George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media has been really putting out some great online academic tools. They’re the ones behind the Zotero research extension for Firefox. Now they are developing some software for web sites like Omeka, an open source content management system for museum collections and exhibits, and ScholarPress, plugins designed to make WordPress more usable for college classes.
ScholarPress has two plugins right now, Courseware, for adding syllabi and assignments, and WPBook, a way of converting your WordPress blog as a Facebook Application. The two developers, Jeremey Boggs and Dave Lester, also host a podcast called THAT podcast and have posted a tutorial on using the Scholarpress plugins along with an interview with Matt Mullenweg as the first episode. I certainly admire them for the impressive amount of work they have put in to all of these projects and look forward to trying their tools out in the future. (via Photo Matt)