Author Archives: Ian McBride, Joseph Antonioli, Travis Stafford, Matthew La France, Alex Chapin, Adam Franco, Barbara Merz and Bryan Carson

About Ian McBride, Joseph Antonioli, Travis Stafford, Matthew La France, Alex Chapin, Adam Franco, Barbara Merz and Bryan Carson

Alex Chapin no longer works at Middlebury College. He is the Executive Director of Academic Technologies at UNC Charlotte. Contact him at (704) 687-0059 or achapin@gmail.com

Weekly Web Development Round-up September 19-23, 2011

To give our colleagues a better idea of what’s changed in our web applications each week, we’ll be preparing this quick list for publication each Friday. Not all of the details of each change are included below, but we’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have in the comments.
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WordPress in the Liberal Arts

Last week I attended a Nercomp event on WordPress in the Liberal Arts in Norwood, MA and participated in a panel on WordPress themes and plugins with colleagues from the College of Wooster and Abilene Christian University.   About 45 people attended, most from institutions that were already using WordPress.  Many of these same institutions were also using Moodle and Drupal.

WordPress is used by many for course sites.  Abilene Christian University has integrated it with Banner making it easy for their faculty to create class blogs that automatically include students.  The College of Wooster has an instance of WordPress referred to as Voices, that includes BuddyPress and bbPress, popular WordPress plugins and associated platforms that add functionality for creating groups and forums and aggregating activity streams across various sites.   Mark Frydenberg from Bentley University teaches his students how to maintain a WordPress site, requiring each student to take on the role of site administrator and tasking them with changing the site theme, adding plugins and managing roles.

Some institutions are using WordPress for e-portfolios.  Macaulay Honors College has over 1,500 sites in EPorfolios@Macaulay, which also makes use of BuddyPress to create various groups that they plan to include in their upcoming WordPress student portal, My.Macaulay.  Some institutions even use WordPress for the college website including Bates, Lafayette and Wheaton.

Weekly Web Development Round-up September 11-16, 2011

To give our colleagues a better idea of what’s changed in our web applications each week, we’ll be preparing this quick list for publication each Friday. Not all of the details of each change are included below, but we’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have in the comments.

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Weekly Web Development Round-up September 5 – 9, 2011

To give our colleagues a better idea of what’s changed in our web applications each week, we’ll be preparing this quick list for publication each Friday. Not all of the details of each change are included below, but we’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have in the comments.

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Weekly Web Development Round-up August 29 – September 2, 2011

To give our colleagues a better idea of what’s changed in our web applications each week, we’ll be preparing this quick list for publication each Friday. Not all of the details of each change are included below, but we’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have in the comments.

  • Moodle is now live and in ready for use for the fall semester. Sign up for a training session or request a course site.
  • You can now log into WordPress (sites.middlebury.edu) when viewing it on a mobile device.
  • m is on the way…. ….more to come next week. ;-)

Moodle and Course Hub Work Sessions

The Curricular Technology team has organized a number of workshops on the Course Hub, Moodle and WordPress which have been very well attended and have provided us with great feedback.

We have also just scheduled a number of work sessions next week, specifically for faculty and staff who have already started to create sites in these new platforms and have specific questions or just want to collaborate with colleagues and LIS staff.   Here’s the schedule of these new work sessions:

  • 10:00-11:00 am Weds, Sept 7th, Library 105
  • 2:00-4:00 pm Weds, Sept 8th, Library 105
  • 10:00-12:00 pm Weds, Sept 9th, Library 105

For the full schedule of workshops, see:
Segue from Segue > Workshops

Weekly Web Development Round-up August 22-26, 2011

To give our colleagues a better idea of what’s changed in our web applications each week, we’ll be preparing this quick list for publication each Friday. Not all of the details of each change are included below, but we’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have in the comments.

Continue reading

WordPress for Course Sites

(Cross-posting from WordPress @ Middlebury):

WordPress and Moodle are the primary alternatives to Segue for course sites at Middlebury.  A number of workshops have been scheduled on how to use WordPress for course sites and how it is integrated with the Course Hub.

  • 11:00 am -12:00 pm, Wednesday, August 31, Library 105
  • 11:00 am -12:00 pm, Thursday, Sept 1, Library 105
  • 4:00-5:00 pm, Tuesday, Sept 6, Library 105
  • 3:00-4:00 pm, Wednesday, Sept 7, Library 105

To attend one of these sessions, please fill out our sign up form, see:
WordPress / Course Hub Workshop Sign Up

These sessions have been scheduled before or after similar sessions on Moodle, Middlebury’s new learning management system (LMS).  To learn more about how these platform compare, see: Curricular Technologies Platform Overview. If you’d like to attend one of the Moodle sessions, there is still time to sign up: Click to sign up for a Moodle Workshop.