Charlie Lowe has been working hard to create a Weblog set up for writing classes using Drupal.
Drupal, at its base installation, is a blank slate, a content management system that can be used to create a large variety of different websites. Thus, DrupalEd is preconfigured for creating a community site suitable for the online writing classroom, a highly configurable platform that better facilitates community interaction and collaboration than is possible with proprietary course management systems. Educators will find that this distribution, once installed, eliminates 95% of the work involved in setting up a Drupal site for a writing class, as well as containing some documentation materials which will reduce the learning curve for site administration.
Here at NECC, there has been lots of talk about the “best” tool for classroom Weblog application, and frankly, there haven’t been a lot of good answers. One of the ironies is that as I walked around the exhibit hall yesterday, I must have seen over a dozen booths that were pitching various products that blogs can already do for a fraction of the cost (i.e online portfolio, course management software.) And then there were those few things that I found myself wishing were included in the current choices (i.e. calendaring.)
The killer app for edublogging isn’t anywhere out there right now, and the general consensus among those of us who actually spend time thinking about these things is that the tools are changing so fast anyway that in a couple of years whatever works now will probably be obsolete. That being said, we need to put together a comparison of current software from an educator’s perspective, i.e. how much, how hosted, security, preview posting, ease of setup, etc. I think Anne may have started on this, but is there any reason why we the community shouldn’t start wiki-ing this stuff into an edublogpedia?
I think that 2 of the absolute necessities are security and ease of use. Without both, any solution, no matter how well featured will simply not be used in the classroom.
I’m trying out Blogger because:
1. It’s the easiest (IMHO) to use
2. If you publish to your website (via the FTP option) – this means that nothing gets published that you don’t already see!!
3. It’s free 🙂
cf. http://www.digilogue.net/blogger/ for a really simple example of what a non-blogger can throw together in a few minutes … I’m certainly impressed (hope you are too 😉
It’s a tricky one isn’t it… I mean ease of use is paramount but at the same time so is flexibility and the ability to push/hack the system. Radio / Manila does this so well but like you say… unlikely they’re going to come to the edutech party (unless BBs new IPO is pushing them that way!)
I’m not so sure about the redundancy of current solutions… MSWord, for example, is much the same as it always has been just with nicer widgits, however, you’re quite right that the playing field of products is changing all the time… so…
I don’t reckon we need a comparison between current products (as that’ll change too rapidly) but rather we need a list and description of specifications which will retain it’s value in the same way that ‘print’ ‘save’, ‘bold’, ‘bullet point’ etc. have retained theirs.
I can set up a wiki for it over at incsub.org if you like, Tiki or PHPWiki… the choice is yours :o)
Cheers, James
My “Webloggy Websites for Schools” site is meant to address this topic. It’s a Plone site set up to allow anyone with an account to edit or add content, so it is basically a featureful wiki. It’s here: http://plone.feinsteinhs.org/schools
When the EdBlogger wiki disappeared last year, I created a replacement for it, see http://coedit.net/ for some wikis devoted to educational topics. The EduBlogger one doesn’t have much in it, but anyone is welcome to add to it, edit it, own it. A page comparing different blog engines for use with schools would be useful at the EduBlogger, as would a page comparing different wiki engines at the WikiGuide site.