This blog post will serve as a series of examples to help inspire, format and display the myriads of potentials that wordpress based websites offer for teaching, learning, presenting, publishing, archiving & sharing. I am drawing from my own courses and examples here, please feel free to leave comments below or in the forum. The examples range from my courses on the academic commons, the Openlab, and a self-hosted private website. All of which use the wordpress interface.
The question I continue to ask myself through these experiences is; “what are the ongoing potentials of this website/ blog /blog post(s) as an experience?” How can I offer more value, accessibility, posterity, archivability? I start with a draft and build/generate content over time as I go. For me, this is a really fun process, I enjoy creating and curating my courses and course content! By all means, be experimental, ask questions, and most of all have fun with the process.
Lets jump in! Perhaps you will click on each example and take a brief tour of each site listed below as you read through here. You can always open each link in a new tab and compare and contrast them as well.
1. https://ct101.us – CT101 – Digital Storytelling. (This is the example that I share at the workshop) This website is a good example of how the course functions as both a repository of content, course calendar and assignment bank with students contributing as authors to the website. The course calendar page is populated with many creative projects that you can follow along with on your own. CT101 is a hybrid course, it is meant to be accessible for distant learners.
2. https://bmccmma100.commons.gc.cuny.edu – This is a foundation graphic design course that places an emphasis on learning the elements and principles of design in relationship to industry standard software applications (Adobe CC). The website serves as the course guide and calendar. Weekly blog posts are published to share assignments, assignment descriptions, research, resources, examples, videos and student contributions via the comment section.
3. https://netart.commons.gc.cuny.edu Net Art is a CUNY-Wide open source course, collaborative exhibition space, research project and experimental “such-ness” created specifically for the Commons. The course is a template and repository for animated GIFs, digital art and video art projects. Contributions come from other CUNY professors, students, courses and beyond! You are welcome to participate and or use any of the projects for yourself and your courses! Submit!
4. Creating presentation content in the blog post format – https://bit.ly/2IZN76O This example will most likely be published as its own blog post here later but I also wanted to include it as a part of this post for contrast. Sometimes an individual blog post can inspire the building of an entire website. This is what this post has inspired for myself. In March of 2019 I was in invited to conduct a workshop at the Graduate Center for the Digital Humanities Initiatives program. The workshop was an introduction to graphic design in relationship to applying it to content created for websites, especially those teaching on the commons and with wordpress. (There are tons of resources here! Enjoy!)
5. Piloting on the OpenLab – https://openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu/mma100-seslow-spring-2019/ – For the spring of 2019 I was invited to pilot my BMCC MMA100 Graphic Design class on the OpenLab – there are many similarities between the Commons and the OpenLab. I am placing this link and example here for visual contrast. Many of you may find yourselves also working with both platforms as you move forward developing courses at BMCC and in CUNY.
6. A Portfolio / Project Example Template – https://profryanseslow.commons.gc.cuny.edu
This website was completed over the summer of 2019 as template to help faculty members with individual portfolio based websites. This places an emphasis on specific bodies of work, projects and collaborations. The site was built using the Twenty Seventeen theme that comes along with the commons.
Thoughts and feedback? Feel free to leave a comment and or visit us in the learning lounge during our summer hours!
PS- if you would like to see another creative example of a wordpress blog / portfolio website that mixes together a series of different things, check out my blog here – https://ryanseslow.com 🙂
PSS – Do you see typos? Help me out 🙂
