Commons in a Box: Open Academic Collaboration for Higher Ed.

As long as I’ve been interested in WordPress for Education, CUNY Commons has stood as the example of what’s possible when you mash up WordPress, WPMU, BuddyPress, and MediaWiki with some special, custom goodness. Built on open source tools, it has enabled the dedicated team at CUNY to build it into exactly the tool their community needs.

I have been trying with very limited success to create a similar tool at InterLearn.us, but now I might not have to….

The project has announced that they will be offering Commons in a Box, a version of CUNY’s customized social network that can be freely installed at any educational institution to provide a social network of blogs, wikis, and collaboration tools.

This is exciting news for those of us who want to free our users to collaborate at a higher level using open tools. What I don’t fully cogitate is how the Box’d version will differ from a Buddypress install with the full list of CUNY’s custom plugins and MediaWiki integrated.

I’m waiting with barely-contained excitement for “Step Two– Put Your School in the Box“. Are you? How does your school facilitate online collaboration?

 

 

Related articles

• I develop free software because of CUNY and Blackboard (teleogistic.net)
• Why “Commons in a Box” Matters (hackeducation.com)
• New BuddyPress plugin: BP Better Directories (teleogistic.net)
• Creating New Academic Networks With ‘Commons in a Box’ (chronicle.com)

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