I activated the Apture plug-in today and it’s pretty cool.  Apture lets you create a collection of links, each of which is popped up in its own window.  The idea is to keep your readers on your site while reading or watching content from other sites.

The first link you select serves as the frame, and all the subsequent links appear as icons underneath the control bar.  Here is a sample Apture link I created: Open Access.   I chose a youTube video as the frame, and included a wiki article from the Commons Wiki, an image from Flickr, an article from Wikipedia, Open Access on Twitter, Peter Suber’s Linked-In account,  and an e-book  from Google Books.  When you select web pages, you can open up snippets, or the whole page in another window.

Apture may be activated by going to “Plugins” on the WordPress dashboard.  Scroll down until you find it, and click on the “Activate” hyperlink.  Once it is installed, you will be guided to set up an Apture account.  A quick “Getting Started” tutorial is available.

See Apture for documentation and additional information.   Unfortunately, Apture does not work on the iPad.  Apture requires Flash Player, and Apple doesn’t allow it.

This can also be done using Apture’s “embed” function.  The following sample was just embedded in the post:

I’ve been looking at the various ways to use blogs and wikis together, and found a new one (at least to me).

Suppose you want to record what you learn at a class or a conference. Both wikis and blogs let you compile links and share information, but blogs are better suited to broadcast that information. On the other hand, wikis allow content to evolve and grow by enabling collaboration. Blogs allow feedback in the form of comments, but searching through comments is not that convenient.

So here’s an alternative that lets you use both!

Using the WordPress plug-in “WIKI INC” you can include wiki content in your blog post or page. I created a wiki page to further explain, and have dynamically “included” it below to demonstrate this plug-in’s functionality.

Everything below here comes dynamically from a Commons Wiki page

I started a new category on the Commons Wiki called “Open Source” and added five pages from the research I’ve been doing. Open Source Movement gives a quick background of the OS movement, lists some of its tenets, and provides some useful links. Open Source – Demographics investigates the makeup and motivational factors involved in Open Source communities. Evaluating Open Source Solutions tracks journal articles that explore conversion decisions — whether Open Source the correct approach, and how to estimate cost savings and support needs. Open Source – Defect Tracking and Resolution pulls together studies that investigate the Open Source development model – showing how a dedicated community can use group forums and wikis to track bugs, plan enhancements, and release superior software in a shorter time frame than the traditional, proprietary model. Open Source – Digital Libraries reviews articles about Open Source Content Management systems, focusing on the LIS community.

Please feel free to add more content to any of these pages, or add some new pages to this category.

Whether you’re busy loading apps on your new iPad this week, or not, you might want to check out our Commons Wiki category Teaching and Learning with Technology. This is a general category and one of our largest, with almost thirty tagged articles. I will feature just a few.

• The Creative Commons Copyright Resources wiki is a great resource for copyright questions. It includes links to overviews, tutorials, wikis, and blogs related to content ownership issues. Links to sites with images, video, and textual content licensed by Creative Commons are provided. Very useful for Web publishing!
• Sites with Information about Teaching with Web 2.0 is a good series of annotated links to interesting Web sites that deal with Teaching and Web 2.0. There is a link to the CUNY WriteSite which serves CUNY writers of all types, from undergrads to professors.
• Design a Lean and Clean Online Interface to Promote Learning is a comprehensive investigation on Blackboard and how it can be used effectively. (The Commons Wiki has a Blackboard category that is also worth browsing through. This category deserves its own featured blog, and I will work on that soon!)
• Web-based Assignment Design:Principles and Possibilities provides another series of annotated links to articles about teaching web-based courses, and examples how other universities are implementing on-line courses. Check out the link to e-Pedagogy for on-line syllabi and course websites in Literature, Theory, Writing/Composition/Rhetoric and Cyber-Cultural studies. Good stuff!

Happy browsing. And as always, please feel free to contribute more content to this category.