Recently I’ve been exploring online (aka “cloud”) IDE’s for use with my various Grav sites and to also recommend for other educators who use Grav with GitHub (as I do). Yesterday I happily discovered SourceLair, which provides a straightforward online environment to develop and test a variety of Web project types all within your Browser (or in my case on my Chromebook). Other noteworthy highlights about SourceLair include a full-screen Terminal and a public URL which can share with others to view your in-development work.

I’ve been further refining my sustainable approach of an open design practice for my experience design work in the education field, and (bravely or foolishly) I’ve attempted to craft a working definition of the phrase:

(1/3) What is a”sustainable open design practice”? My first attempt of a defini...

When mapping out the design of the Grav Course Hub Skeleton, it was important to support the two most popular responsive Web frameworks (Bootstrap and Foundation) so that educators could choose the framework best suited to their multi-device presentation needs.

For folks who decide to use the Course Hub Bootstrap theme, the recently released Gravstrap shortcodes plugin by Giansimon Diblas adds a substantial set of useful Bootstrap framework elements available right in Markdown (no HTML required).

In this article, we will look at how to use Grav with GitHub Desktop and Beanstalk (which has automatic FTP deployment built-in) to provide a highly efficient workflow when updating your Grav site, and source control to boot. While GitHub only offers private repositories for paid plans, Beanstalk offers a free plan to store one single repository privately.

You will be required to enter a few commands into your Mac or PC command line interface (CLI) during this the process, so get comfortable and let’s get started.

After my first Grav CMS for Educators Workshop it became apparent I should provide a wider range of options for how Web-savvy instructors can install and set up the flat-file CMS Grav, especially when using my ready-to-run Course Hub package.

This is a brief guide to help tech-savvy educators ‘flip’ their LMS with the modern flat-file (no database) CMS Grav and my open source Course Hub skeleton package.

Here is the list of resources for participants in my Grav CMS for Educators workshops (bit.ly URL is http://bit.ly/1PDs3N8):

Grav Skeletons

• Grav Workshop Demo Site (bit.ly/1ZZjstZ)
• Course Hub Skeleton with Admin Panel (bit.ly/1QQsJ7z)

I came across this tweet today, thanks to the @getgrav Twitter feed:

Working on a CMS comparison of @Statamic, @GetKirby, @CraftCMS, & @GetGrav. Any insights you’d like to share? pic.twitter.com/RZYL4sf0yT

— Patrick Haney (@notasausage) February 3, 2016

This is something I can definitely speak to, as in fact just over a year ago I tried out each of the above CMSs (and a few others) for use as a new course website platform. Here is a little trip down memory lane…

I am putting together a very brief presentation about flipping an LMS with an open + collaborative platform. Here is what I’ve got so far:

Flip it Good! Flipping the LMS with an Open + Collaborative Platform
Do you have unmet pedagogical goals due to the constraints of your current LMS? Do you want to have a better experience for your students and yourself? In preparing his Fall 2015 CMPT-363 (User Interface Design) course at Simon Fraser University, instructor and interaction designer Paul Hibbitts faced these same challenges. His solution was to ‘flip the LMS’ by designing and developing an alternative front-end to the institutional LMS Canvas (http://paulhibbitts.net/cmpt-363-153/). In this approach, the LMS was used only for elements it was best suited for (i.e. student records, grades, etc.) with all other elements handled by an open extensible platform completely under his control.

This article is now outdated. Please refer to the Grav Course Companion Getting Started Guide.

I am pleased (well, actually quite stoked) to announce that my ready-to-run Course Companion, built with the open source CMS Grav, is now available for fellow educators to take for a test drive.