A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction – Virginia Woolf
During the pandemic, I have been fortunate to continue working virtually from my home office, even if it is in the basement. While my work supporting faculty with open and online teaching and learning is demanding and my children require constant supervision to stay on task in virtual schooling, I have been slowly moving content from my various web spaces to my new domain, nobukofujita.com, hosted by Reclaim Hosting.
In the TEDx talk above, Professor Jim Groom, explains that the idea of having a personal internet domain is not a new one, but that
Faculty and students must have a domain and web hosting of their own if they are to truly understand and engage in the deeper possibilities of the open web – UMW’s DTLT
He suggests that having a domain of one’s own with a whole new set of tools–open formats, open source applications–poses “a new way of putting students as nodes in the grander hub of the web.” Groom admits that this is not a cutting edge technology, but rather a “trailing technology.” I agree. I have administrated websites for over 20 years, but I am revisiting having a domain of my own with access to install 150+ apps, including custom ones like Mukurtu, Pressbooks, Omeka, Scalar, etc.
As a student, I created this website for a weekly course assignment to learn basic HTML. I chose to make it a personal website, a dynamic reflection of my emerging academic identity. It is arcane, which is good because I can’t remember how to access and it hasn’t been updated it in over a decade. I vaguely remember the instructor introducing website creation as a part of the class, and we got a 1-page handout. I got some help from peers, but I basically had to learn a lot of digital literacy skills on my own. Writing for the web, hand coding, using text and image editors, CSS, checking for web accessibility, etc. are still useful to me now. It was exciting for me as a student when people would find my site and contact me to connect, and even offer me jobs related to my studies.
As a faculty member, I find it difficult to carve out time to maintain a WordPress blog like this one that began during my PhD studies, a traditional faculty teaching dossier, and an educational developer’s eportfolio. So, I will compile my distributed digital spaces into one domain and curate the content a little bit at a time, when I can. I hope that I can present the digital work that I do better on the web than on a static PDF format that I currently use for annual reporting and my renewal, tenure, and promotion process.
In my last post, I said I was done with blogging after 15 years of blogging. So, I lied. I am posting a reflection on my blog to get an Ontario Extend Experimenter badge. I am not sure why I feel compelled to get a badge, since the last time I got a badge (for a gaming workshop with James Gee at the Chang School Talks 2016), I let it expire before putting it on my LinkedIn profile.
I like experimenting with new things, though, so I thought I would give it a go. The badge looks like this:
The nice people at eCampusOntario (Lindsay Woodside and Lillian Hogendoorn) said they would give me an extension to complete the required activities, continue accessing the TESS Experimenters PressBook, and encouraged me to join the OOLN Slack community (I am a member, I just haven’t been on Slack much). To obtain my badge, I am submitting evidence of
Completion of at least 3 Daily Extends
Completion of at least 1 Deep Dive Extend
Reflection on the Experimenter activities via blog post and tweeting/sharing a link to the blog to @ontarioextend with the hashtag #oextend.
3 Daily Extend Activities
My Daily Extend Activities included the following tweets for #oext 2, #oext6, and #oext4. I chose these because these did not take too much time away from my other professional responsibilities.
Tweets @ontarioextend for Daily Extend activities
1 Deep Dive Activity
I created my own H5P content as part of my TESS Experimenters activity in PressBooks. I have a free WordPress account, not a business account, so I can’t install the H5P plugin on this particular WordPress blog.
This tool allows learners to export their reflections as a .docx file: exported-text.docx
Now, the Daily Extend activities did not take much time. However, it took a lot longer than 30 minutes to build a H5P and craft a reflection in the H5P documentation tool. Like many faculty members, I am bad at reading instructions, but I am also a reflective individual and so it took me more time to write. Hope this is helpful for everyone.
As a PhD student, I blogged weekly. Mostly, my posts focused on ideas and people related to my research, and the connections therein. Occasionally, they would reveal my interests outside of academia, such as my late pug dog or knitting.
Then I became a mother, a postdoc, and then a professor. Between family and academic work, I did not have much time or energy left over for blogging.
Later, I transitioned into becoming an educational developer and now I blog even less. My attention is split over 20+ teaching-focused projects (I stopped counting at 20). When I write, I have been advised to write peer-reviewed papers or presentations, or to mobilize my knowledge on platforms like The Conversation rather than to blog about outside interests, such as riding horses.
I feel a little sad about this, because I did enjoy writing blog posts once. Much learning happens informally, and in rather unexpected ways. For example, in the last six months, I have learned so much about metacognitive strategies and attentional focus from my riding coach, Xavier, who has the highest international teaching certification (level 3) in the sport of eventing. Remembering jumping courses has always been a challenge for me. My narrow, internal focus that makes me a good academic often impairs my ability to focus externally, to turn my horse towards the next fence, to find a good line, to maintain the same rhythm and balance, and to find a distance for take off. Fortunately, my young pony partner, Marshmallow, is very athletic, and will take over to problem solve for me I mess up. Who knew.
I’m posting this here as well as on the Open Learning Blog. Note, Opinions are my own, not those of my unit or institution. Apologies for the formatting, I am testing out the new Block editor in WordPress.
On the 10th day of #12Apps, my true love gave to me: PubPub, your hub to community publishing! It’s an easy app to make your research stronger. It’s an app to create your own community or participate in multiple communities of practice among researchers, publish books and journals, and host conferences.
Ten Leafs a-Leaping from A Porcupine in a Pine Tree: A Canadian 12 Days of Christmas by Helaine Becker. Illustrated by Werner Zimmerman.
What is PubPub?
PubPub gives research communities of all stripes and sizes a simple, affordable, and nonprofit alternative to existing publishing models and tools.
I know what you’re thinking. Perhaps you’ve met members of the Open Learning Team at a pub at academic conferences, or even joined us on the requisite pub walking tour in search of sustenance, and to keep tabs on the Leafs game. No, I’m afraid this blog post is not about that kind of pub. But, we definitely could entertain a lively conversation about PubPub in a pub, if you like!
Punning aside, PubPub is an academically supported, open-source, and end-to-end alternative to proprietary publishing models and platforms. Developed with strong institutional support from MIT’s Knowledge Futures Group, a joint initiative of the MIT Press and MIT Media Lab, when PubPub says they are open source, they mean business–paradoxical as that sounds–releasing all of their code on Github. PubPub operates on a non-profit, free forever, researcher-friendly business model. How cool is that?
Moreover, PubPub actually “gets” the true nature of our work as academics (when we are not teaching or doing service): the iterative process of conducting research, drafting manuscripts, reviewing the work of our peers, and publishing. While we can and do conduct individual research as independent scholars, the design of PubPub draws on the fundamental insight that scientific research and knowledge creation is a collaborative enterprise.
As a computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) researcher focused on investigating knowledge creation using iterative design-based research methods, clearly, I’ve already drank the Kool-Aid. But how can I convince you, dear reader, to give PubPub a whirl?
We know that collaboration cultivates research quality, enhances resource utilization, and increases our impact (Hsiehchen, Espinoza, & Hsieh, 2015). Circulating pre-prints on non-commercial servers (e.g. bioRxiv, OSF Preprints, SocArXiv) facilitates conversations and feedback on a manuscript prior to submission (Maggio, Artino, & Driessen, 2018). Sharing our work early, before it is finalized through publication, is what PubPub calls “community publishing.” Let’s take a look at an example of such a PubPub community, next.
Responsive Science
Responsive Science is a community that uses PubPub as
“…a platform for researchers to share their scientific goals and progress with the communities that may one day be impacted by their research. By actively inviting concerns and criticism from local citizens at the very beginning of each projects, technologies can be redesigned to more effectively address societal needs.”
Imagine posting grants, papers, and proposals to engage the very people who will be impacted by your research findings.
For instance, check out video recordings of the Mice Against Ticks team at community meetings with the citizens of Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, and Cuttyhunk. These do not follow the style of an average community meeting. They take a rather lively, musical turn in some cases:
Well, that particular PubPub example is a tough act to follow, isn’t it?
In Science in Action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society, Bruno Latour (1987) conducts enquiry on how someone–a researcher–utters a statement and follow how another character, one that they dub the “dissenter,” believe or disbelieve what was said. Responsive science turns the notion of “intra-group discourse” among members of a research lab on its head by promoting “inter-group discourse” (Woodruff & Meyer, 1997) with a larger audience comprised of real people in the community, people who might be somewhat more unbiased and critical of your research than say, your fellow lab mates working on the same project. Nevertheless, such critiques can help you hone your dialectical argumentation and persuasion, thus enabling you talk about your research in ways that intelligent people not in your discipline can readily understand.
As a segue to an entirely different kind of example, I’ll let you in on a secret. Virtually all of you know me as a social scientist or even a “real” scientist (several of my pubs are included in the dblp computer science bibliography). However, did you know that I have a MA and BA in English Literature? Yeah, think serious paradigm wars unfolding in my head.
Frankenbook
To tell you the truth, when I first saw the title, Frankenbook, on the PubPub site, I thought of “Frankenfish.” Not the 2004 American horror film, but rather of stories of genetically-modified salmon that my colleague from the Canadian Food and Inspection Agency would regale me with on his visits to the Learning Centre where I worked for Health Canada in the BC-Yukon Region.
Imagine my delight to find out that Frankenbook is
“..a collective reading and collaborative annotation experience of the original 1818 text of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley”
This project was launched in January 2018 as part of Arizona State University’s celebration of the novel’s 200th anniversary. This PubPub community allows scientists, engineers, and creators of all kinds to explore–through annotations and discussion–Shelley’s first novel (yes, she started writing it at age 18; think about your first-year student writing this novel) from scientific, technological, political, and ethical dimensions, as well as its historical context Two hundred years later, Shelley’s text inspires us in films, parodies, cartoons, costumes, memes, gifs, etc.
The annotations on the 1818 text stay focused, unlike my own inattention and shifting frames of reference. I can’t resist connecting Shelley’s the Romantic era novel with pop culture referents like the brilliant 1974 comic scene, “It’s Frankensteen,” in the scene where Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) meets Igor (character not in the original book).
Books from my collection and current prices for new copies, in CDN, on Amazon.ca. Left to right: Norton Anthology of English Literature ($115.76), English Romantic Writers ($586.08), English Romanticism ($45.95), and Frankenstein ($46.92). Total cost $794.71. Wouldn’t it be nice to save students nearly $800 using an open solution?
DISCUSSIONS
The discussion posts are many (413), multi-vocal, and ongoing, with posts continuing many months after the project launched.
Example of continuing discussions on Frankenbook many months later
Both the annotations and discussions are more legible than the private annotations that I madly scribbled in pencil on hard copy books as a student. Like this:
Note: Mary Shelley’s work and Frankenstein are on the “marginal syllabus,” outside of the main body of Perkins’ English Romantic Writers. Oddly, works by Mary Wollstonecraft (Shelley’s maiden name) are in included in the main body of the book
IN SUM…
PubPub is a powerful app because it creates a hub where participants in a community, whether they are students participating in a learning community in a traditional, hybrid, or online course; a community of practice of literary scholars and teachers analyzing a text and seeking reviews and feedback; or scientific researchers engaging the larger civic community, as partners in their research process.
While I haven’t yet fully explored PubPub’s capabilities for embedding rich media content (e.g. H5P in PressBooks), or LTI integration with a Learning Management System (LMS) like Hypothes.is, I feel confident in saying that PubPub is worthy of the hubbub that it’s creating in open education circles.
So keep an eye on PubPub, it has a lot of potential to transform the way you enculturate learners into your discipline, whether you research and teach in the humanities and social sciences, or in science and engineering.
Nobuko Fujita, PhD 