The problem I’ve run into so far is that my experience with TEI encoding was limited to working on a project that others set up, so I’d need to figure out how to create a DTD with Roma and so forth before beginning. And my TEI experience is years old, anyway. But any general talk about texts and Omeka, and I’m in.

Patrick, I you have a definite advantage here! I know the theme offerings and features already available can be tweaked, but it does require a better knowledge of PHP–most instructors interested in Omeka don’t really have that knowledge (like me!). Developing a couple of themes for classroom use would be fabulous, or even a plugin to enable some customization without going into the PHP. For instance, I found it very tough to customize the “add a resource” widget. As you suggest, and as my limited experience confirms, some of the things that students found difficult were more about how to select resources. Perhaps we could think about ways to focus attention in the Dublin Core data or in the contributors’ options on provenance and annotation? Or ways easily to alter the headings/titles/language used throughout the site to accord with pedagogical ends–instead of “collectors,” for instance, “researchers”; altering the help text associated with contributing; building connections; and so on. I haven’t returned to the project since I last taught the class I’d used it with (and now, some things in the class site I’d developed are defunct because I haven’t updated), so I would welcome a brainstorming session about what facets of the record are most useful for students and for what purposes. Of course, this means considering instructional design, too. Exciting!

There’s also a conversation waiting to be had about copyright, fair use, and so on–I’ve uploaded things, for instance, from ECCO, which I’m sure the folks at Gale would be less than happy about…. Sorry for the chaos of/lack of revision in this response–I just wanted to get some thoughts down. Two weeks!