This is an archive of an EdTech Demo that happened on Wednesday January 25, 2017.
Using the Grav CMS as a Personal Open Platform in Education
Session Archive
Session Description
Grav is a database-free CMS which stores content in a flexible and easy-to-access file structure, which is ideal to take advantage of today’s modern ecosystem of collaborative tools like GitHub or GitLab.
In this presentation, Paul Hibbitts will demonstrate three possible educational applications of Grav:
Course Hub
Course Hub is an open source Grav-based project intended to help instructors enhance their students’ learning experience by providing an open and collaborative space under the full control of the instructor. Using Course Hub, a broader choice of online course components can be utilized to help reach pedagogical goals beyond the scope of the typical institutional LMS. With this approach, instructors have the freedom to move beyond the confines of the LMS while sensitive student data remains located within the institutional or organization’s LMS.
Open and Collaborative Blogging
An open blog is where content can be created and shared not just by the owner of the blog, but by the entire audience of the blog. Since content in Grav is stored and maintained as individual files rather than inside a database, services such as GitHub and GitLab (which can be hosted on your own institutional server) can be easily partnered with your Grav blog for collaboration and version control. With the recent development of the ‘set-and-forget’ GitSync Plugin and the Add Page by Form Plugin almost any Grav-powered blog can be quickly transformed into an open and collaborative platform.
Online OER Content Authoring/Sharing
Open Educational Resources (OER), in addition to appropriate licensing, should ideally support a collaborative workflow for sustainable development and a means for platform independent reuse. With the release of the open source Gantry 5 Framework by RocketTheme, drag-and-drop site layout for online publishing has come to Grav! Gantry provides extensive customization features, including the ability to add new functionality without scripting. With the upcoming Edit Page with Git Particle combined with the GitSync Plugin, users can easily add a dynamic link to view/edit site content as it is stored in a Git (i.e. GitHub or GitLab) repository with the platform-agnostic Markdown format.
About Paul Hibbitts
Combining his professional interaction design skill set with his extensive instructional background, Paul thrives on the challenges of design for learning and experience in our multi-device connected world. In 2016 he published his first open source project, Grav Course Hub, to help fellow educators ‘flip’ their institutional LMS with the Web platform Grav to shift control back to the hands of course facilitators and participants. Paul has several new open source projects already cooking for 2017 – learn more at hibbittsdesign.org.