Month: April 2021

Liked a tweet (Twitter)
This is a great example of web accessibility that is too often overlooked.
Watched April 20, 2021 - PBS NewsHour from PBS NewsHour
Tuesday on the NewsHour, we get national reactions as a Minneapolis jury convicts Derek Chauvin on all counts for the murder of George Floyd. Then, efforts to create electric planes and cleaner jet fuel become more urgent as the climate emergency intensifies. And, former vice president Al Gore remembers the late Walter Mondale and how he helped transform the highest level of American government.
Such a good day in the news.
Strong coffee brewing past the witching hour here in Los Angeles. Beginning to peel the eyelids open during the peak of the Lyrids meteor shower for what portends to be an interesting two days of talks at .
Watched Opening Plenary OERxDomains21: Joy and Care in Open Education in times of pandemic with Tutaleni Asino, Orna Farrell, Nicolas Garcia and Catherine Stihler from YouTube

Apr 21, 2:00 AM 45 min
Speakers:Catherine Stihler, Nicolas Garcia, Tutaleni Asino and Orna Farrell
Chair: Joe Wilson

Our conference opens with a plenary session: Joy and Care in Open Education in Times of Pandemic. We are delighted to welcome a panel comprising Tuteleni Aseno from Oklahoma State University, Nicolas Garcia, student president at City of Glasgow College, Orna Farrell from Dublin City University and Catherine Stihler, CEO of Creative Commons. We are also looking forward to thought provoking keynotes from Jasmine Roberts, Ohio State University, Laura Gibbs from the Tiny Tales OER Project (formerly University of Oklahoma) and Rajiv Jhangiani from Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia.

RSVPed Attending What I learned from 20 years of giving domains as Christmas presents: Tools and concepts for owning an online identity

Apr 21, 3:00 AM 20 minDOM21
Speaker:Dominik Lukes

I bought my first domain on the 15th of April 2000. Now, more than 20 years later, I have almost 30 domains to my name with a few expired ones in the rear view mirror. Not all those domains are for me, though. I have set up domains for projects as gifts to friends and family members. I’ve given domains for birthdays, Christmas and to celebrate the birth of a child. For some, I also host their sites, others their emails.

My first domain was to share teaching materials before the concept of Creative Commons was even conceived. Some domains were to help projects but most were about maintaining online identity. This session will outline the key lessons I’ve learned over the years about online identity, the technology required to maintain it and the knowledge, skills and mindset involved. It will cover:

• Key knowledge and skills required to own a domain
• Pitfalls and hidden difficulties with domain ownership
• Ways of leveraging a domain into a website or an email presence
• Changes in the processes and options over the last 20 years and future prospects
• Novel ways of hosting websites, emails and identities
• Dilemmas faced by individuals and institutions in maintaining online identities

RSVPed Attending Outside Their Domain: Introducing German Higher Ed to Domain of One's Own

Apr 21, 3:30 AM 30 min
Speakers:Christian Friedrich and Katharina Schulz
The concepts and ideas around a Domain of One’s Own (DoOO) are not yet widely known or implemented in Germany. While there is a fairly strong ethos of independence in parts of Germany’s OER and ed-tech communities, DoOO has not gained traction.

In this session, we will present a project that started in February 2020. The project’s aim is to provide easily accessible information about DoOO as well as ready-made materials for those who would like to implement DoOO in their teaching. After basic research, we started by recording podcast conversations that explore DoOO from different angles, covering a student’s perspective as well as technical, didactical and strategic aspects. Based on these conversations, our own experiences with DoOO and available materials, we are developing guidelines and checklists for different stakeholders. The project Domain of One’s Own is funded by the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW HH) as part of the Hamburg Open Online University (HOOU), a cooperation of several institutions of higher education in Hamburg.

One of the impulses for our project was Educause’s “7 Things You Should Know About a Domain of One’s Own”, which prompted the idea of producing similar materials tailored for the German Higher Ed landscape, while seminal projects at the University of Mary Washington and at Coventry University serve as important reference points. For the German discourse, discussions around digital literacies can provide a basis for starting the conversation about Domains.

In our pre-recorded conversation with Jim Groom, we share an insight into our experiences so far and talk about the challenges connected with advocating for a concept largely based on shifting control from teacher to student in a rather traditional higher education landscape like Germany. During the live session, we look forward to engaging with the communities around OER and DoOO by taking up questions and comments from the chat. With this session, we also hope to spark conversations around how to tackle more conservative spheres of higher education. Some of the questions that could be addressed are:

What can a conservative and largely publicly funded Higher Ed landscape gain from DoOO?
What kinds of reward structures, staffing structures, technological infrastructure and incentives are ideal for DoOO?
What kinds of success stories or good practices can you share about introducing DoOO?
EDUCAUSE (2019). 7 Things You Should Know About a Domain of One’s Own. [PDF] Available at: https://library.educause.edu/resources/2019/10/7-things-you-should-know-about-a-domain-of-ones-own [Accessed 09 April 2021].
Coventry University Group (n.d.). Coventry Domains. [online] Available at: https://coventry.domains [Accessed 09 April 2021].
University of Mary Washington (n.d.). Domain of One’s Own. [online] Available at: https://umw.domains [Accessed 09 April 2021].
Friedrich, C. (2019). Digital Literacies und Offenheit: Was wir tun, damit Menschen das Freie Netz formen können. [online] Available at: https://blog.wikimedia.de/2019/06/27/digital-literacies-und-offenheit-was-wir-tun-damit-menschen-das-freie-netz-formen-koennen/ [Accessed 09 April 2021].

Bookmarked From My to Me: Another history of the WWW, 2020 by Olia Lialina (INTERFACE CRITIQUE)
This article is an elaboration on the statements about the WWW, web design and personal websites I made in my recent talks and articles, as well as those included in the volume. As the editor (and probably the readers as well) noticed, as soon as I look for counter examples to new media products made following the cruel and hypocritical UX paradigm, I come up with a website – or more precisely, with a website of a particular genre – “the 90s GeoCities”.
This article was mentioned by Jim Groom several times at Domains21