So this looks pretty interesting…
Jenn has 60 students spread across 3 classes at Saint Rose college in Albany, New York. Jenn is going to have all of the students blog for class, it is a writing class, and I will leave the explanation at that. Jenn can say more about this and her goals for the class. What I am going to do is help Jen figure out how to get all the students set up, with minimal technical difficulties, and to help Jen figure out how to track all of the students postings.
There are a lot of details here which I will get into in future posts. But as an overview, I will be posting here on Academhack about the technical side. I am going to try outline step by step how this gets done. I will also hopefully create screencasts so that others can reproduce the efforts, borrow or change as they see fit. My goal is to create the tutorials on the level of web browser interface. This means if you are familiar with a web browser, can use Firefox, IE, Safari . . .than you should be able to follow the steps. Like I said, low entry barrier, open source.
The first post is already up.
Jenn’s class blog is called Expos-i-story, which I love, btw, and she’s already doing some interesting reflecting on her process and thinking. . It’s on a university level, but I can’t imagine it wouldn’t be instructive to K-12 teachers as well. Low entry and open source are filled with Web goodness…
technorati tags:education, blogging, college, expository_writing, teaching
After reading through some of the posts on http://academhack.outsidethetext.com/ — and particularly after reading http://academhack.outsidethetext.com/home/?p=47 (about setting up email groups for your classes) and http://academhack.outsidethetext.com/home/?p=48 at(about the tools for the class), I would also recommend taking a look at Drupal using the Organic Groups module and the Views module. Drupal provides the blogging platform and user registration; Organic Groups allows for the students to join areas of the site for their specific courses; and the Views module allows for custom filters on content to be created — and these custom filters also generate their own rss feeds.
While the Drupal site would probably require more setup on the part of the site admin, it would also allow for an easier experience for the end users. Between the Views module, Organic Groups, Drupal’s built-in search feature, and different ways of finding/sorting posts using tags, it’s possibile for students to keep track of content without using rss feeds, and an instructor can generate more focused feeds that allow them to have a clearer view of student work. And, if a student wants to use feeds, they have a pretty broad range of feeds to choose from — they can get their content in their way.
As I said earlier, the initial set up might take a bit longer (especially the first time) but the payback in ease of use (and time saved) throughout the course is more than worth it. Drupal is also “(l)ow entry and open source” and “filled with Web goodness…”
For those looking for a powerful blogging platform for a class, Drupal merits examination.