Mikepedia

What is CoreDogs?

CoreDogs is an interactive website where users make their way through courses in order to become “Webers” (a term endearingly used on the site to refer to people who work with internet technologies).  The home page of the site describes itself:

CoreDogs helps you learn the Web’s core tech. So you can make Web sites, work with Web designers, set up Web software, and do other useful things.

We cover only the important tech. The 10% of the tech that does 90% of the work.

CoreDogs helps you get the most you can from every minute you spend learning. How? By using best practices from learning science. And CoreDogs is free.

CoreDogs helps people who teach Web tech, as well as people who want to learn Web tech.

Why am I writing about CoreDogs on Mikepedia?

As part of my final undergraduate semester, I’m engaged in an independent study with the creator of CoreDogs, Kieran.  My goal is work through the ServerCore as any other user would and then write about my experience.  This will include things like offering suggestions for improvement, praising what works well, and maybe pontificating existentially upon the idea of “learning” itself.  The idea is that I’m to be honest about my experiences so that the site can be improved.  (Not to mention benefiting from learning some PHP as I make my way through the course!)

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This page will be a sort of home base for my CoreDogs experience.  As I write more in-depth articles they will be posted on my blog, but they will also be linked to on this page.  To begin, look at the articles written by the Kieran that explain the goals of CoreDogs in detail, as well as the philosophy of learning that has been applied to the courses.

Designing CoreDogs –> A detailed paper that describes CoreDogs’ design process.  I found the Learning Process Model section particularly interesting.

Textbook Writer: A tool for writing effective online college textbooks –> CoreDogs is more than a place to learn about the web’s core technologies.  It serves as an initial test case for a scalable Drupal module called Textbook Writer.  This Drupal module (extension) aims to enable others to write engaging educational courses that employ the same learning techniques as CoreDogs.