I said as much on Twitter to two HASTAC community members:

To which the response was basically we’re not too sure, let’s ask HASTAC, and the HASTAC twitter responded a few times:

So, being a community member makes you more responsible? Not certain of this, but I am pretty certain it cuts back on the conversation significantly and said as much:

The conversation went on between Paolo Magnifico and HASTAC a bit longer after this discussion:

Fair enough, HASTAC sees itself as network of networks, but if that is the case, why not act as a syndication hub of the various conversations your network engages in around the web rather than pulling them into a space like Facebook, which is not really a very good example of a meta-network–a network that harnesses networks would be far more platform agnostic nor dictated by a specific idea of community. Networks in many way change the idea of community, just think about how I found Cathy Davidson’s post, and how my conversation with HASTAC continued on a space outside their Facebook like community space. A network of networks would allow a kind of streaming in of various conversations from a variety of sites and services, and the HASTAC community would be more of an aggregating hub of activity from around the web—at least that’s my take on it. Anyway, like I said, no big deal, no comment left, not signing up. But then I get this tweet:

Hmmm, all I wanted was to comment, I don’t want to necessarily join the HASTAC Facebook-like community. I have a network. I simply wanted to reply to Cathy Davidson—is that so wrong? A community of scholars is fine, and if HASTAC wants to build that than bully for them, but why define it at the level of commentary from others who don’t feel the need to join that community? Point being is the commentary and discourse often happens at the level of comments on a post in this space, and by making that more difficult than it need be you actually hurt your community my homogenizing the voices there. What good is a community without dialogue and commentary, why frame that dialogue around a rather arbitrary idea of community member? Sure it’s simple to become a member and free and all that, but at the same time it also creates a barrier that is entirely unnecessary by reinforcing a sense of community that is more deeply rooted in the inability to control comment spam on Drupal than letting others have a discussion along the path of least resistance:

This is all kind of silly I know, but annoying nonetheless. All I wanted to do was comment, I don’t want to join your community, rather I want to be able to join the discussion freely in many places, and not just at the HASTAC website, but certainly there at times. So, for all that is right and holy HASTAC, open your comments to everyone—the bava commands you!

Now, before you jump all over me, hear me out. I’ll try and make it short and to the point (but no promises), and I won’t even pull a Rorschach on your ass—at least not just yet.

Funny thing about EDUCAUSE Review and EQ (and journals more generally) may not necessarily be the citations, I’ve seen articles by Alan Levine and Bryan Alexander, Brian Lamb, and Gardner Campbell—to name just a few—extensively cite blogs in their work—in fact Brian’s article on the Mashup in the EDUCAUSE Review is almost entirely citations from blogs—which might come as no surprise given the author. So, I’m not so sure we can tun on the EDUCAUSE Review here as a culprit that reinforces an intentional marginalization of blogging. In fact, I’d bet money their record is better than the majority of academic journals out there when it comes to citing blogs and other “untraditional academic media.”

That said, does the responsibility of credit then come back to the author(s) of these articles? I would argue to some great degree yes, and I would also argue that who those authors are and how they frame the tone/voice of their articles has everything to do with what is the crux of these journal articles: a normalized, objective voice that makes otherwise individualized and idiomatic arguments that make potentially powerful ideas—often expressed creatively—that much more palatable for the professional academic class. And, often times, but not always, that class is accompanied by three letters after their name and a long list of publications in similar journals which often, but not always, gives them entrè into the journal in the first place. Is this necessarily bad? No. Does it help certain ideas circulate to a particular audience? Yes. Are we putting too much power in the hands of these journals by reacting this way to the idea of credit? Absolutely.

Fact is, I have written extensively about the “End of the LMS” and the death of BlackBoard, etc. on my blog for close to four years now.  I have linked to Leigh and Stephen and Mike before, as well as Alan Levine, Barabra Ganley, Barbara Sawhill, D’Arcy Norman, David Wiley, Geeky Mom, and the list goes on and on, but no one is pissed at me for writing about it when I didn’t reference them. No one cares when I go off about an idea like this in the same way they might when it’s a journal article in a publication like EQ, and the reason why is that we still believe that Jon Mott’s discussion of the Post-LMS Era in EQ is somehow more official and real than it might be on a blog, meanwhile we all know that these ideas have been vehemently discussed and hashed out on the blogosphere, where credit is often and necessarily inconsistent and erratic, but somehow implied–and given we are all working for bigger idea of open and free and fluid education, credit seems to be a vestige of another time—like journal articles for tenure committees and the like. I don’t have to play that game, so I don’t. And the idea of publishing in a journal is odious to me because I can’t use the tone that has liberated me from a terrible bout of graduate school and helped me find my stride, and has, as a result, made my work and interaction fun, rather than a list of necessitated acknowledgments, citations, and origins. I don’t blog for credit, I don’t blog for tenure, and I don’t blog to promote a global micro-brand—first and foremost I blog because I like blogging, it’s fun, and when I blog about education it is often informed by the seemingly obvious fact that education is over-priced, run by fools, and in serious danger of becoming yet another commodity.  And this idea of credit gets to the heart of this idea of the commodity, because in many ways credit builds the abstract, but very real, commodity of authority—and the two often lead to some assumed role of leadership and justified power.

But, that is not how I see this loosely coupled conversation emerging and it is a bit distressing to see it move towards a scramble for credit, recognition, and some anemic sense of “edech celebrity” —not unlike what we are seeing play out in the Twitter commentary at TedxNYC as we speak—I guess the unconferences and barcamps didn’t highlight individual genius nearly enough—and what we have now is a push towards an almost ceremonious recognition of certain individuals as somehow more—and not to say they may not be—but I don’t understand the push to accentuate it so. Credit? I guess, and then soon follows leadership, power, and then what? More of the same, maybe?

Yesterday Joss Winn published a post titled “Towards a Manifesto for Sharing,” wherein suggests that the need for institutional sanctioning of sharing in many ways goes against the very logic of why and how we share. In this post he points to a new emphasis for education more specifically

…on grounding education in the reality of our social relations, the struggle of daily life, the hierarchical relations between institutions and people, and between academics and students. The desire for autonomy is also a desire to re-instate the commons, to break the enclosures that currently inhibit sharing. The conscious act of sharing is both a move to resist oppression and a drive towards autonomy.

Often journal articles, celebrity conferences, and the like remove us from the social relations that made so many of these ideas possible, they elevate and re-inscribe the hierarchical relationships between institutions and people, as well as academics and students. And the commons itself becomes unevenly distributed around ideas of credit, -who said what first? -who linked to who? -who made you? The point is, part of the move towards autonomy and a resistance to oppression has everything to do with letting go of some of our ideas of ownership and authority, in an attempt to cultivate a space of creativity and a tone and home of our own. Journals often don’t provide us with new ideas in edtech, but rather move to codify those we have already had some first hand experience with in shaping through thought and praxis. They are a barometer for all the folks who have decided not to join the conversation, and that’s fine, but I really don’t see it as a threat to—or a forgetting of—the sources, because we are all working towards a large idea of seeing education change, and if we revert back to the traditional nodes of power in terms of owning ideas, necessitating credit, and invidious distinction annointed our leaders than we really haven’t re-invented anything—just put a new label on old clothes. A social history of edtech as a emergent movement is far more interesting, and in my mind necessary and relevant right now, than an intellectual one.

What’s more is that Antonio is having his students get their own web hosting and domain names to provide them the space to experiment (all of which will feed back into the course site), and to do this he actually found both free web hosting with 000webhost.com and free domain names with co.cc—so the whole thing comes at no cost to the students! Brilliant! This looks to be a grand experiment, and a very cool way to teach computer science students about open source, web-based content management out on the open web with their own open source tool box, domain, and web hosting that they can take with them when their done. More than that, the collaborative documentation promises to be both a very useful resource for the class as a whole, as well as for many beyond it. Kudos Antonio, and avanti!

Why I tweet (Take 1)

Why I tweet (Take 2)

Yesterday Tyler commented about the header images on the bava, suggesting that they are just one more reason to read God’s only blog. His comment went like this:

OK, I did find this useful. [referring to an old WP tutorial post]
But I stayed on this page all day because I loved the header pic…
Then when I tried to grab it I found the rotator and holy shit you have the best header pics ever!
Thanks, and now I just need to track down some of those films.

I couldn’t agree with Tyler more, I do have the best header pics ever, and to show my faithful readers how responsive I am to their needs and desires, I decided to post a play-by-play of the brilliant header images that have adorned this blog since December 2005 when the lights when on. Additionally, I’ll have you know that unlike some who will not be named here, I’ve been themogamous with the K2 theme for WordPress for almost five years now. I remain devoted to my theme, and I am of the mindset that a blog’s theme is a contract with your readers, a deep and sacred aesthetic relationship that should not be altered under any circumstances. Far too many people switch themes as if it were just a container for their ideas rather than an integral and constitutive part of the ideas themselves, and it’s my firm contention that the thematic promiscuity that is rampant on the web right now is an underlying factor in the decline of the fabric of the blogosphere more generally. There are no loyalties, the thoughtless hopping from theme to theme has escalated in recent years to a mindless jumping from service to service, and soon enough the web becomes a sordid orgy of half-assed apps and orphaned content, a broken platform lacking any sense of consistency and persistence. Well, the bava knows that, and as an antidote to the general moral malaise that abounds online currently, we’ve done our best to give everyone who comes home through its always open doors exactly what they expect, a clean, well-lighted theme that understands memories are made in space over time, and that the persistence and consistency of that space over time is paramount in making this world more than virtual.

Before I get into a free wheeling discussion of the headers and their respective films, let me first give the long overdue credit to this classic Mario Bava fan page that provided me with well more than half all my header images.

Before I figured out how to load the random header script, this blog actually had only one header image for about a week or so. The first, and because of that the dearest to me, was this still from Mario Bava’s classic….

The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963)

The Girl Who knew Too Much is possibly the best example of Bava’s acknowledgment of his place as an uniquely Italian b-movie filmmaker by putting the Giallo—a popular Italian dime-novel tradition named after their yellow covers (giallo in Italian means Yellow)—on film for the first time. But this is just one of Bava’s many firsts. Not only is Bava playing with the Hitchcock classic in this work, but placing it within a suspenseful, serial killer framework that doesn’t abuse the gore that becomes commonplace in his Italian b-movie heirs, namely the over-rated Dario Argento. Moreover,  it was only one of two films that Bava shot in stunning black and white, and his almost noir-like mastery of light in this film makes a nice juxtaposition to his homage to the black and White Masterpieces of of the Monster movies of the 30s apparent in Black Sunday.

Black Sunday (a.k.a The Mask of Satan) (1960)

Probably the most numerous and gripping headers on the bava come from his acknowledged masterpiece Black Sunday. Starring the queen of 60s horror, Barbara Steele (who I still have a crush on), this film is often cited as the pinnacle of Bava’s aesthetic—though the visual magic of  Danger: Diabolik (1968) and Planet of the Vampires (1965) make for some powerful challengers to that assertion—but after seeing a couple of his shots in glorious black and white it becomes clear why some may make this argument.  What strikes me about Black Sunday is that its film aesthetic comes right out of the stage-sets of the classic period of horror films during the 1930s. It is really a pleasure to watch Bava’s ability to conflate the camp world of Barbara Steele with the aesthetic brilliance of James Whale. More than that, he captures the horror in this film by interpolating the gore—the Iron maiden Scene is a perfect example of this—rather than simply filming the blood like some porn-inspired money shot that characterizes Italian b-horrors of the 70s and 80s. Admittedly I enjoy many of the gore fests of the 70s and 80s, but none capture the elegance and pared down raw visionof Bava’s earlier work. What’s more is that you can watch this fil in it’s entirety on YouTube on you tube in its entirety (one file, rather than the usual 10 or 11) here (thanks to Starzmedia—though keep in mind there are a few commercials, however it does seem to play for others outside the US, thanks @LisaRead for testing this).

Planet of the Vampires (1965)

This one is near and dear to me because it is actually the first Bava movie I ever watched, and it remains remarkable to me because it proves that vision and imagination is far more important than finances. Bava turns simple models into a psychedelic trip through outer space. The plot has two spaceships filled with the best-dressed astronauts ever (it is an Italian film, mind you) that land on a deserted planet to investigate the SOS transmission they have been monitoring. Turns out the planet is inhabited by formless beings that need to be hosted by foreign bodies in order to escape the limited resources that plague their planet (sounds remarkably similar to the plot of Ridley Scott’s Alien , no?). Moreover, the mist-filled planet seems to inform the aesthetic of Alien, creating a specular experience – perhaps born from limited resources – that realizes an abstract vision of space that opens up an imaginative element of cross-fertilizing scifi and horror (another benchmark used to celebrate Alien). The first ten minutes of this film may be my favorite of all of Bava’s work, the way the actors work through the G-forces pulling them to this strange planet is nothing short of brilliant, and the technology aesthetic for the spaceship is so magical. You can find this film in its entirety on YouTube as well, but not all in one file. Here is part 1, which comes highly recommended.

Kill, Baby, Kill (1966)

Must admit this was not one of my favorite Bava films despite the fact that it is considered by many to be his highest achievement. Everyone from Federico Fellini to Martin Scorsese to David Lynch quote this film as an inspiration for their own work (I’m sure Tim Burton does too, but he is a hack so I won’t recognize him here on the bava unless I am abusing him for his inexcusable Planet of the Apes remake). I’ll have to re-watch it again before I try an articulate my own flat response to this film, but I can absolutely see the remarkable  of the psychedelic fun house imagery. Moreover, the film is immediately and completely divorced from any sense of naturalism, although it is in many regards played straight. There is probably something I’m missing here, so this goes back on the queue before I spout off about it giving it another go. Either way, I loved the image below of the dude about to be snuffed.

Hercules in the Haunted World (1961)

Bava’s contribution to the Sword & Sandal genre features some inspired set design of the underworld which are in many ways taken to the next level in his scifi/horror masterpiece Planet of the Vampires. The film also features the great Christopher Lee and has some brilliant camp with the relationship between Hercules, Thesues, and Telemachus. One of my personal favorite headers features Hercules, Theseus and Princess Deianira on the beach, and I think beautifully captures what I think is Bava’s best campy film, in no small part because the end of the film features Hercules smashing an army of zombies with boulders. Great stuff.

Here’s a look at some of the beautiful set designs and colorful lighting that might otherwise get overlooked for all the camp:

The Whip and the Body (1963)

I’ve written about this film already at length, one of my personal favorites because I love how Bava does S&M, but I choose this header rather late, sometime in 2008, because it reminded me of the first header from The Woman Who Knew Too Much with the focus on the horrified eyes, but this time Bava uses deeply colored light to similar effect as black and white.

Black Sabbath (“The Telephone” epsiode)

Mario Bava’s horror anthology features three short films based on stories by the other Tolstoy, Chekov, and Mauppasant. Black Sabbath has a fascinating history in that it was cut dramatically for the US release, in particular the sub-plot of a lesbian relationship from the short film titled “The Telephone” removes key scenes and re-writes in translation various dialogues that would capture this short as a story of revenge story into one of a ghost story.  The headers from Black Sabbath pay tribute to that short and the lost scenes. You can see the US version of “The Telephone” on YouTube in 3 parts here, and then compare it to the Italian version for those significant differences here.

Some other fun facts about Black Sabbath via Wikipedia:

In August 1969, a heavy blues-rock band named Earth decided to change their name and agreed that the title of this movie would be a nice fit for their sound. This band, Black Sabbath, later rose to much acclaim.

According to Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary, Black Sabbath was the inspiration for Pulp Fiction.

According to Video Watchdog editor Tim Lucas, the final section of this film bears a striking resemblance to a scene from David Lynch’s 1992 film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. Lynch’s final episode of Twin Peaks, filmed just prior to the 1992 film, features a sequence reminiscent of Bava’s Kill, Baby, Kill.

Four Times That Night (1972)

One of my favorite Mario Bava films because it puts bava in the seemingly foreign genre of the sex comedy. And how does he deal with it?  Well he turns it into he Rashomon of erotica. Telling the tale of a lox tryst from four different angles according to four different characters, all of which get increasingly insane. More than that, the interiors of the 60s apartment are absolutely brilliant. Some argue you’re not missing anything if you haven’t seen this Bava, but I disagree, this is a must see because it is so very different from just about everything else he’s done.

Six Women for the Murderer (a.k.a. Blood and Black Lace) (1964)

Must admit I haven’t seen this one yet, but it is on my list.  Got the image here, and here’s a review. Again, though, Bava with the eyes!

Half-Life 2 (2004)

This is a departure from the bava-themed header that come before it, but I had to pay some homage to a video game that in may ways inspired some of the same horror Bav brought to the big screen. The first 15 minutes of Half-Life 2 remains the most amazing direction of a gme ‘ve yet to see, and truly opens up this genre as a magical space for storytelling that earlier games like Duke Nuke “em only hinted at. And some may argue Bioshock is a more recent example, and while I enjoyed it, it was nothing like that opening sequence of Half-Life 2, still the standard in my mind.

“Bomb Shelter”

This is simply an image I found when work on my first domain name ever, redbaiters.com (which simply redirects to bavatuesdays now).  It was going to be an homage to red scare propaganda on the web, which there is a ton, but I never got it off the ground, though I learned a ton in the process. Anyway, I loved the image, and incorporated it into the pantheon of header images

Upon finishing this monolithic post about seemingly nothing (my favorite kind) it strikes me that I am missing some gems.  There is nothing from the film fumetti Danger: Diabolik (1968), Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971), or Rabid Dogs (1978). All classics that need to be represented here, so I guess I need to do a follow-up once I add some more header images. What’s more, if you click on the Rabid Dogs link above, you’ll notice it doesn’t even have a Wikipedia article, which has to change as well.

Long live the banners, long live the bava!

Click image for full size.

This work of art inspired by a return to Brady Bunch 2.0.

The conference started out with an opening session by Jared Stein and Marc Hugentobler titled “Late Night Learning LIVE!” (link to full presentation on Mediasite here). The amount of time, energy, and work that went into this presentation is belied by the the brilliance with which it was pulled off, this presentation was superb. The format of a late night talk show eases everyone into the conference, makes it relaxed and fun all at once, while at the same time throwing bomb after bomb at the audience. When I realized how mercilessly Marc and Jared were dogging the LMS and pushing for alternatives like the loosely coupled approach characterized by Personal Learning Networks, I felt like a chump. They had hit almost every point I wanted to make, but using a format that was not only more entertaining, but framed in a style that allows for the audience to laugh at an important critique. An approach that is,  in my mind, the best way to effectively get people to consider your ideas—comedy is still the hardest and highest of art forms. And, truth be told, most people would prefer a comedy skit to a sermon any day of the week, and therein lies the importance of an experimental presentation like this one that pushes the bounds of how we communicate a series of new ideas at a conference. This presentation was a masterful example of engaging the audience while at the same time challenging them on just about every assumption we approach the LMS with.  So, in short….Bravo!  And kudos to John Krutsch who both Jared and Marc recognize as the originator of this format, you can see him doing the original “Late Night Learning Live!” here.

Also, I would be remiss if I didn’t detail some of the highlights of the session (and there were many):

Jared Stein’s interview with Jon Mott was brilliant. Jon, as usual, eloquently discusses the power and possibility of decoupling the management elements of the LMS from that system in order to afford his campus the ability to explore learning across a variety of domains and tools. Jon really does frame his argument beautifully, and as much as I scream and yell, what he is doing at BYU right now along with David Wiley (and I’m sure many others I don’t know) is nothing short of revolutionary, primarily because they can frame their approach as moderate in relationship to the “LMS is dead” crowd while at the same time realizing a very powerful initiative towards encouraging, enabling, and supporting faculty and students who want to pursue and cultivate their own personal learning networks on the open web at BYU. As for this video, I think it is my favorite of the presentation because Jared’s subtle use of a BlackBoard mug while interviewing Jon is the best kinda of on-camera gag you can imagine—simple and brilliant. You must see this one, it comes at about 11:00 minutes into the presentation.

And then there were the commercials, the brainchildren of John Krutsch, and oh how good they are. I can’t find direct links to them online, so be sure to just watch the whole presentation, the commercials are brilliant.

Up next was Diego Leal discussing how he ran an entirely online course using an aggregated approach with blogs and wikis. He blogged about his setup here—which is impressive—and hearing him talk about the class and the challenges and triumphs was heartening. Being an educator in Columbia, the back and forth about the LMS is not really of issue, from what I understand they don’t have a major, all-encompassing system like BlackBoard, which makes the dependence on a small pieces approach that much more vital. And when done right, like Diego does it, it becomes apparent that our institutional dependence on the LMS for distributed, online learning is most clearly linked to the bottom line: scaling, efficiency and limited effort and investment in the learning design for both faculty and students—all of which comes at a price, on several levels.

And finally, you had an interview with Tom Woodward and I acting like survivalist lunatics offering tips for preparing for the rampant “zombification” of higher ed. This was fun to do, but a bit hard to watch while at the session because it simply re-enforced what I already knew, namely just how much funnier Tom Woodward is than me. We filmed these clips one evening from our respective garages—it was a blast to do and just further proves that their are few more willing to go bat shit nuts for a presentation than Tom Woodward.

I could go on and on about this presentation, but let me stop here to say it was one of the best I’ve yet to see at an EdTech conference, and Jared and Marc set the bar extremely high for my presentation the next morning, and I can’t say I answered the call. But, if I came even remotely close—which I didn’t—it was because of the people at this conference. In particular, busynessgirl, A.J. Williams, Dr. Donagee, Howard Beattie, Hannah, and several others whom I hope someone helps me fill in the details for in the comments. I’d like to give everyone credit because these folks made my presentation.  In short, the night before my presentation busynessgirl approached me and asked if I would be interested in having a choir for my Sunday morning sermon. I initially thought she was kidding, but it turns out she was dead serious. She recruited more than 10 people to actually march through the ballroom during my presentation and sing “I saw the light.” And for me, that made my talk (it as all downhill from there) and it captures what was so excellent about the ITC conference, the participants were not afraid to have a lot of fun. I talked about the coming reality of an educations based on small pieces loosely joined, and as usual built my presentation on the back of UMW’s finest faculty. Here’s a clip Barry Dahl took of the first 8 minutes of the presentation, which is pretty much all you need, and for an even more abbreviated version go to minute 4 for the stars of this talk: the EdTech choir.

As I mentioned already, it was depressing to leave the conference as soon as I did, and I really only got to see the grand debate and bits and pieces of various presentations on Sunday. I spent most of the time talking with folks in the hallways and finally sitting down and rapping at some length with Nancy White, who is a complete gem and has an uncanny ability to make you look closer at yourself and think hard about what it is we are doing in the field of edtech—even though she wouldn’t call it that. I finally got to see first-hand Nancy work her magic, and it’s no surprise why she is valued so dearly by so many. We talked about a range of things, but one of the issues that came up that has me thinking about things is the “massification” of education (Nancy’s term), the idea that increasingly we are seeing a push for open access to content across wide regions of the world without necessarily considering the ways in which the resources can be facilitated around specific, localized networks of learning. I think this is where Nancy’s ideas and practice with facilitation and community begin to dovetail nicely with Siemens and Downes‘ example of the Massively Open Online Course (MOOC) on Connectivism and Connective Knowledge Course. I’m beginning to connect more dots in this field after finally “connecting” with Nancy, and I’m feeling re-invigorated as a result. We all share concerns about turning open access to open educational resources into feeding lots of taylorized education (thank you for the metaphor, Gardner) rather than powerful examples of how we might harness complex networks of connections to start re-imagining the future of education that is open, affordable (if not free), and provides a sense of quality that is not germane to a resource as much as to a series of relationships around a resource, therein repositioning the idea of quality that all to often is associated with a material rather than the thought and ideas around it.

Image credit: Barry D’s “ITC10 FtWorth 010″

And while I didn’t see Nancy’s presentation in-person, I did watch it soon after it was published and her presentation beautifully models the introduction and facilitation of a new tool, watch how she masterfully and gently introduces Twitter in the first 10 minutes of her presentation at ITC10—so much to learn from her. And the way she uses Twitter to consciously break the wall between presenter and audience is extremely impressive, refocusing the idea of the speaker to a facilitator of a group of 300 attendees through a distributed tool such as Twitter—which becomes a lens through which to talk about and at the same time visualize the changing nature of networks using what she calls a “safe-fail experiment”—small experiments like a presentation that allows us to see what works and what doesn’t work. And more than that, she pushes back on the blogo-centric logic of my discussion, suggesting the “me” and the “we” need to dance between old and new structures, and experiment and explore the “me” associated with blogs as well as the “we” associated with wikis, forums, and even twitter. A discussion that links me back to John Maxwell’s talk at OpenEd 09, wherein he brings into question the blogo-centric logic I’ve been promoting for a few years now—as have many others—by thinking about how the social creation of knowledge through wikis is a skill that in many ways challenges some of our assumptions about the primacy of the individual in all modes of writing and learning.

As you can see, this conference was as powerful for me as it was because I cam away questioning and re-thinking a number of my assumptions, and I have to thank Barry Dahl particularly for recommending me to speak at ITC 10, and Christina Mullins for being so cool in making the trip possible for me. Until Florida next year for ITC 11….

Let me start by saying that I didn’t know you could map a domain on a Google Site until yesterday, and they’ve had this service available for over a year and a half. While I tend to avoid Google Sites cause I find the service way too limited, realizing they have domain mapping available made me wish we were a Google School once again so I could experiment more with this across campus, particularly after realizing yesterday that you can map your root domain to one service, and various subdomains to other services without even having a webhosting account. This was a revelation to me, and something I figured out  while experimenting with mapping a root domain to a Google Site and a subdomain to a blog on UMW Blogs (which could just as well be wordpress.com, blogger, typepad, etc.). If you think about it, this provides a way of having a namespace independent of a specific service while at the same time building a unique identity online that will allow you to move from service to service if necessary, yet keep a consistent presence. Something I wish Leigh Blackall had, because when I search his stuff I am spread across three different blogs, and while I like the fact that he moves services regularly (he is a badass in that regard—I could never leave the bava blog), I just wonder how he can stand all his awesome ideas remaining web service vagrants on the open web without a steady URL to call home.

OK, so, that said Leigh (or Big Papa), here’s the tutorial to get you started

First things first, mapping your main domain to Google Sites. One of the limitations of Google Sites is if you map your main domain it has to be www.yourdomain.com, it can’t be just yourdomain.com. So, in order to map you main domain you have to do the following (this assumes you already have a domain name purchased through a service like Godaddy and have created a Google site). First, you need to point your main domain to to Google Sites. You do this in the Total DNS control panel on the service where you registered the domain, in this example I use Godaddy because I have an extra domain there laying around collecting dust.

Click for larger image

As illustrated above, edit the CNAME field (or alias) for the www alias and point that to the host name ghs.google.com and save the changes.

Then I jump over to my Google sites account and go to Manage Site and then look for the Wed Address setting pictured below:

And add the main domain, in this case www.edupunk.net (keep in mind you need to add the www. prefix). After that click add web address, and your domain should map like mine did: http://www.edupunk.net

Now that in and of itself may not be so amazing, because I’ve been talking about domain mapping for a while with WPMu, and the idea that Google would have it makes sense.  What is cool, and is a new discovery for me, is that while the m ain domain points to a Google site, I can have a subdomain like blog.edupunk.net point to another service like wordpress.com, blogger, or the ever great UMW Blogs without having a hosting account. It’s actually quite simple, all I did was add an A Record for the UMW Blogs IP address (174.37.153.244) in the Total DNS control panel at Godaddy:

And then, I created a CNAME (Alias) titled blog and pointed that to the umwblogs.org domain:

Click image for larger version

After that, I can go to a new blog I created on UMW Blogs (which has Domain mapping enabled for any blog on the system) such as edupunk.umwblogs.org and go to Tools—>Domain Mapping and simply add blog.edupunk.net.

And voila, main site on Google Sites here, blog on UMW Blogs here, and potentially several other subdomains mapped to several other services.

Now, to get back to my original example, Andy Smith now has her Fred Buildings project on Google sites here and a blog for announcements and the like here. More proof that no faculty member at UMW can meet with me without getting a UMW Blog, it is impossible, and that’s why I’m the rightest Reverend ever.

Playing around with the Drive-In Movie Ads at Internet Archive, oh what a joy. Via “What’s New at the Internet Archive.“