Using Blojsom for students blogs

It looks like of late there has been a fair bit of noise around and interest in using Blojsom for student blogs. As it’s also it’s the only one that I didn’t get to test-drive when thinking about student blog systems a bit back I thought I’d have a roll over some systems that are using it, the system itself and invite you to have a peek under the hood at the IncSub install.

The two institutions that I know of (thanks for the comments guys :o) using Blojsom are Zane State (Blogs @ Zane State College) and USC with Blog do CETA (here’s an example).

As my Spanish isn’t so hot and as Zane look like they’re a fair bit down the track it’s probably best to focus on them as they look like they’ve got:

-LDAP integration (First Name / Last Name / Zane State ID > Username / Password e.g. Mary / Contrary / 88361 > mcont361 / 88361)

&

-Some good introductions to editing blog settings, posting, adding attachments, changing themes and using RSS.

I really like this, it’s smooth, straightforward and looks like it’s working well. It would be great to have some sort of portal to other blogs linked in to this, a way of finding similar Zane students (and others in similar disciplines) and collective aggregation built in and so on but for a first functional step this is pretty cool.

Am not so sure how keen I am on Blojsom itself though, here’s why:

-Adding a blog entry is painful… you have to code the entire thing (including breaks!) using some pretty tacky tags and then there’s a range of meta options which have no explanation / links to explanations or options for essentially enabling them

-Some of the navigation is painfully over complex (for example you have to go through a category system to get to posts you might want to edit)

-Despite the very high level of tech proficiency you’d need to be comfortable with this tool there is no simple way to edit the templates. In fact, getting your head around installing templates or plugins is something that does not come easy.

-Maybe I’m spoilt but the lists of plugins & extras for Blojsom looks pretty slim and fairly tricky compared to, say, WordPress.

-I’m pretty sure I installed the ‘multi-user’ blog version and yet there is no clear indication as to how I might bring this into being (without going into the databases & hacking code) and even if I did do that there’s no seeming way to get a ‘Create your own blog’ page (you have to have created them all first yourself for people to login)… and that’s a big downer as the vast majority of users here are not going to be doing LDAP)

So, interesting experiment but no thumbs up from me I’m afraid and Apple users… don’t get too excited about the new built in blogging tool!

Would love to hear what other people think! If you have a minute and would like to see what it’s like from the backend I’m making the account publicly accessible here. Login: default Password: blojsom

Blogsavvy: Your professional blogging consultant

Drumroll please… I’d like to introduce a new blog… my new blog to be precise!

Blogsavvy is part a creature of me wanting to write about blogging a lot more, part result of my belief that blogs are here to stay and are capable of making an enormous positive difference in a range of spheres and part me thinking that this might be what I really want to do!

It’s going to be a blog about blogging, about blogging for Education, Business, Communities, a Cause and even for Money.

The business model goes like this… if you’re interested in what I’m writing about and think I know what I’m doing then you can hire me to do blog workshops, assist with developing your blog strategy, come up with and implement blog solutions and even do you some savvy blog design.

incorporated subversion remains by blog, IncSub will remain (and hopefully grow through this) the focus for online education and organisational learning and the free-for-teachers model is never going to end there. But I really really dig blogging, I’ve enjoyed putting Blogtalk Downunder together like you wouldn’t believe and I rather want to do this professionally… perhaps even full time down the road!

And if you could give me a leg up and share a link to the site through your blog, then you’ll be giving me a great start and I’ll love you forever (again :o)

Using Weblogs - A Second LTUG Workshop

This workshop looks at the possibilities and challenges in the use of weblogs in education… I’m running it in about 45 minutes and have put up, for yer pleasure, the slides and audio recordings for each one (done rather late last night, excuse any uming and ahing).

So if you’re interested, here it all is… (bar the questions / discussion / comic mishaps which face these things live :o)

LTUG Workshop: Getting up Close and Personal with Weblogs

I’m lucky enough to have been invited to run a workshop this morning for the Learning Technology Users Group.

It’s another one of my ‘draw inspiration from the images’ presentation (i.e. virtually no bullet points / no blocks of text) but it’s got a fun twist at the end… LTUG Blogs all round!

Yup, we conclude with sending people off to Bloglines and the the LTUG Blogs Register Page… and take it from there!

Here’s the presentation for the workshop.

In fact, not only can we do workshops (virtual and real) on weblogs, RSS, wikis, online learning environments and more… but we can also give you your very own, customised, ‘Weblogs @ Your.edu’ to complement it… for very few $s indeed!

Get in touch if you’re interested.