If you don’t know about the University of Mary Washington’s A Domain of One’s Own project, get thee to this Wired article from July of 2012,  this Tech Therapy podcast on the Chronicle site, or go straight to the source at UMW’s  http://umwdomains.com/ to find out more.
UMW’s IT crew–Tim Owens, Jim Groom, and the rest–are true technology innovators: starting this Fall, all faculty AND students at UMW are being offered their own personal web space, for free, allowing them “reclaim the web” and “take control of [their]digital identities.” It’s such a simple concept really, so simple it’s genius, and easily untangles the Gordian knot of the  LMS “walled garden” that has made the software, not the student, the center of learning.
Now, as recipients of a Shuttleworth Foundation “flash” grant, Tim Owens and Jim Groom are offering this free hosting to any faculty or educational technology staff who want to experiment with having a domain of their own. Jim and Tim will even help you get it set up and working.If you’re interested, go to Reclaim Hosting (reclaimhosting.com) to sign up. You’ll need to have an idea of how many accounts you need and  pay about $12 each for domain names.
*Correction: an earlier version of this post identified UMW as the recipient of the Shuttleworth grant and  the sponsor of the Reclaim Hosting project; in fact, Tim Owens and Jim Groom are the grantees supporting this project.
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