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

INTERACTION DESIGN / EDUCATION / SYSTEMS THINKING / MARKDOWN

🌍Starting this year I plan to help support the efforts of others involved in climate change action by providing no-charge premium support for my Grav CMS projects involved in the raising of awareness and action of climate change - contact me at paul@hibbittsdesign.org for details.🌏

Well that decade blew by. In terms of just this past year, two things standout professionally – my first experience with student-generated assessment in CMPT-363 (which I’ve presented about in Vancouver at SFU DEMOfest and online via ETUG) and of course my Grav-based open education and publishing projects that are designed to help people who want to use a Markdown-based Git (i.e. GitHub, GitLab, Gitea, etc.) content workflow.

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It’s been a pretty busy year for my Grav-based open education projects - here are the highlights:

  • Three new example demo sites for Open Course Hub (basic, intermediate and advanced)
  • Initial support for displaying H5P content in Open Course Hub and Open Publishing Space
  • New default theme for Open Publishing Space - Quark Open Publishing theme
  • Bootstrap4 Open Matter theme (now the default theme for Open Course Hub)
  • Bootswatch theme styles in Bootstrap4 Open Matter theme
  • Shortcodes (PDF, H5P, Twitter and others) added to Bootstrap4 Open Matter and Quark Open Publishing themes
  • New ‘section’ and ‘subsection’ page templates for better support content-heavy pages in Bootstrap4 Open Matter and Quark Open Publishing themes
  • Git Sync Plugin 2.0 (skillfully developed by Trilby Media) support and integration
  • Improved accessibility in Bootstrap4 Open Matter theme and inclusion of an Accessibility Checker in the Open Course Hub skeleton packages
  • Additional theme styles in the Learn2 with Git Sync theme (thanks Ole!)
  • Initial preparations for the planned release of Grav 2.0 (which includes Twig 2.0 compatibility)
  • Improved support for multiple blogs in Open Course Hub and Quark Open Publishing
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Having just finished my 20th offering (in 20 years, how did that happen?) of CMPT-363 at SFU I will be getting back to posting more frequently about my on-going work with Grav in the field of education… stay tuned.

With the recent addition of the GitSync and Add Page by Form plugins along with the arrival of the Gantry 5 Framework to the Grav universe, 2017 holds even greater promise for (open) educators to benefit from Grav. With these new elements, not only will the setup of the multi-device friendly and collaborative Grav Course Hub be easier and quicker, but a whole new range of applications with Grav opens up in relation to open blogging and online OER authoring/sharing. Let’s start with the Grav Course Hub!

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