When we first set out to build the Commons, it was with the inspiration of other projects like the CUNY Academic Commons, and the Domain of One’s Own project headed up by Jim Groom among others, which at the time was a small project happening at Mary Washington University. The ideals behind that project has …
Category archives: Commons
OER Repository on the Commons: A “Brief” History
TLDR; Version: Go visit https://oer.commons.hwdsb.on.ca/ Over the past few weeks, Andrew Kelly and I have been working together on Version 2.0 3.0 of a new Open Educational Resources Repository on the Commons. This continuing work dates back to 2015, when the 21CL team here @HWDSB began planning the Professional Development sessions for a roll-out of …
Continue reading “OER Repository on the Commons: A “Brief” History”
Why WordPress in Education
I’ve noticed the topic of WordPress in Education recently in my Twitter feed. @Jeffr0 over on WP Tavern was recently polling his followers for info on the type of CMS (Content Management Systems) used by schools, along with the cost to run such platforms. Here at Hamilton Wentworth District School Board, we are big WordPress …
Disrupting Morning Announcements
I’ve been working on and off for a little while in the off hours on re-configuring how announcements are delivered at schools. We currently have an incredibly convoluted process that Paul Hatala and I conjured up when we were building the secondary school landing pages in the HUB (our LMS). Looking at it now, it …
SSL Everywhere
Warning; technical details ahead: Over the weekend, the entirety of the Commons was switched over to the HTTPS protocol. This has been in the works for a few months now, and took a few key steps. We first needed to secure all of the content that you share on your site. We accomplished this by …
The Commons Experiment
5 years ago, around this time of the year, we sat in the Memorial Building in Ancaster, feeling like perhaps it was too late, and that maybe we should wait to launch until Semester Two. What would become the Commons had just been brought to life on a small server. Most of the summer was …