
The resultant main page includes a table of contents on the left side, a “page” that you can customize in the center, and some widgets on the right. The meat of this comes when you clink a link to one of the posts.
Each paragraph has a “speech bubble” to the right of it. Click on that and you can view all the other comments on that paragraph. Comments can even be threaded. Whether or not there are comments already, there is a text field for entering comments.
As it stands, CommentPress works well. Yet the developers plan on giving it even greater flexibility with version 2.0 due out in a couple weeks. I had trouble with the beta on my server, so I can only write about what I have seen and read on their site.
Rather than just a theme, the new version will include 3 plugins and a theme that can work independently so you only use the components you need. You will be able to use it with most WordPress themes. The comment box can be dragged and dropped to any location on the page. There are also enhancements that improve CommentPress’s ability to work with changed text in the posts. I also understand that it will be more flexible in working with other widgets and plugins.
CommentPress’s potential in education and in other areas is great. The ability to annotate and critique text paragraph by paragraph make it much easier to focus a response to a given segment of text. It would work well for peer editing of student writing. Teachers could post a segment of text for students to read allowing them to respond to the text and other comments. I have installed CommentPress to facilitate discussion of our school’s web publishing policy.
I look forward to working with a new version of CommentPress, but I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it as it is today. As a bonus, the current version works with WPMU, and I hope the newer version will as well.
Tags: collaboration, commentpress, comments, wordpress, WPMU