Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 6 seconds

Excited about “Known” @withknown

Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 6 seconds

I’m really excited about Known, which I hope to be beta-testing sometime soon. I can’t wait to try it for my personal academic stuff, I can’t wait to try it to collaborate with the edcontexts folks, and I cannot wait to try it out in my class… I learn something new about it every day and I get new ideas about how I want to try it every few days…

Known is an offshoot of the #indieweb (nickname for independent web – not sure if that’s an offshoot of the reclaim movement or the other way round, but who cares, yeah? The main idea is to allow users to reclaim or own their own content, “reclaiming” it from third parties like, I guess, facebook, twitter, etc., and also from closed systems like LMSs). Principles of the indie web are here (I sort of sensed them in an indirect way in the discourse amongst my favorite open educators, but only read them explicitly recently)

I’d write a full post about this, except that this video probably says it all – so I just wanted to share it!

If you’re not into videos (ahem, like me), this site is pretty informative on what Known is supposed to do (if a little nerdy in the discourse)

3 thoughts on “Excited about “Known” @withknown

  1. Interesting! I’m trying to parse the differences between Known and Word Press (we have a Word Press installation at our Uni, and I use that for course sites; I also have some Word Press sites on Reclaim Hosting). In some ways it looks like it’s doing similar things to Word Press (customized types of posts, various plugins, customizable themes, open source, etc.). Much of what they talk about people can already do through having a Word Press site (their own installation, or one on a university; not WordPress.com, which doesn’t have as much functionality).

    One difference is the integration with the LMS–publishing directly to that. I don’t use an LMS, though, except for students submitting assignments and me giving the marked assignments back; the LMS makes it easy for just me to see their assignments and just them to see their marked assignments. Not so simple on Word Press. I can’t tell if Known will do that sort of thing.

    Another difference is publishing directly to social media from the site, which, so far as I know, one can’t do on Word Press.

    I may have missed other differences!

    1. Hey Christina, I am on reclaim as well. You can publish directly to social media from wordpress, whether thru wordpress or thru IFTTT but as far as I know it can only be a new post that you tweet about or post on your fb status (so i assume you’re talking about posting original status updates). I think the key for me with Known is that everything I post on the web is done in one place, and I can retrieve it again. Currently what drives me crazy is for example writing something on facebook or a comment on someone else’s blog, or even a tweet, and then not being able to retrieve it a month later. That bothers me. The LMS integration part – i also don,t use the LMS much. The big plus is that students get to keep their original versions no matter whether the teacher uses LMS or not. The little trick all these indie type projects never mention is this: the person will have to continue to PAY for the hosting and the domain, whereas on wordpress.com they can keep it forever for free (unless wordpress shuts down and kicks em out)

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