Exploring and Building Open [Source] Software for Tech-savvy Educators and OER Publishers

INTERACTION DESIGN / EDUCATION / SYSTEMS THINKING / MARKDOWN

It’s a cliche (for a good reason), but I it’s hard to believe the summer is almost over and the fall teaching term is about to begin.

Over the summer I continued working on all of my Grav open education and publishing projects. A highlight was the brand new Grav skeleton package Open Presentation Hub to help create, publish, and share Markdown-based slides with the Presentation Plugin by Ole Vik, which uses the Reveal.js Framework.

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Recently I tweeted a sneak peek of the new Grav Presentation Hub skeleton, and I thought I would share it here:

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Recently I tweeted about the new Presentation Listing page for the Open Course Hub skeleton package (which leverages Ole Vik’s Presentation Plugin), and I thought I would share it here:


Recently I tweeted some details about the new Presentation Plugin by Ole Vik for the Grav CMS, and I thought I would share them here:

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Recently I tweeted some recent improvements to Sections-type pages, designed to support a large amount of Markdown-based content within a Grav site, and I thought I would share them here:


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Recently I tweeted some of my thoughts about Markdown, open content, and the release of the new Grav Presentation Plug, and I thought I would share them here:


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Recently I’ve been working on trying to visualize my approach for a future-friendly open content system, including how my Grav projects support that system, and I thought I would share them here:

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Today, the biggest update so far to the Git Sync Plugin has been released, and what a release it is! Two of the most requested features have been added - the ability to sync additional user folders and the ability to fine-tune the automatic synchronization of page changes - plus much more!

SFU’s fourth annual DEMOfest is scheduled for Wed, November 21st and I hope to share with my fellow educators how the Grav CMS can be used to expand and enhance Canvas - here’s my submitted proposal:

Expanding and Enhancing Canvas with the Open Source Grav CMS
Tech-savvy educators! Want to incorporate more open and collaborative materials within Canvas? How about improving the online experience? Faced with this challenge, Paul Hibbitts developed components for the file-based Grav CMS (getgrav.org) to effectively work inside of his CMPT-363 Canvas course (https://canvas.sfu.ca/courses/38847). Grav uses the platform-independent Markdown format and enables collaborative editing by students and instructors with Git-based services such as GitHub and GitLab. These also naturally support the 5 Rs (Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix and Redistribute) of Open Educational Resources. Integrating Grav pages within Canvas is seamless too - without any content restrictions.

As an experiment I’ve created a small set of 30-second demo videos to give a glimpse into some major and minor features of my Open Course Hub and Open Publishing Space projects. I recently tweeted these videos and thought I would share them here too:

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