My new course “Web Content Management” is taking off. Almost at mid-semester, my students are building an appreciation of what content management for the Web means and what helps automating most of it.

Students have built:

A Portal: http://mcw2010.stemmed.sagrado.edu/
A Wiki documentation site: http://www.mcw2010.co.cc/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Each have installed a WP copy on their own servers (free, courtesy of http://www.000webhost.com/ ) under each own’s personal domain (free at http://www.co.cc/) – (they do appreciate your inspiration, Reverend Jim Groom!). Thus, this is the first site to enact the prophetical Syndication Bus at STEMmED, and we are quite proud of it. Students post on their own blogs and through the magic of FeedWordPress, their accordingly tagged posts appear on our class portal -which they manage, too.

The wiki doc site is growing, and includes for now some important documentation which will help them compare the various CMS’s available. This week they are going to install one CMS each (the most popular ones, like Mambo, Drupal, Joomla, etc. -they already have WP running and a Wiki Media install) and begin distilling a set of primary features they think one cannot live without. Later we’ll compare this list of features with the most comprehensive one they got from the literature.

The will also add an XML chapter to the wiki-doc site: XML is the structure which allows for automated data inter-exchange, thus they’ll have to deepen their knowledge of Web publishing inner-working if they want to understand how CMS works.

The course and the Web sites associated with it grow and are built day by day. At semester’s end we will have a solid documentation system which hopefully can be used beyond our class. In fact, we explored the Wikipedia entry on CMS and found it needs help. Which we are going to offer, at least by enhancing the article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system and its References (none at the moment).

Last, one last assignment: on Saturday, March 6th I will be attending the incredible TEDxNYED summit in NYC: An unprecedented gathering of exceptional minds ranging from Larry Lessig to Mike Wesch and George Siemens, whom I’ll be able to meet together for the first time. It will be a time of strong reflection on the roles of technology and knowledge in education… so I asked my students to watch the conference through the streaming session (6 March 2010, from 10am to 6pm, www.TEXcNYED.com). They will have to write down a little report of one talk each.

Let’s start workin’, fellas!

http://www1.internationalliving.com/qofl2010/?field=final

International Living published a few weeks ago its annual Quality of Life index, which I’m commenting here. France is the country with best quality of life (82 points/100), largely due to her excellent health system, low cost of living, infratsructure, economy, strong culture and freedom. Follow Australia (82), Switzerland, Germany, (everything works well, there!), New Zealand (81), Luxembourg (79), the US, Belgium, Canada (78) and Italy (77). All these first 10 countries have more or less the same characteristics. Italy has a low cost of living and the second highest health system after France. However, thanks to the Berlusconi regime, she got 92/100 in the freedom arena, just like the US. Ditto for her infrastructure, down to 62/100, a very low score, when compared to France (92) and the US (100).

Then, interestingly, Spain is 17th, but with a similar overall score, practically equal to Italy’s in terms of infrastructure and health system.

Where is Puerto Rico? 59 overall, 36 infrastructure, 72 health, 43 culture and 45 economy and 42 for the environment. We know these are the most pressing issues for the Island’s prosperity. Education (and culture), infrastructure, and the economy above all.

These stats are quite true, in my opinion. They show what is not usually evident from the purely economical data available. For instance, they show the truth about freedom issues and they show as well what happens beneath the surface of many countries who appear as rich or industrialized as their most advanced peers, but then reflect a lesser quality in their health or education system. These countries may well be paradises for investors, but not necessarily they are paradises for those deciding to live there.

Puerto Rico is such a place: splendid geography, beaches, mountains and climate. But the communications infrastructure is less than standard and expensive, as expensive as its education system. While nominally education is almost free for all, quality education is very expensive and impacts heavily a resident’s budget.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Why France is the best place to live in the world (cnn.com)
• Britain’s quality of life worse than former Communist countries (telegraph.co.uk)

UPDATE on Invisible Learning/Aprendizaje Invisible, a wonderful bilingual project headed by Cristóbal Cobo, Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales en México (FLACSO-México), and John Moravec, editor of http://www.educationfutures.com.

Their idea:

EXplore, eXploit and eXport innovative knowledge.

EXplorar, eXplotar y eXportar conocimiento innovador.

Participants will share great ideas about redesigning education to foster sustainable innovation and connect with the people making these changes happen. Through the development of 1) a collaborative, printed book; 2) an e-book; and 3) a repository of innovative ideas at www.invisiblelearning.com, we seek to:

Share experiences and innovative perspectives, focused on rethinking strategies and innovative approaches to learn and unlearn continuously

Promote critical thinking of the role of formal, informal and non-formal education at all educational levels.

Contribute to the creation of a sustainable (and continuous) process of learning, innovating and designing new cultures for the global society.

This project aims to facilitate the creation of a globally distributed community of thinkers interested on the creation of new futures for the education.

Los participantes compartirán ideas valiosas acerca de rediseñar la educación para promover innovación sustentable y conectarla con personas que están logrando que estos cambios ocurran. Mediante el desarrollo de 1) un el libro colaborativo impreso , 2) un libro electrónico, y 3) un repositorio de ideas innovadoras en www.aprendizajeinvisible.com, buscamos:

• Compartir experiencias y perspectivas innovadoras, orientadas a repensar estrategias y enfoques innovadores para aprender y desaprender continuamente.
• Promover el pensamiento crítico frente al papel de la educación formal, informal y no formal en todos los niveles educativos.
• Contribuir a la creación de un proceso de aprendizaje sostenible (y continuo) , innovando y diseñando nuevas culturas para una sociedad global.

Este proyecto tiene como objetivo facilitar la creación de una comunidad distribuida a nivel mundial de pensadores interesados en la creación de un nuevo futuro para la educación.

Congratulations for this project to both Cristóbal and John. I hope to participate myself in the collaborative book effort.

Here is the project’s logo

Great presentation on the Society of Learning (Sociedad del Aprendizaje) on the Prezi canvas. It’s a very well done concept, real multimedia storytelling in action!

It includes a short interview with Manuel Castells, videos on augmented reality, wearable computing, pillow fights in Wall Street, etc. By Cristobal Cobo Romaní (ergonomic.wordpress.com), from aprendizajeinvisible.com (Invisible Learning).