John Stewart

OU Create 2.0

Wed, 23 Mar 2022 20:41:07 +0000

This year, I’ve spent a good bit of time restructuring the OU Create project. Since the start of the project, we had been giving all of the users a full domain where they could stand up as ma…

Another (the best) tool for Live Captioning Your Zoom Session

Tue, 09 Feb 2021 11:36:14 -0600

Last week, I posted some notes about five different tools for live captioning a Zoom session. After I posted, I found out that OU had just turned on a new

5 Tools for Live Captioning Your Zoom Class

Tue, 02 Feb 2021 11:08:13 -0600

Since we’ve all dived head first into Zoom, I thought I’d take a look at a few different options for captioning videos. If you are on a Pro or Educational

Yoast and Rank Math: WordPress Plugins for SEO

Wed, 14 Oct 2020 20:48:35 -0500

One of the first questions people ask after they get settled into OU Create with a working WordPress site is how to set up search engine optimization (SEO).

Chemistry and Slavery in the Scottish Enlightenment

Wed, 27 May 2020 12:40:27 -0500

Scottish people don’t figure prominently in most histories of slave trade. When Scots are mentioned, people usually point to the writings of Adam Smith and

Teach Anywhere

Thu, 12 Mar 2020 09:11:02 -0500

Featured image photo by Victoria Heath on Unsplash

You don’t need Wix: Use WordPress Elementor

Mon, 27 Jan 2020 16:12:40 +0000

Here at OU, we provide every student, faculty, and staff member with webhosting and a free URL through OU Create. We’re hoping to build digital literacy by giving students the chance to build…

Niantic, XR, and (y)OU

Tue, 22 Oct 2019 21:40:41 +0000

I play Wizards Unite and Pokemon Go, two very popular mobile video games made by Niantic. On any given Sunday, you can probably find me wondering around Norman collecting Pokemon and various items …

WordPress migration tip

Tue, 09 Jul 2019 15:58:47 +0000

This is largely a note to myself, but I hope it will be useful for anyone else who helps to administer a Domain of One’s Own project. I get a lot of requests from OU Create users to migrate a…

Checking the status for 5200 websites

Tue, 02 Jul 2019 16:14:51 +0000

OU Create The University of Oklahoma offers all of its students, staff, and faculty their own web domains through the OU Create program. Anyone who wants to can sign up for a free subdomain (someth…

A History Course Site with Leaflet

Wed, 26 Jun 2019 21:27:55 +0000

I’ve been interested in using digital maps to in history projects for a while now. My first big project on this was Situating Chemistry. This is a research database of places where chemistry …

Reflections on Domains 19

Wed, 12 Jun 2019 20:56:40 +0000

Domains19 wrapped yesterday, and it was great. Lauren and the whole Reclaim Hosting team did a great job putting the conference together. As with any good conference, my favorite part was getting t…

#Domains 19 Day 2 Lunch Keynote with Amy Collier

Tue, 11 Jun 2019 12:59:02 -0500

For the Day 2 lunch keynote, Amy Collier talked to us about Ambitious futures for (digital) education: Perspectives from Tropicália.

#Domains 19 Day 2 Breakout Session 3: Embedded in the Fabric

Tue, 11 Jun 2019 16:01:25 +0000

Georgetown Domains and the Master’s of Learning, Design, and Technology Speakers: Lee Skallerup Bessette, Randal Ellsworth Abstract: The mission of the new Master’s of Learning, Design, and T…

#Domains 19 Day 2 Breakout Session 2: Weaponizing Your Website

Tue, 11 Jun 2019 15:41:59 +0000

Speakers: Jennifer Hill Abstract: There is a war a raging in our cyberworld and it is time for you to join the resistance. Cambridge Analytica stealing Facebook user’s data, white supremacists gett…

#Domains 19 Day 2 Breakout Session 1: HAX Chaotic Good

Tue, 11 Jun 2019 15:03:00 +0000

Speakers: Bryan Ollendyke (Not really an) Abstract: “YOU SEE, I’M NOT A MONSTER… I’M JUST AHEAD OF THE CURVE“ Unbalance, unrest, and chaos can be brought with one simple act: Giving away everything…

#Domains19: Martin Hawksey Keynote

Tue, 11 Jun 2019 14:03:37 +0000

Minority Report Martin Hawksey, creator of TAGS and chief innovator for ALT, gave the opening Keynote for Day 2 of Domains19. Martin talked about data surveillance including everything from Twitter…

Video in situ

Thu, 25 Oct 2018 15:01:47 -0500

I’ve only recently stumbled upon La Blogothèque, a French website / YouTube channel that produces fantastic films of music being performed. They have

Getting Started with WordPress in OU Create

Wed, 05 Sep 2018 17:59:16 +0000

It’s back to school season, and for me that means helping students and faculty set up websites. The Office of Digital Learning at the University of Oklahoma provides a service called OU Creat…

AirTable Review

Fri, 18 May 2018 20:30:25 +0000

I have been trying out different project management tools over the last few weeks. So far, I’ve used Notion, Trello, and AirTable and also looked at half a dozen others. I also tried a notebo…

Twine Game Data to Google Sheets via Javascript version 2

Mon, 14 May 2018 03:06:37 +0000

Using Twine, a free, open-source, text-based game software, you can build choose your own adventure games that explore the untaken paths in literature, promote empathy through simulated experiences…

Keegan’s Game Jam

Fri, 11 May 2018 19:21:28 +0000

This weekend, there is a 48 hour Game Jam in honor of Keegan Long-Wheeler. As most of you know, Keegan had to have brain surgery a couple of weeks ago to remove a tumor. In order to cheer him up, w…

Code Ocean

Mon, 26 Mar 2018 17:50:53 +0000

Sarah Clayton in the libraries organized a demo for Code Ocean today. The company offers reproducibility as service allowing you to upload or import code and data in a variety of open source langua…

If You Can’t Write a Letter of Rec for Every Student, Change the Way You Teach

Fri, 02 Mar 2018 16:27:14 +0000

TLDR: Replace your course rubric with a letter of recommendation. It’s time that we take responsibility for knowing our students. If you can’t write a letter of recommendation for your…

Fake News and Fact Checking

Fri, 16 Feb 2018 16:36:03 +0000

Keegan is wrapping up the first week of his Information Literacy Faculty Learning Community as I type. The FLC, especially for weeks 1 & 2, draws heavily on Mike Caulfield’s work on media…

Game Design as Project Based Learning

Tue, 06 Feb 2018 11:29:50 -0600

2016 still sounds more like a made up year in the distant future than that time “a couple of years ago.” Nonetheless, a couple of years ago, Scott Wurdinger

Omeka + HTML5Up

Mon, 04 Dec 2017 16:50:45 -0600

I have been working on a couple of Omeka sites this semester. I really like the Omeka system for its handling of meta data and the Neatline map extension for

The Gods of Norman

Mon, 06 Nov 2017 22:19:05 +0000

In my history of science survey, we talk about how ancient cosmologies reflect the geography of the people. Thus the Nile River civilizations believe in mostly benevolent gods that bring annual, pr…

Time for R

Fri, 03 Nov 2017 15:17:53 +0000

Here at OU, there are at least 4 or 5 that teach introductory R. You can take a statistics class, an economics class, a biological stats class, or a class just on R as a programming language. R has…

Visualizing Connections in the Sea of Information

Tue, 24 Oct 2017 15:07:03 -0500

Between podcasts, newspapers, blogs, journals, books, and video, I have access to far more media than I could possibly consume. Rather than having to search

Twine Game Data to Google Sheets via Javascript

Tue, 03 Oct 2017 20:50:25 +0000

Omeka of One’s Own

Tue, 19 Sep 2017 14:16:27 -0500

One of the recurring concerns/complaints surrounding the Domain of One’s Own project is the inescapability of WordPress. Most students and faculty on OU

I am Open (and so can you!)

Wed, 12 Jul 2017 01:14:35 -0500

For the next few weeks, I will be taking a history course, something I thought I would never do again after I finished my dissertation. Shawn Graham is

Searching and Discoverability at Domains17

Mon, 05 Jun 2017 19:17:00 +0000

In our Information Age, I think we are all lost in a sea so vast that neither shore nor bottom are visible. We grab onto the first lifesavers thrown at us, FaceBook and other social web sites, and …

Open Letter to Sen. Jim Inhofe

Fri, 02 Jun 2017 22:03:50 -0500

I have been using the Resist Bot to write faxes to my congressional representatives every time I’m outraged by something congress or the White House does - so

Digital Note-taking in the History Classroom

Mon, 06 Feb 2017 17:20:05 +0000

One of the projects I’ve been most excited about this semester revolves around an effort to teach history students how to take notes using an online database. The central point of my own digi…

A Brief History of Alchemy

Wed, 01 Feb 2017 10:33:18 -0600

Alchemy, as a field of study, was thought to answer several different questions making it hard to define. Alchemy was used to study ontology; that is,

A Letter of Apology to My Daughter

Wed, 09 Nov 2016 08:20:55 +0000

Dear Evie, When I laid you down in bed tonight, I made you a promise. “When I wake you up in the morning, I’m going to tell you I love you and that Hillary won.” When you wake up, you’ll know by th…

Situating Chemistry: Creating a Database of 18th-c. Chemists

Wed, 21 Sep 2016 13:14:02 +0000

*This post is the first section of a talk I gave at the 7th International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science. In 1756, fifty-nine students attended William Cullen’s (1710…

Recap of the 3rd Digital Humanities Day at OU

Fri, 09 Sep 2016 18:44:01 +0000

Today I attended the 3rd Digital Humanities Day at OU. Below I’ve identified a couple of the emergent themes and given my thoughts. Below that, I included notes on each talk. Making as a Mean…

Design Thinking in HE #InstCon

Wed, 20 Jul 2016 16:52:03 +0000

In the first session of the day, I attended Robin Bartoletti’s talk, ‘Design Thinking for Learning Design.’ Robin Bartoletti presenting on Deign Thinking at #InstCon pic.twitter.com/J8MPNFRW4P — Tr…

Duplicating Drupal

Tue, 28 Jun 2016 11:31:21 -0500

One of my big ongoing projects is an online Drupal database for the History of Chemistry called Situating Chemistry. The database connects the sites where

Brexit and Higher Ed

Fri, 24 Jun 2016 11:50:21 -0500

Now that the vote’s in and I can no longer bury my head in disbelief, I’ve been doing a good bit of reading about the British Exit from the EU and

Persistent Student Writing

Tue, 14 Jun 2016 10:17:14 -0500

I have written before about my dislike for disposable writing assignments in college courses. Like math homework, they serve a purpose in having students

Open Notes for Deep Maps

Thu, 09 Jun 2016 20:39:22 +0000

For the last couple of years, I have been working with my colleague John Perkins on building a database called Situating Chemistry. With this database we have been collecting information about the …

Twine & Serious Gaming

Tue, 07 Jun 2016 15:58:19 +0000

As we were working on GOBLIN, Keegan and I both got really into Twine as a tool for building narrative-based games. One of the biggest problems in game-based learning and gamificaiton is the idea t…

Hypothes.is Collector

Wed, 18 May 2016 16:25:38 +0000

One of my favorite online tools is Hypothes.is. It allows you to annotate web pages as you would a book. When you’re using Hypothes.is you can highlight text on a webpage or add notes. The to…

Using Reclaim Hosting’s Server Status API in WordPress

Thu, 25 Feb 2016 20:14:00 +0000

I am extremely excited about a server status page that I just published for OU Create. The page simply displays the current status, operational or otherwise, of the two Reclaim Hosting servers that…

Team Learning: A Halo 2 Clan Story

Mon, 22 Feb 2016 17:17:56 +0000

This post was written by guest blogger Keegan Long-Wheeler and cross-posted from his blog, Keeganslw.com. Keegan is the educational technologist at the Center for Teaching Excellence at the Univers…

Scaffolding: From Candy Land to Calculus

Tue, 09 Feb 2016 18:31:20 +0000

I’m currently teaching my 4-year old daughter, Evie, to play board games. Before we get to chess or Scrabble or even Sorry, we’re starting off with some really simple games that can demonstrate for…

Goblin as OER

Thu, 04 Feb 2016 15:00:29 +0000

While the thought of gamifying an entire class or even elements of a class will be daunting for many, GOBLIN also includes more universal and applicable concepts. Well designed games introduce gam…

A Brief History of GOBLIN Faculty Development

Fri, 29 Jan 2016 16:00:44 +0000

This post is written by guest blogger Keegan Long-Wheeler. Keegan is the educational technologist at the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Oklahoma and my collaborator on GOBLIN. …

Embedding WordPress in D2L

Wed, 27 Jan 2016 19:20:57 +0000

One of the main limitations for learning management systems is that many are constructed as silos, hiding the course contents from anyone not enrolled in the class. This limitation encouraged me an…

Announcing GOBLIN: goblin.education

Mon, 25 Jan 2016 18:07:46 +0000

Games Offer Bold Learning Insights Nowadays (GOBLIN) is an interactive adventure game that is, first and foremost, a vehicle to experientially teach pedagogical concepts. In other words, GOBLIN aim…

Converting Students’ History Essays into Wikipedia Articles

Tue, 05 Jan 2016 20:08:18 +0000

The history research paper is often treated as busy work by students and seen with the same contempt as an algebra homework set or lab write-up. While all of these assessments have pedagogical util…

My first plugin

Fri, 28 Aug 2015 23:52:22 +0000

*The opensource code for the BadgeOS_Slack integration plugin can be found at the OUDigilearn GitHub site: In my office (the University of Oklahoma’s Center for Teaching Excellence), we use …

OU Create

Thu, 09 Jul 2015 18:54:51 +0000

*This post was written as part of Keegan Long-Wheeler’s Mobile Blogging Workshop series in response to his prompt: What campus resource has been most helpful to you and/or your work this year…

Transcribing Joseph Black’s Chemistry Lectures

Mon, 04 Aug 2014 15:00:35 +0000

Joseph Black (1728-1799) was one of the best known and most influential chemists during the second half of the eighteenth century. Black’s correspondence, recently published by Jean Jones an…

About / CV

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I earned a PhD in the history of science in 2013, then took the alt-academic route: from digital humanities projects into instructional technology, and from there into systems administration for a university education-services organization.

My historical research centers on eighteenth-century chemistry — Joseph Black’s lectures and correspondence, the chemical communities of the Scottish Enlightenment, and, more recently, how the era’s science was entangled with slavery and empire.

CV coming soon.

Colophon

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This site is built with Hugo and the PaperMod theme, and served as static files from GitHub Pages. It uses your device’s system fonts, ships no analytics and no tracking, and aims to load fast on any connection.

Posts from 2014–2022 originally appeared on my previous blog, johnastewart.org. When that domain lapsed, the content was recovered from the Wayback Machine and migrated here; each recovered post links to its archived original.

Unless otherwise noted, content is licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Publications

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Publication list coming soon.