This was a November 17, 2021 presentation at the Open Publishing Fest where I and other colleagues will talk conversationally about the TRU Writer SPLOT as an open publishing tool. Will it ever clarify the meaning of “SPLOT“? Likely not, but still, it makes most sense to publish not slide decks but to used an instance of TRU Writer to publish about itself.
Presentation on the Open Publishing Festival website: https://openpublishingfest.org/calendar.html#event-74/
Presentation Materials Published at TRU Writer:
It Goes SPLOT! TRU Writer as an open, shared, privacy respecting Writing Space
Abstract
One in a collection of nebulously abbreviated Simplest Possible Online Learning Tools (SPLOT), the TRU Writer (https://github.com/cogdog/truwriter) is a flexible and versatile platform for creating a space for students, guests, anonymous visitors to compose rich media content. As a WordPress child theme, it provides all of the publishing capability of WordPress without requiring a log-in or access to the WordPress interface. It’s interface offers options for managing access and capability, plus a simple way to customize the form for collecting responses.
I have used it as pseudo journal where each year students post final reports– see http://journal.arganee.world/ Others have used it as a place for students to submit assignments (https://biol420.opened.ca/) , a conference proposal system (http://conf.owlteh.org/contributions/), an open space for contributions to the #femedtech community (http://femedtech.net/), and a space for sharing stories of facing the pandemic (https://livetogether.openlcc.net/covid19stories/).
I will share examples but more than that, will do a live demo and show how these sites are easily customized to purposes I can’t even imagine.
Guests
I have invited colleagues that have both helped shape the initial creation of TRU Writer as well as ones that have put it to use in variety of contexts.
- Alan Levine (Open Education Global) — host and responsible/blame for this session https://cog.dog
- Brian Lamb (Thompson Rivers University) — to credit for coining the word SPLOT and enabling the fellowship under which it was created http://abject.ca/
- Ken Simpson (retired, Thompson Rivers University) – faculty who’s need for simpler publishing of student essays inspired TRU Writer
- Tannis Morgan (Vancouver Community College) – has used for projects and encourage others to take it up https://homonym.ca/
- Grant Potter (University of Northern British Columbia) – supported many UNBC faculty in use of TRU Writer https://networkeffects.ca/
- Daniel Villar-Onrubia (Coventry University) – made use of TRU Writer in several unique ways that led to additional features, functionality, https://daniel.coventry.domains/
More about TRU Writer… https://splot.ca/writer/2021/812
