A HH4901 3
From Studyplace
Contents |
[edit] Humanistic studies in a digital commons
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Teachers College Columbia University Thurday 3:00-5:00 A&HH4901 |
Through Humanistic studies in a digital commons, participants can work on academic projects of their choice within a digital commons, www.studyplace.org, where people join to respond in diverse ways to the question, What educates? Participants work towards two objectives —
- to advance lines of inquiry of importance to their scholarship and writing and
- to explore how they and others can best do that through open-source peer production.
[edit] February 1, 2007
Let's try an explicit agenda for these meetings, initially
- 3:00 to 3:40 — Design and systems initiatives
- Continuing projects —
- New projects —
- MediaWiki and CSS (see below)
- 3:40 to 5:00 — Substantive projects
- Continuing projects
- Individual projects — Quick update
- Collaborative projects — Discussion
- Digital Lyceum — Cornel West
- Symposium — Tough Questions on Tough Choices
- New projects — Individual or collaborative
- Continuing projects
[edit] Running considerations on site architecture
[edit] MediaWiki and CSS
Currently, key StudyPlace pages make heavy use of tables coded in a trial and error manner, which works (more or less, with the less now being evident in problems that seem to crop up with versions of Internet Explorer). It would probably be much simpler to maintain and extend these pages, if we had better understanding of how MediaWiki makes use of CSS and other resources of good web design. Let's try devoting some effort, week by week, to building a shared understanding of MediaWiki and the principles of good web design. If it seems to be a diversion of our effort from more important things we can stop.
- As background for discussing design issues for a project such as StudyPlace, a very useful resource is Web Design in a Nutshell by Jennifer Niederst Robbins (3rd edition, Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media, 2006). This is available online for those with a Columbia UNI. This week, lets try discussing questions and observations that arise on reading the first 3 chapters of Web Design in a Nutshell, which deal with basics of web standards, browsers, and displays. If that seems illuminating, we might continue doing two or three chapters a week.
Robbie McClintock 17:59, 28 January 2007 (EST)
