Indieweb for Education

 IndieWeb for Education  is the application of indieweb principles to one's personal site with a particular emphasis on use cases for education, pedagogy, research, academic samizdat, and collaboration. It is generally synonymous with the aims and goals of the A Domain of One%27s Own or DoOO movement.

While the general principles of IndieWeb can apply to anyone's site, in an attempt to help foster the next generation of potential IndieWeb adopters who may be focused on teaching, education, and research, whether at the K-12, undergraduate, graduate, post-doc, or other levels, we're compiling some specific hints, tips, pointers, and examples which may be germane to these particular audiences to assist in their motivation and adoption.

I mean, what does an alternative to ed-tech as data-extraction, control, surveillance, privatization, and profiteering look like? What does resistance to the buzzwords and the bullshit look like?

I don’t have an answer. (There isn’t an answer.) But I think we can see a glimmer of possibility in the Indie Web Movement. It’s enough of a glimmer that I’m calling it a trend. &mdash;Audrey Watters in Hack Education

In addition to the material below, be sure to see getting started, which is an excellent place to start for all people. For additional help and discussion, feel free to visit the IndieWeb chat rooms.

IndieWeb Academics and People
A group of people closely identified with the areas of research, teaching, academia, other:


 * Amber Case - Studying the impact of technology on how we live. Author: Calm Technology + An Illustrated Dictionary of Cyborg Anthropology. Fellow @BKCHarvard + @CivicMIT.


 * Dr. Amy Guy a researcher who wrote the thesis The Presentation of Self on a Decentralised Web


 * Kartik Prabhu


 * has both WordPress and Known installs


 * Kris Shaffer - R, Python, JavaScript, Data Science, Music, Open Source Ed Tech, Critical Pedagogy. University of Mary Washington. His site has a variety of posts about IndieWeb and he's closely related to A Domain of One%27s Own




 * William Ian O'Byrne - Assistant Professor of Literacy Education at the College of Charleston. Has both WordPress and Known installs and has participated in Known's Google Group.


 * Tim Owens - Founder of Reclaim Hosting


 * Jim Groom - founder of A Domain of One's Own, Reclaim Hosting; see also Bava Tuesdays


 * Anelise H. Shrout - New cliometrician. American historian. Atlantic historian. Native of NJ, transplant to CA. History, cartography, #DH, & sometimes my dog. Opinions my own, etc. Has used Known for teaching. Personal site on WordPress, experience with Omeka.


 * - Doctoral Candidate, Information and Library Science - site on Micro.blog


 * Antonio Sánchez-Padial


 * John Johnston


 * Aaron Davis, an educator, with WordPress sites at Read Write Respond and Read Write Collect


 * Cathie LeBlanc Professor - Plymouth State University


 * Stephen Downes (OLDaily) attended (virtually) IWC-NY and has explored Webmention and Post Kinds Plugin


 * Mark Grabe Professor - University of North Dakota


 * Rick Wysocki - Doctoral candidate interested in queer rhetoric, archives, new materialisms, and media theory.


 * Doug Holton


 * Jeffrey Keefer - Director of Training & Knowledge Management + Educational Researcher + Professor + Poet + Wikipedian = Liminality + Actor-Network Theory + Open Education


 * Ken Bauer, Associate Professor of Computing Science at the Tecnológico de Monterrey in Guadalajara uses Known on his primary site.


 * Rayna M. Harris using github pages and Jekyll
 * https://raynamharris.github.io/i_can_science/ - github pages jekll
 * https://public.nihdatacommons.us/ - github pages mkdocs


 * Davey Moloney - a Technology Enhanced Learning Manager in Graduate & Professional Studies at the University of Limerick, Ireland, where I’m involved in the design and production of flexible online and blended postgraduate and professional education programmes for distance and workplace learners.


 * Will Monroe of http://willtmonroe.com/ - is an Assistant Director for Instructional Technology and adjunct instructor in educational technology and library and information science.


 * Adam Procter is the Programme Leader for BA (Hons) Games Design & Art and Principal Teaching Fellow at Winchester School of Art (WSA). He also sometimes gets the chance to make Apps, Web stuff and works as UX and UI designer, developer and consultant.
 * 2020-01-08 Guest on Thought Shrapnel Microcast #082 – Nodenoggin in an interview by Doug Belshaw talking about IndieWeb and his work.


 * Christina Wixson



Others
People working in the space and at least tangentially knowledgeable or aware of the IndieWeb movement:
 * Jeremy Dean has a domain of his own


 * Audrey Watters Beneath the Cobblestones... A Domain of One's Own, Reclaim Your Domain (With Known)


 * Vicki Boykis Has shown interest in IndieWeb principles


 * John Carlos Baez - Physicist at UC Riverside


 * Dan Scott - Librarian · Developer who uses Known


 * Taylor Jadin - runs Open Domains Lab


 * Kathleen Fitzpatrick - Director of Digital Humanities and Professor of English at Michigan State University; Has Webmention working on her personal site; previously published and self-dogfooded her book Planned Obsolescence which was released in draft form for open peer review in fall 2009.

"I've started mixing regular and micro blog posts. The micro.blog idea is really interesting; a way to share small thoughts (like on twitter) but retain control over the content on your own publishing platform. My micro.blog is at https://micro.blog/blair."
 * Blair MacIntyre, a professor at Georgia Tech, is using a hybrid approach between his main website/blog and a micro.blog account with a sub-domain.


 * Dr. Doug Belshaw an open educational thinker from Northumberland, UK, who leads the MoodleNet project and works with We Are Open Co-op. Specialized in digital literacies.
 * Has a variety of sites using WordPress that support Webmention
 * 2020-01-01 Microcast #081 – Anarchy, Federation, and the IndieWeb
 * 2020-01-08 Microcast #082 – Nodenoggin featuring Adam Procter


 * Dan Cohen is Vice Provost, Dean, and Professor at Northeastern University
 * Micro.blog account at https://micro.blog/dancohen


 * Dave Cormier supports Webmention on his WordPress site.


 * Alasdair Ekpenyong



People are heartily encouraged to look into the depth and breadth of other examples on the pages spanning the remainder of the wiki.

IndieWeb Examples

 * Course example using Known: edu106
 * Course example using Known: edu307
 * Course example using a mixture of Glitch and WordPress: edu522 with additional material from:
 * Greg McVerry
 * Chris Aldrich and specifically https://boffosocko.com/2018/07/31/indieweb-technology-for-online-pedagogy/

LMS Examples

 * KQED.org has a digital teaching platform built on Known

Projects
Naturally any project could be used for educational or research purposes, but the following either are geared toward the academic/research spaces, or are heavily used by them and have a relatively rich ecosystem of additional functionality or plugins to expand their use specifically toward these areas. New users, particularly those of generations 2+ who may not be programmers/developers by nature may be advised to take a look at one or more of these for their base functionality.

Known
The Known CMS was built as an opensource IndieWeb project from the ground up, but the business side of the project is geared toward the education market, thus making it a convenient choice, particularly for classroom and collaborative use. Known's education specific page has some great motivation for using IndieWeb in learning and research environments.

WordPress
WordPress is a commonly used CMS in general, but there is a large and engaged community of educators, researchers using it for a variety of academic specific plugins and functionality.

Plugins
The list below isn't specifically IndieWeb related, but are plugins, some with an IndieWeb flavor, which people interested in these areas may find useful.
 * Hypothesis Aggregator, see also 1
 * Academic Blogger's Toolkit
 * PressForward - a tool by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media for aggregating and curating web-based content within the WordPress dashboard.
 * Indie Cite
 * Post Archival in the Internet Archive
 * Book Review
 * Reading List


 * Anthologize - Grab posts from your WordPress blog, pull in feeds from external sites, or create new content directly in Anthologize. Then outline, order, and edit your work, crafting it into a coherent volume for export in several ebook formats, including PDF, EPUB, and TEI.
 * CommentPress Core - allows readers to comment in the margins of a text. You can use it to annotate, gloss, workshop, debate and more!
 * FD Footnotes - Elegant and easy to use footnotes
 * JQuery Hover Footnotes - Lets you add footnotes with qualifiers of you're choosing, then dynamically displays them when you hover over.
 * Knight Lab TimelineJS - A simple shortcode to display TimelineJS.
 * ScholarPress Coins - Makes your blog posts readable by various COinS interpreters.
 * Zotpress - Bringing Zotero and scholarly blogging to your WordPress website.

Related

 * edublogs - Custom hosted WordPress solution for the education market
 * CampusPress - enterprise version of edublogs
 * WPCampus
 * Humanity Commons A network of Commons repositories
 * MLA Commons (see below)

ASU Labs Theme
An opensource theme for professors, educators, and lab or research groups with an integrated approach
 * Explanatory site with examples: https://asuengineering.github.io/asu-labs-theme/
 * Github repo: https://github.com/asuengineering/asu-labs-theme
 * Overview talk about this project at WPCampus 2020 https://2020.wpcampus.org/schedule/anatomy-of-a-great-faculty-website/

Omeka
Omeka is a CMS built on a LAMP stack and designed for scholars, museums, libraries, archives, and enthusiasts to create complex narratives,share rich collections, research, exhibits, and digital projects.

Examples

 * 2017-09-17 John Stewart Omeka of One’s Own
 * 2017-12-04 John Stewart Omeka + HTML5Up
 * 2018-07-25 Using OU Create and Omeka How to Create a website using Omeka on an OU Create account, Lesson Level: Beginner

Drupal
In addition to the standard Drupal core set up which can be extended with modules for additional functionality, there is also the Open Scholar project which is geared toward use by professors as well as reasearch groups, departments, and even entire universities.

Domain of One's Own
A Domain of One%27s Own (or DoOO) is a project at University of Mary Washington that allows students, faculty, and staff to register their own domain name and associate it with a hosted web space, free of charge. With their Domain and corresponding web space, users will have the opportunity and flexibility to design and create a meaningful and vibrant digital presence.


 * Flexible Modules for helping to incorporate Domain of One's Own into the curriculum.
 * For those interested a Workshop of One's Own is scheduled for 2018-03-15 to 2018-03-16

Grav
Grav is a flat-file CMS built on PHP, with Twig templating, and YAML + Markdown for storing articles (YAML for metadata, Markdown for the content).

Paul Hibbitts has some Grav related resources available with regard to education.

2020-03-09 Theo Acker Grav Tutorial Lesson Level: Beginner

Elgg
Elgg is a social media networking engine used primarily in educational settings now (as of early 2023) supports (or can support) microformats2, Webmention, and Microsub according to https://indieweb.social/@elgg/109627578812796230 inspired by ’s Drupal IndieWeb module.
 * "#IndieWeb for #Elgg draft is available for testing. One small step to integrate IndieWeb into Elgg 🚀 via https://pw.wzm.me/wall/v/15787 https://github.com/RiverVanRain/indieweb" @elgg January 3, 2023

MLA Commons
MLA Commons is a scholarly network for MLA members. Users can discover the latest open-access scholarship and teaching materials, join language and literature discussion groups, build a WordPress Web site for a class or conference—or to showcase your own work—and grow your readership by uploading materials to CORE, our open-access repository. This is a growing "open" network in academia that allows for Gen2+ users an easy way to create websites (particularly WordPress based sites), generally for academic purposes.
 * Its flexibility compared to self-hosted WordPress may be limited, but it could be a simple way to join a larger network of academics for additional work related functionality.
 * An inexpensive MLA Membership is required for full functionality on the platform. Compared to domain registration and hosting, the cost becomes a net positive when bundled with their other services.
 * Set up is fairly similar to WordPress.com or EduBlogs in terms of site flexibility, though it does provide interaction with a large network of other academics.
 * No support for webmentions (yet)
 * Not all themes properly support microformats

ScholarlyHub
ScholarlyHub intends to be a paid platform to allow people, especially teachers and researchers, to own their own content and data and share it freely. While not specifically identifying as IndieWeb, many of their core philosophies are very IndieWeb-centric. In early 2018, they are attempting to raise €500,000 by 2018-31-07 to build what looks like a Gen2+ platform.

"Your donation will help launch a new scholarly social network which is entirely non-profit, member-run and open access. ScholarlyHub will not trade in users' data, will protect scholars’ independence from conglomerate publishers’ market-oriented needs, and will make scholarship visible and accessible across disciplines and throughout the world."

Science Sites
Science Sites, Inc. is a Massachusetts 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization which was founded and directed by science writers to bring a journalistic approach to content strategy and website creation. Their goal is to "help scientists and scientific organizations engage with new media and best showcase and share their work online." They believe that: "'Too many brilliant researchers with too much important research have no acceptable web presence. We believe that improving how their work is represented online will bring greater attention to their research and advance the public's appreciation and understanding of science.'"
 * Websites appear to be based on the SquareSpace platform
 * They provide hosting and maintenance and do charge for building sites for clients apparently in the $1K+ budget range
 * Their target market is for Gen2+ people.

Scalar
 Scalar  is a free, open source authoring and publishing platform that’s designed to make it easy for authors to write long-form, born-digital scholarship online.

Library Carpentry
"Library Carpentry develops lessons and teaches workshops for and with people working in library- and information-related roles. Our goal is to create an on-ramp to empower this community to use software and data in their own work as well as be advocates for and train others in efficient, effective and reproducible data and software practices. Our workshops are based on our lessons. Workshop hosts, Instructors, and learners must be prepared to follow The Carpentries Code of Conduct."
 * Library Carpentry is a community similar to the IndieWeb but focused on software and data skills for people working in library- and information-related roles.
 * #librarycarpentry on Twitter

TiddlyWiki

 * TiddlyWiki is a responsive website platform built as a single file in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript but which can also be hosted privately in a variety of locations like OneDrive, DropBox, or on your computer.

Examples

 * A thesis notebook by Alberto Molina
 * Bottomtabs a set of plugins by Alberto Molina to enhance the TiddlyWiki experience


 * TiddlyWiki for Scholars beta version
 * "TiddlyWiki for Scholars is a personal customization of TiddlyWiki 5.0.15-beta I made for note-taking from readings, but it can be useful for other purposes. The idea behind this adaptation is to show and to allow creating relevant data related to the current tiddler without leaving the tiddler."


 * Slides and Stories by Jan is a repository of the tools to optimize TW for scientific research and for presenting and publishing results.

GitHub pages
"Academics who need a personal website, check out my http://academicpages.github.io project, a ready-to-fork GitHub pages template supporting CV-style content. Difficulty is more than using Wordpress but lower than building your own site from scratch. Over 2,500 people have tried it out!" --Stuart Geiger via Twitter
 * Stuart Geiger has a ready-to-fork GitHub pages template that supports CV-style content which is geared toward academics. Pull requests are welcome.

Hugo

 * Academic is a custom theme for Hugo designed for academic related uses. Here's an example site.

Related Conferences

 * Domains
 * Session Videos
 * #domains19 on June 10-11, 2019
 * #domains17
 * Virtually Connecting coverage
 * Domains 2019


 * WPCampus
 * WP Campus 2019 in mid to late July 2019
 * Conference on July 14-15, 2017 (videos)
 * Free online conference on 2018-01-30


 * OpenEd Conference


 * PressED Conference: 2018, 2019
 * 2019-04-18 : Webmention Badges
 * 2019-04-18 Dr. Kay Oddone: PhD and beyond: A WordPress adventure! Blogging my PhD on WordPress created new learning opportunities & expanded my professional digital identity. Now as a lecturer my blog includes an open learning space for students & other learners. I’ll share what I’ve learnt on my WordPress adventure!


 * WordCamp for Kids is ramping up and they're creating some DoOO-esque materials for helping kids from 7-14 spin up their own websites
 * WordPress Workshop for Kids - organiser kit
 * WordPress Kids Events Planning on Trello


 * Domain Camp (Hosted by Ecampus Ontario)
 * Domain Camp 2018
 * Domain Camp 2019

Articles relating to IndieWeb and Academe



































 * Free self-hosted .pdf version
 * Free self-hosted .pdf version






















 * add additional articles here (see this for more details)...

Videos

 * No Digital Facelifts: Thinking the Unthinkable About Open Educational Experiences
 * Conversation with Ben Werdmuller (YouTube): Stephen Downes interviews  about software, microformats, IndieWeb, Known, and other related topics as part of his E-Learning 3.0 online course.
 * Connecting to the IndieWeb Movement (YouTube): Jim Groom chats with Mikhail Gershovich,, , and Simon Thomson about the IndieWeb movement as it dovetails with A Domain of One%27s Own and the education space as part of the finale of Connected Courses on 2014-12-05.
 * Anatomy of a Great Faculty Website session by Steve Ryan at WPCampus 2020 Online

Articles About Blogging with Students

 * Why students should blog
 * Some quotes on blogging as students
 * Why I Teach with HASTAC: Platforms as Critical Pedagogy

Twitter hashtags

 * #phdchat
 * #HipHopEd
 * #DoOO Hashtag for domain of owns' ome
 * #diversityninja children literature advocates fighting dominant narrative
 * #edtechchat weekly chat about edtech
 * #literacies on going hashtag of literacy, reading, and writing professors
 * #higherED Hashtag for generall higher education
 * #dh or digital humanities
 * #ds106 longest running MOOC which it realy isn't. just folks telling digital stories
 * #educolor weekly chat of issues facing educators and students of color
 * #WPCampus
 * #AcWri hashtag for support in academic writing
 * #openscience open science movenement
 * #clmooc a creative space of writers and artists
 * #digped Ongoing feed of critical digital pedagogy
 * #lthecha Weekly chat on learning in higher education
 * #altc Association for Learning Technologies

Poetry Fridays

 * |Poetry Fridays is a weekly blogging meetup running since 2008. Each week one blogger is in charge of curating all the poems posted to the Poetry Friday group.

Aggregation
Aggregating class-wide related work can be a common stumbling block for some teachers, designers, and technologists. Below is a short list of potential technologies geared toward solving this problem

FeedWordPress
FeedWordPress is an open-source Atom/RSS aggregator for the WordPress blog publishing platform with planet-like functionality. Taylor Jadin has set it up for this functionality in the past.

PressForward
PressForward is free software built for WordPress for curating and sharing content from the web. While originally developed for journalists curating content, its core functionality adds a native RSS feed reader into one's site. It could be used as a planet in online course related settings.

gRSShopper
gRSShopper is a personal web environment that combines resource aggregation, a personal dataspace, and personal publishing. It's a project built by.

Known
Known can be set up for an entire class with multi-user accounts. Better, it can be set up with syndication capabilities that allows users to use their own sites to post material and syndicate it into the shared class-based site. has set up something like this in the past.

Syndication via Webmention
While different than most of the above models, perhaps the Reddit like functionality of sites like news.indieweb.org or Indieweb.xyz could be leveraged to allow students to post their content on their own websites and purposefully syndicate class-related pieces into a commons using Webmention. Having the ability to delete the content from the planet at a later date by editing or deleting the Webmention could be a beneficial piece of functionality.

Blogs as Notebook/Portfolios
Educators have always used blogs for electronic notebooks and student portfolios. This practice is most prevalent on Blogger, but edublogs, kidblogs, and SeeSaw among others are also used.

Examples
 * Portfolio Building in Chinese Language Learning Using Blogs 2004
 * Samantha Moberly 2016-2017
 * Casey McLaghlin 2016-2017
 * Dr. Kay Oddone used her WordPress website to blog through her Ph.D. See her presentation/talk at PhD and beyond: A WordPress adventure!
 * Carl Boettiger Lab
 * Madsen Lab Notebook
 * Michael Toth on How to Write Pelican Blog Posts using RMarkdown & Knitr, 2.0

See also:
 * portfolio
 * commonplace book

Miscellaneous Projects and Sources

 * Ethical edtech wiki
 * Library Carpentry
 * Profhacker Blog on Chronicle of Higher Education
 * Chronicle of Higher Education articles about WordPress
 * #comments4kids a hashtag started in 2010 for students blogging in class and looking for comments from outside
 * E-Learning 3.0 Distributed Learning Technology MOOC from 2018-10-15 from
 * The Compelled Tribe Educational Blogging collective that began in 2014

Sessions
Related sessions at IndieWebCamps
 * 2012/Academic_Citations_Web
 * 2018-06-26 at IndieWebSummit 2018 in Portland: 2018/education
 * Keynote at IndieWebCamp New Haven 2019 by : IWCNHV19 Keynote: Connected Learning & the IndieWeb
 * 2019/New_Haven/gradebook