Writing about Open Education

While working as an instructional technology consultant at UW-Madison, I became increasingly involved in digital publishing, especially in relation to open educational resources and openly licensed textbooks. I published several articles on Medium (and my blog) connected to this work at UW-Madison:

• “Thoughts on Licensing: Why I Prefer CC-BY Licenses” (October 2018)
• “Publishing Open Textbooks at UW-Madison: what we’ve accomplished and what we’re working on in 2018” (February 2018)
• “Connecting Pressbooks with Canvas: A Practical Guide” (November 2017)
• “Getting Started with Pressbooks: A guide for users in Higher Education” (November 2017)
• “Adding Interactivity to Web Annotation: Putting H5P activities in the Hypothesis annotation layer” (October 2017)
• “A Guide to DIY Podcasting: How to self-record your own podcast using a Mac laptop and free software.” (February 2017)
• “So You Want to Make a Personal Website: A guide to building a low-cost personal website (for grad students and other academics)” (February 2017)
• “Open Educational Resources at UW-Madison: An update on 2016 Activity” (January 2017)
• “Open eText Authoring at UW-Madison” (written in 2015, published March 2016)

Academic/Creative Writing

In February 2016, I wrote a short essay for CHE‘s Edge Effects blog about the history of radio broadcasting and the Wisconsin idea.

In May 2015, I wrote a short essay for CHE’s Edge Effects blog on Lorine Niedecker’s ecopoetics.

In 2012, published “Hollowing the Stalks,” a story about my grandparents in a special issue of EOAGH devoted to writing about dementia edited by Susan Schultz.

In 2012, I published two media projects that I had made dealing with silence, noise, poetics, formal constraints, chance, and the work of John Cage in the journal Enculturation.

• The first piece was a graphic essay/magazine called {Sile / nce} which remediated an experimental seminar paper.
• The second piece was a short film adaptation (my first time using iMovie!):

In 2011, Lynn Keller and I traveled to Chicago to talk about poetry with Ed Roberson. The resulting interview was published in Contemporary Literature | pdf.

In 2010, I published an interview with the poet Mark Nowak in Contemporary Literature | pdf.

Storytelling

When we lived in Madison some friends of ours hosted regular storytelling nights whose format was based on the engaging, extemporaneous style made famous by the Moth. Laurel and I loved attending these events and often participated as storytellers. A few of the stories I told at public events were recorded (thank you Kevin Gibbons!).

Feast for the Beast

A story about a tiger attack at a zoo fundraiser and my first foray into ‘beautifying’ water towers with spray paint.

Grimethorpe

A story about a being a Mormon missionary in the northeast of England and visiting an economically depressed mining village.

Touching Someone and Being Touched (with Laurel)

A two-part story that Laurel and I told about falling in love with one another. Each of us told our version of the same story while the other person was out of the room, so the audience was able to hear back to back versions but we didn’t hear each other’s stories until we listened to the recording afterward.

The Boise Public Library!

How the Boise Public Library became a LIBRARY! 

There are No Coincidences

A short impromptu ghost story from my teen years in Boise.