CommonPlace has a mixed heritage which includes commonplace books from the Renaissance period, modern-day web logs or blogs, and wiki web authoring. The following three quotes should give you some indication of the perspective from which this project has been conceived.
Oxford English Dictionary entry for "commonplace book"
Commonplace-book. Formerly Book of common places. orig. A book in which commonplaces or passages important for reference were collected, usually under general heads; hence, a book in which one records passages or matters to be especially remembered or referred to, with or without arrangement." Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971. First usage recorded: 1578.
WikiWikiWeb definition of Wiki
The ideas of Wiki may seem strange at first, especially to a first time user of Wiki but dive in and explore its links. Wiki is a composition system; it's a discussion medium; it's a repository; it's a mail system; it's a tool , we don't know quite what it is, but it's a fun way of communicating asynchronously across the network while dynamically sharing your ideas.
The significance of weblogging from Rebecca Blood
The promise of the web was that everyone could publish, that a thousand voices could flourish, communicate, connect. The truth was that only those people who knew how to code a web page could make their voices heard. Blogger, Pitas, and all the rest have given people with little or no knowledge of HTML the ability to publish on the web: to pontificate, remember, dream, and argue in public, as easily as they send an instant message.
Something for the humanities and liberal arts
So (if you're still with me), the idea for CommonPlace was to provide a software environment that would exist in the public domain and that was collaborative, contextual, discursive, and above all convenient. I wanted something that was easy to use for publishing class notes and information, but that also encouraged writing that could lead to enquiry and discussion among users.
As a liberal arts graduate working as a web designer for a community college, I have been very discouraged by so-called "learning management" software. These products seem to make a commodity of knowledge, reducing it to information bytes delivered by a conveyor belt (Web) to consumers (students) who must either pay to get in the door or at least be permitted access by the doorkeeper (access codes). To me this trivializes both the learning process and the promise of what the World Wide Web can provide to education.
So I thought there must be better models for developing educational software that would reflect what was happening in successful web communitites acros the global network. What were they doing? I found that web logs, or blogs, and wikis were both really easy to use and were encouraging reflective writing, critical thinking, enquiry, community, and many other qualities valued by professors on college campuses. In teh end I put my fortunes in with the wiki idea beause it focused more on collaboration among a community of interested individuals, whereas the web log was of a mroe personal nature. Between them, though, I found the very elements that had made the Web so popular and beloved in the first place:
- I found something I was looking for- information, a quote, an idea, a discussion
- There were references to other web sites that took me to destinations I hadn't anticipated
- The site was uncluttered, linear, contextual, and personal
Realizing again why I like the Web so much and thought that it was such a great medium made me aware of why I felt so uncomfortable with LMS's and this in turn led me toward finding a way for professors and students to create an online community similair to what was taking place in the world of blogs and wikis.
more coming...
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