Wayne Thinks (about a few things....)

In case you missed it, Apple announce a new push to position the iPad in the middle of the textbook market. Whether you are a fan, hater or somewhere in between, you should agree that Apple has a solid history of changing the market. The textbook market is ripe for change. I questioned the impact of the iPhone when I first read of Apple's plan to enter the cell phone market, and was probably one of the best moves the company has ever made. 

The ds106 course is kicking off this week. The first assignment is to register a domain and create a blog to begin to discuss and share materials.

I have had this domain for several years and have various versions of blogs, wikis, portfolios...... hosted on it. My problem has been maintaining a regularly posting habit. The space has been successful as a playground to explore and experiment with new web technology. In this post I figured I would share a little bit about the back end of the site. Instead of using Word Press as the blog/CMS, I have chosen to use Drupal. Drupal is similar in function, but is generally seen as more complex yet more flexible. Word Press is designed as a blog tool while Drupal is more of a web content management system. Both are open source.

As part of regaining ownership of my own domain, I will be carving out my space on the web. Deciding to integrate a 3rd party tool could challenge the philosophy of total control of one's web presence, but often the tool helps to promote the rich engagement you hope to build. In this case, I don't think it is reasonable for someone who wants to comment on material I post to need to create (and remember) an account on my site, but I don't want every bot selling cows blood shampoo to be able to post either. My solution at the moment is to integrate Disqus into my site. I hope this will allow users to more seamlessly be able to engage.

I took the plunge and joined the DS106 open education course taught by Jim Groom at the University of Mary Washington. Last spring I followed the course from a distance, nosing around the assignments, following the twitter banter and sporadically tuned into to #ds106 radio.

This is the start of the re-birth of WayneThinks. It will be a completely fresh build.