Everybody's Blogging
We noticed an article in the Oracle, the campus newspaper at University of South Florida, about a new weblogging project called blog@USF. The university is hosting a weblog service for their students using WordPress, an open source weblog server.
My colleague and buddy, Melissa Chotiner (Blackboard PR Manager and newly converted to the wonders of blogging) is standing over my shoulder saying, "Greg, Greg, why can't we put a blogging feature in our software?" The answer is there's no technical reason why we can't, but we haven't heard from customers that they really want this as a core feature of Blackboard software.
What do you think? Blogging in Blackboard Academic Suite? Thumbs up or thumbs down? How would you use it on your campus? Are teachers and students on your campus already using blogs in education?
P.S. I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Learning Objects Inc. has created a Building Block called Journal LX that incorporates weblogs into Blackboard. There's also a Building Block from Baylor University called My Journal that also sort of blog-like.
posted by Greg Ritter @ 3:42 PM
22 comments
22 Comments:
Thumbs Up!!
Please ad it ASAP!
I'm a UK academic and reasonably 'new' Bb user who has just 'discovered' blogging and I would be very keen for Bb to consider including this in their system. There are loads of lecturers and teachers using blogs for educational purposes; I'm currently running two (a professional one and a personal one) and will be looking to include blogging in my future teaching. (And while you're at it, how about a wiki editor as well... :) )
today we discussed about having such a feature in addition to portfolio.
We can't wait: 2 thumbs up!
Thumbs Up!
I'm teaching at a german university that uses Blackboard as LMS. Due to the lack of blogs, I had to switch to a public blogging system. But I would prefer to have this feature integrated into Blackboard (privacy reasons, less management effort).
Yes please - we're been talking about it here at the conference. Learning Objects products goes someway in this area, but I seem to remember in the original App Packs suggested schedule, blogs was mentioned on a future possiblity. At the time I didn't really know what the fuss was all about, but I now maintain a blog regularly, and I believe that incorporating it into Bb would be a powerful step towards encouraging reflective learning journals and negotiated group creation of materials, as well as meeting the expectations of our student users. I would welcome this. For a non-bb experience with blogs, check out http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk
THUMBS UP!
At Leiden University we are in the process of starting up a weblog pilot. We have chosen Movable Type as our new blogging platform.
We are going to provide three main types of weblogs to students and teachers:
- Group / theme Blog
- Educational Blog (Blog as e-learning environment)
- Personal Blogs
Some examples of our experiences so far:
- Our Blackboard Blog
- E-learning Blog
- Blog as a Blackboard knowledgebase
- Blog as a incident management tool
- My new Personal Blog
Most information is in dutch ... but you will surely get the message.
We think that blogs will be an important tool in creating a student centric e-learning environment.
Yes! We would like a blogging tool in Bb:
- Personal Blog
- Group Blog
Klaas Haasjes
Blogs would be great in Blackboard, but they need to be easily accessible to the public. People outside the sphere of the local Blackboard community need easy access to student blogs created within Blackboard.
In addition, there should be a separate blog for each course. The course blog course be indepedant of the public blog, or it could be made a subset of the public blog. Either way, two levels of blogging within Blackboard would be very highly regarded.
BTW, use your behind.blackboard.com support account to submit these requests as Enhancement Requests. The only way to gather serious attention about your desires is to use the enhancement request option of http://behind.blackboard.com. Or call your local sales rep.
Our school has the Learning Objects building block for blogging but I agree that Blackboard should add it to one of the upcoming app packs.
Don't you guys at Blackboard keep up with new technologies and educational developments. I can't believe that it takes so long for something to filter through- perhaps you should employ someone to monitor the various conversations around about emerging technologies?
Really seems like an advertisement for working with open source and one's own developers. Pace of uptake by Bb is glacial.
That said, blog should be able to be made fully public, remain closed to course members and any other reasonable options. Keep working on the wiki editor too.
So how do the consumers get through to you most effectively rather than relying on someone reading a campus newsletter?
I too am a litte surprised it has taken this long to even consider implementing blogging into your software. The open-source LMS Moodle has already indicated it will be part of future releases, maybe as soon as August, 2005.
If it does become part of future releases, I believe it's important to provide both public and private (group) blogs, allowing for focused teaching among segments of a class.
Yes, you should add this feature, but NOT BY WRITING YOUR OWN BLOGGING TOOL. Yours will stink and be immature compared to existing open source tools. Here's a radical concept:
Spend your efforts improving an open source tool, like WordPress, and put your contributions back into the OSS community!
What you don't want to do is co-opt yet another open source tool for your purposes without putting anything back into the community. I remember when my university deployed Bb back in the day. A quick look inside and we saw apache, perl, mysql, and other open source tools there. You leveraged open code to Bb's advantage. But when we wanted to leverage these same tools to get those same advantages by tweaking a few internal things, what did we hear from Bb? "Sorry, you're not permitted!"
There's already enough bad feeling around your having started with OSS internals but refusing to even minimally participate in the community of practice then. Don't make the same mistake twice. And PLEASE don't write your own tool.
I think that it is really in bb's best interests to anticipate a little bit the needs of their clients. Rss, wikis, blogs, tagging systems like Flickr and delicious, are all clearly visible on anybody's business radar. My university might very well move toward separate blog servers for its clients and then discover that it's only one very small step toward an open source lms. Of course, blogs open up an otherwise closed system. Can bb stand the sunlight?
Also in response to one of your comments:
"BTW, use your behind.blackboard.com support account to submit these requests as Enhancement Requests. The only way to gather serious attention about your desires is to use the enhancement request option of http://behind.blackboard.com. Or call your local sales rep."
There is your problem. Why should I have to work so hard to start up a conversation with you? Better I just stop clicking and do something else constructive. The word is "unresponsive" and its corollary is "defunct". Please get a clue.
2 thumbs up for adding blogging capability.
BE SURE TO INCLUDE RSS FEED capability. Maybe a subscribe feature to also allow an e-mail to be sent based on a certain threashold.
I think it a goiod idea that VLE suppliers start embracing the new methods of learning.
But in reality does it need to be included explicitly in Blackboard (or any VLE).
Wouldn't it be simple enough to get students/staff to create weblogs in their preferred option and then post the link(s) to the discussion threads etc.
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