Running a multi-user version of the blog software I’m running here, edublogs hopes to be the place for students and educators to blog. Hopefully it will take off. Here’s the press release
http://edublogs.org – Launched!
http://edublogs.org is an totally unique project aimed at teachers, researchers, writers and educators the world over.
Basically you get to set up a free WordPress blog (by far the best blogging platform out there!), 10MB of upload space (extending to much much more down the line), an enormous stack of beautiful themes and to be part of a unique community.
You could use a blog to record and annotate important resources and ideas, to propose and discuss anything under the sun, to progressively develop your thesis, to publicise and discuss your publications with the world or just to develop your digital identity.
Either way, http://edublogs.org is a no-strings-attached, open source, ongoing and freely available service for you and you’re invited to take part!
If you’ve got any questions, please feel free to contact James Farmer at james[at]edublogs(dot)org
It’s been busy in blogland while I was away. My RSS feeds are full of articles! Here’s some tidbits:
The problem of U of Phoenix ads showing up on the web next to small colleges in searches (something that has been noticed in this region) warranted an article in the Chronicle. After the Phoenix president was confronted at a conference this practice was corrected. But search engine ad placement will always be tricky for small institutions that don’t have large marketing budgets.
I might have to be careful here if I ever need to change jobs! I am liking these Chronicle first-person articles by pseudonym-ed professors from midwest liberal arts colleges.
The Encyclopedia of Distance Learning looks interesting (though pricey). The table of contents is most impressive as is the editor list. Judith Boettcher visited Augsburg a year or two ago (I forget exactly when) and she was an impressive woman to talk to.
I was listening to the World’s technology podcast (July 8th) and was interested in the segment on the role of social technologies in the London bombing aftermath. With most voice communication networks overwhelmed, people used their blogs to post “I’m alright” so that friends and family would know. And camera phones and social picture networks like flickr generated immediate pictures of the aftermath. Even though the voice systems were overloaded, the phones could connect to the internet and upload pictures! One woman started a wiki for people to build an information center on the tragic event — several news outlets followed with pages for people to post their accounts. It seems like these technologies are linking people both in text and images after a major tragedy like never before.
In addition, On The Media had a bit on wikipedia’s entry on the bombing. It fascinates me that this page did not exist and then was created and is filling with information on the event. And the page will continue to change as details unfold. The segment is worth a listen. It really helps differentiate wikipedia from an encyclopedia and from the media. The social nature of these technologies — wikis, blogs, personal devices, flickr — fascinates me in that they allow for the construction of information in almost realtime by everyone.
I stumbled upon this newsletter that speaks highly of the presentation given by my partner-in-blogging at the COTF conference in May.
I’ve been catching up at work from being gone and hope to get some more reading in today so I can post here.
I’m just finishing up listening to the podcast of the Auricle interview of Dublin City University’s Morag Munro on their moodle migration. It’s a good listen. They’re running moodle for 13,000 students on a single server with a backup/development server standing by. They easily linked it to their authentication system and their student information system. Had I seen this when I was in Dublin last week maybe I would have looked them up? Well, probably not. I was able to not think about work for those 2 weeks which was a record.
Back to podcasting. I’m finding I’m using podcasts as tivo for radio (which is not uncommon). My habit has been to take the podcasts for FutureTense, On The Media, and The World: Technology and burn them to CD for listening in the car. It’s been great to have my favorite radio spots whenever I want them. If I was really crafty I’d get an iTrip for my iPod and just use that. But I still like the simplicity of the CD.