Is anyone in the or space using @tinysubversionsHometown fork of to create small “local only” posting spaces for their classes? Are there any inexpensive hosts that have one click installs/setups for this? Screen capture of paragraph that reads: "In August 2018, Kazemi created his own Mastodon server (an “instance”) called Friend Camp. But he didn’t want it to be a popular instance — he wanted to run a small social network, with under 100 users. The goal was to foster community-related discussion and attain a sense of “group cohesion.” The following year, based on his experience of running Friend Camp, Kazemi forked Mastodon into a new software package he called Hometown. One of its main features is “local only posting,” which gives users the option of not federating their posts." The last line is highlighted in yellow.
Replied to a thread by Phil Windley, Jon Udell, Matt (Twitter)
There are still many in the (dare I use “old school”?) education space like @CogDog and @JimGroom who still do blog to blog conversations via comment sections.

I’ve seen a growing group of others who are using and displaying Webmentions for site-to-site conversations. If you use WordPress, there’s the Webmention plugin for the notifications part and the Semantic Linkbacks plugin for the display part. (One day the two will merge, we hope.)

Plugins and modules exist for a number of other systems if they’re not already built in.

I’m using all these on my site to have site-to-site conversations with others. I’m also using Brid.gy to bridge the gap between WordPress and Twitter (and others). If you prefer, you could read all this on my site.

Happy to help others set this up for themselves, should they need help.

Bookmarked Sheet-posting (sheet-posting.me)
Turn a Google Sheets spreadsheet into a blog page and RSS feed
This reminds me of the sort of thing that @JohnStewartPhD or someone from the space might do: Turn a Google Sheet into a website.

Kevin Marks in #indieweb 2021-09-06 ()

Replied to a thread by @tjoosten and @grandeped (Twitter)
I’m happy to help you try to put together an IndieWeb-friendly version with Webmentions which work with multiple platforms including WordPress, Known, Grav, etc.

You might find some interesting examples and pieces on IndieWeb wiki, particularly their Education page. I’d love to see Matt add his example(s) to that page for others’ future reference.

I did a short demonstration of what the current website-to-website space looks like at the recent OERxDomains21 Conference. You can find the short video here on my site.

If you go the older route one of the best planet-like sites I’ve seen was http://connectedcourses.net/, which if I recall correctly was built by Alan Levine. If you poke around a bit or ask @cogdog on Twitter, I think there are some details or a recipe somewhere of how he put it together.

Chances are reasonably good that people in the or space have some ideas as well.

Quoted a tweet by Amy CollierAmy Collier (Twitter)
There are some great resources and material here. Signing up today.
Replied to a tweet by Sue Jones (Twitter)
Sue, I wrote a generally non-technical primer on them a while back. I think they could be used to some interesting effect in the OER space actually. Perhaps we ought to focus this month’s meetup on the topic?
Replied to a tweet (Twitter)
I contribute to a wiki and a community that looks at some of the why and how questions which you might appreciate.

There are also many academics and researchers who are in the space which may give you some examples. Some are talking about the space under the moniker of A Domain of One’s Own or the hashtag . The project name is a direct reference to Virginia Woolf’s essay A Room of One’s Own (1929) in which she writes:

“A woman must have money, and a room of her own, ​if she is to write fiction.”​

If you want to immerse yourself, we’re having a free online conference this weekend that will help you explore the idea and even begin starting down the road if you like. In fact, the conference is hosted BarCamp-style, so I heartily recommend you attend and suggest your exact question as a session for discussion and brainstorming! If you’d like there are a bunch of volunteers that can help you get something started on the second day.

Personally, I really love WordPress.org infrastructure which I recommend running on Reclaim Hosting (they focus on universities, colleges, and academics) which will get you up and running with a domain name (usually about $10/year depending on what you choose) and hosting for $30/year. They have excellent support and you’ll find some of the smartest and most ethical technologists in academia in their fora. I use my own website as a research notebook cum commonplace book.

I’ve got some time between now and the end of the year if you need some volunteer technical help, I can assist you in getting over some of the technical hurdle to get something up and running and using it if you like.

Notes from the DoOO October Meetup

Chris Aldrich:

The October Domain of One’s Own meetup is starting in just about 45 minutes. Get your tea or coffee ready and join us for some conversation. @withknown https://boffosocko.com/2020/10/02/domain-of-ones-own-meetup-october-2020/
The conference room is open for the meetup for socializing prior to the meetup: https://events.indieweb.org/2020/10/domain-of-one-s-own-meetup-october-2020–GvlqwJBN66xn
Had a good, but smaller meeting this week and talked with @jbj and others about uses of webmention.

Replied to a thread by geonz, ThomasJTobin, actualham (Twitter)
I’m helping to host an online IndieWebCamp at the end of June. I’ve stubbed out a session on A Domain of One’s Own “LMS” to discuss just this problem. I’d encourage other creators to join as well to propose other education, , and OER related topics for that weekend. Everyone is welcome to attend.

Domain of One’s Own LMS
The coronavirus pandemic has rapidly forced educators to flee online where there is a wealth of predatory, amoral, and questionable platforms for managing online pedagogy. Starting closer to first principles, how might we design and build an LMS (Learning Management System) based on IndieWeb Principles or using the related ideas behind A Domain of One’s Own where the teacher and students own their own content, learning content, and personal learning network. Can we dovetails ideas and principles from the Open Educational Resources (OER) space with this at the same time?
Replied to a tweet by Tom WoodwardTom Woodward (Twitter)
All the credit really goes to Ryan Barrett and the huge open source crowd in the #IndieWeb who provide a truly magic tech layer for adding onto the and space. If you haven’t tried it, step on in and say hello! 👋
Bookmarked Thing Type: Domain Camp (Extend Activity Bank)
There sure are a lot of moving parts to managing a domain of your own. This camp experience (which is open any time of year) will lead you through activities to become more familiar with cpanel, subdomains, web redirects, installing applications on a Domain of One’s Own.

👓 Let’s Make Twitter Great Again? – A Reflection on a Social Media of One | Read Write Respond

Read Let’s Make Twitter Great Again? – A Reflection on a Social Media of One by Aaron DavisAaron Davis (Read Write Respond)
Many argue that something is not right with social media as it currently stands. This post explores what it might mean to make Twitter great again? Responding to Jack Dorsey’s call for suggestions on how to improve Twitter, Dave Winer put forward two suggestions: preventing trolling and making cha...
Replied to a tweet by Jessica ChretienJessica Chretien (Twitter)
It’s threads/comments like these that make me think that using Micropub clients like Quill that allow quick and easy posting on one’s own website are so powerful. Sadly, even in a domains-centric world in which people do have their own “thought spaces“, the ease-of-use of tools like Twitter are still winning out. I suspect it’s the result of people not knowing about alternate means of quickly writing out these ideas and syndicating them to services like Twitter for additional distribution while still owning them on spaces they own and control.

I know that Greg McVerry, Aaron Davis, and I (among others) often use our websites/commonplace books for quick posts (and sometimes syndicate them to Twitter for others’ sake). We then later come back to them (and the resultant comments) and turn them into more fully fleshed out thoughts and create longer essays, articles, or blogposts like Jessica Chretien eventually did on her own website.

I wonder if it wasn’t for the nearness of time and the interaction she got from Twitter if Jessica would have otherwise eventually searched her Twitter feed and then later compiled the post she ultimately did? It’s examples like this and the prompts I have from my own website and notifications via Webmention from Twitter through Brid.gy that make me thing even more strongly that scholars really need to own even their “less formal” ideas. It’s oftentimes the small little ideas that later become linked into larger ideas that end up making bigger impacts. Sometimes the problem becomes having easy access to these little ideas.

All this is even more interesting within the frame of Jessica’s discussion of students being actively involved in their own learning. If one can collect/aggregate all their references, reading, bookmarks, comments, replies, less formal ideas, etc. on their own site where they’re easily accessed and searched, then the synthesis of them into something larger makes the learning more directly apparent.

An Invitation to IndieWeb Summit 2019

Fellow educators, teachers, specialists, instructional designers, web designers, Domains proponents, programmers, developers, students, web tinkerers, etc.,

  • Want to expand the capabilities of what your own domain is capable of?
  • Interested in improving the tools available on the open web?
  • Want to help make simpler, ethical digital pedagogy a reality in a way that students and teachers can implement themselves without relying on predatory third-party platforms?
  • Are you looking to use your online commonplace book as an active hub for your research, writing, and scholarship?

Bring your ideas and passions to help us all brainstorm, ruminate, and then with help actually design and build the version of the web we all want and need–one that reflects our values and desires for the future.

I’d like to invite you all to the 9th Annual IndieWeb Summit in Portland, Oregon, USA on June 29-30, 2019. It follows a traditional BarCamp style format, so the conference is only as good as the attendees and the ideas they bring with them, and since everyone is encouraged to actively participate, it also means that everyone is sure to get something interesting and valuable out of the experience.

We need more educators, thinkers, and tinkerers to begin designing and building the ethical , , and interactive pedagogy systems we all want.

Come and propose a session on a topic you’re interested in exploring and building toward with a group of like-minded people.

While on-site attendance can be exciting and invigorating for those who can come in person, streaming video and online tools should be available to make useful and worthwhile virtual attendance of all the talks, sessions, and even collaborative build time a real possibility as well. I’ll also note that travel assistance is also available for the Summit if you’d like to apply for it, or you’re able to donate funds to help others.

I hope you can all attend, and I encourage you to invite along friends, students, and colleagues.  

I heartily encourage those who don’t yet have a domain of their own to join in the fun. You’ll find lots of help and encouragement at camp and within the IndieWeb community so that even if you currently think you don’t have any skills, you can put together the resources to get something up and working before the Summit’s weekend is over. We’re also around nearly 24/7 in online chat to continue that support and encouragement both before and after the event so you can continue iterating on things you’d like to have working on your personal website.

Never been to an IndieWebCamp? Click through for some details about what to expect. Still not sure? feel free to touch base in any way that feels comfortable for you. 

Register today: https://2019.indieweb.org/summit#register

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Quoted You need your own spot! by Leo LaporteLeo Laporte (This Week in Google | TWiT.tv)

Everybody, every company, ought to have a website: a place they can call their own, a place where your best stuff lives, a place where, when people Google you, they find your site.

I tell every teenager: [...] create a website, get your domain name—preferably your own name—put stuff up there so when people search for you they find your best stuff. It's so important.

And if you're a business it goes double. A business that's not online practically doesn't exist.

Now you may say, "well i have a Facebook page, I have a Twitter account." You need your own spot! Sure you can have your Facebook page and Twitter feed and all that stuff, and it should link to your website, but you gotta have the website.

Leo Laporte, The Tech Guy on the Premiere radio network, broadcaster, podcaster, tech pundit. Founder, TWiT Netcast Network.