The following Wordpress extensions were developed ubnder the auspices of the Open University OpenLearn project as a way of exploring how OpenLearn RSS feeds could be used as a mechanism for importing OpenLearn course units into the popular Wordpress blogging platform and encouraging the reuse of OpenLearn content in the context of this popular blogging platform..
Two extensions are available:
WPMU-OpenLearn importer extension [download]: the OpenLearn WPMU widget builds on an earlier demonstration by Jim Groom of how to populate a WordPress MU blog with content from an OpenLearn unit (Proud Spammer of Open University Courses). Two sorts of RSS feed are provided from OpenLearn: feeds that list the homepages of course units in a particular OpenLearn topic area, and feeds that contain the actual content of a particular OpenLearn unit. The WPMU-Openlearn extension acts as a batch mode WPMU blog creator, allowing the WPMU administrator to:
Anticipated Use Case: one way of using the WPMU-OpenLearn importer is to create a set of "course unit blogs" for a particular topic area behind the insitutional firewall. Students can then consume the course materials via the appropriate blog, and make use of blog comments as a medium for course discussion. One way of creating an arbitrary set of course blogs might be to bookmark the appropriate courses using a social bookmarking service such as delicious with an appropriate tag, and then pass the feed for that tag into the extension (untested).
Anticipated Use Case: the daily feeds widget is ideal for use with "static content" blogs - that is, blogs whose content does not change over time, such as a WPMU blog containing content from an OpenLearn course unit, or a "blogged uncourse" such as Digital Worlds. The daily feed delivers the course one item at a time, thus providing paced delivery of content to the learner/subscriber.
The two extensions are released on an as is basis, and are currently unsupported, although we are keen to further develop them or help others develop them. If you install the extensions, please report any known issues to Tony Hirst.
The two extensions are offered as contributions to the open educational community and as such we are keen to see them extended in ways likely to benefit that community. Please post feature requests, or change release notes/download links for any extensions you make to the code, as comments to this blog post: OpenLearn Wordpress Plugins.
One of the most comprehensive demonstrations of how Wordpress can be used in an educational context can be found at UMW Blogs. Jim Groom regularly blogs progress notes about the UMW Blogs environment. D'Arcy Norman has also been pushing the use of Wordpress in an educational context.
For more example of "daily feeds" in action, see daily feeds resources.
The OpenLearn Wordpress extensions were developed by Isotoma Ltd. based on an original idea by Tony Hirst and Patrick McAndrew.