Recently bouncing around a few edublogs are echos of Liz Lawley’s MT Courseware 3.1 is coming: The announcement about new features in the upcoming MT3.1 release has gotten me excited about revising my courseware for this fall. In particular, the multi-blog option (“A plugin which allows you to include template content from one weblog in any other weblog in your Movable Type install”), the post scheduling, and the improved php/dynamic capability will all make it much easier to create a more robust courseware implementation… Wahooo! The salvation is here… Oops, now wait a minute. The “mult-blog” option is just a third party MT plugin that already exists. Actually there were about 4 to choose from at the MT-Plugins site (see multiple blogs from the category view). I use one already in our MT 2.661 Ocotillo multi-blog. Some of the other new MT 3.1 features sound okay (the pre-publishing or holding [...]
CogBlogged from ‘July, 2004’
The Power of Grouping RSS Feeds
I’ve been using my CDB Bloglines site mainly to run a master copy of my regular RSS feeds (keep my home and work computers in synch). But playing with grouping of feeds, I’ve found some new tricks to play with. I had just been dumping all feeds into one Bloglines folder, organized alphabetically. I run them on the sidebar of the main entry to CogDogBlog– yes, “blogrolls” are like, so, 2002, but I have used it myself numerous times to share the URL of a blog I read. And when I visit new blogs, I very much like to scan who they read and it has helped me to uncover new blogs. It was the low tech Friend of a Friend approach. Anyhow, Bloglines provides a JavaScript cut and paste that puts my current RSS list on the blog page. I had noticed James does something similar, but his generated [...]
Raising the White Flag on our Course Management System Data Collection
As far as course management systems, the Maricopa system has quite the diversity for course management systems- 2 colleges using WebCT (moving Fall 2004 to a shared Enterprise server), 6 using Blackboard, 1 using MIDAS, a derivative of the Anlon product, and 1 developing a brand new LMS/CMS to pilot this fall. We saw this starting back in 1998, when 2 colleges were separately licensing stand-alone versions of WebCT, and the other colleges were looking at a variety of systems– our office scheduled a series of demos with some nudging that they ought to consider going in together on these systems. The result? The colleges who started with WebCT stayed with it (individual servers), and seven who had none went in at the same time on individual site installs of Blackboard. Hence Levine’s First Law of CMS-es: Most institutions are using the first CMS they tried. Now not to suggest [...]
Tom, Here’s an Interface for Ya!
Tom Hoffman, blogther (=”blog+author”, eh?) of Tuttle SVC wrote today about an interest in two-person interfaces: What occurred to me is that there are lots of jobs in real life where you have two people collaboratively operating one machine or even one set of data on paper, but I can’t think of a single pc-based application, outside of games, where two people are working on two computers on a real-time collaborative task. SubEthaEdit, I suppose, but that’s a relatively simple case. I’m not talking about having a conversation; I’m thinking about some kind of serious data manipulation. More like a pilot/co-pilot relationship. Gunner and loader, that kind of thing. I’m not saying it is a problem, but it is kinda weird if you think about it. I wanted to share something I worked on a few clicks back, but sadly, his blog lacks comments (?) so maybe someone who knows [...]
One More Flickr-y Post
flickr foto Pass the Suflur, Pleaseavailable on my flickr Most folks who have been to the Vancouver waterfront have likely marveled at this yellow mound- a ferry ride, a lot of pixels, and some cropping got me a nice closeup. I have dinkered away a bit more time than I would have preferred to set up this “blog from flickr to MT”, but that is what happens why you start pawing around with new toys. It is a matter of clicking the “Blog This” icon from flickr: Anyhow, I had to do a bit of munging to the style flickr uses to create a post, and especially take out the CSS it inserts into the entry (instead putting it in my style sheet), modifying the styles to my liking. That gets really messy when you have MT’s default to convert everything to HTML! Then I had to do some subsituting [...]
Blogging Photos FROM Flickr
flickr foto On the Waterfrontavailable on my flickr A nice day in the harbour of bustling Ucluelet, on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Remarkly, when I told Canadians I visited Ucluelet (which took a week to learn the correct pronounciation), they invariable smiled and said, “Ah, Tofino” (which, while nearby, is a completely different town) The tools are getting interestingly cross-bred. It’s been a few months since I looked at the photo blog site flickr and having gone back, I am very pleased with all the new tools they have! For one, I can compose a blog post with any image in “my flickr” and have it sent to my MovableType site (or Blogger or … a bunch of others). There are also some slick desktop upload tools. I am also trying the side bar feed from flickr replacing the one I had before from buzznet.
Stephen Blogs then Spammers Mob
I hold Stephen Downes as the uber edu-blogger- and givne his following, when he mentions one of our sites like he did today, the comments come flying in, the Trackback meter spikes… and as an un-intended sign of the ripples in the net, the spammers swarm in like a bunch of vultures in meth. I do not blame Stephen or hold him responsible for sending spam my way (though trackbacks from OLDaily would be swell), and more marvel at the organic entity that the web truly is by demonstration just today. Only hours after he tossed some high praise on our use of “small pieces” for our Ocotillo projects, there were already throttled attempts thwarted by MovableType 2.661. However, a few porn web sites managed to squeeze in through some cracks in the MTBlacklist plugin (off subject but related- a big blog congratulations to Jay Allen for winning the Six [...]
More RSS Joins for the Ocotillo Action Groups
Recently, I outlined our “small pieces (not so loosely) joined” approach for setting up a system of blogs + wikis + discussion boards for the work next year by our faculty-led action groups. These groups will be leading activities next year related to Learning Objects, ePortfolios, Hybrid Course structures, and Emerging Learning Technologies. While waiting (patiently) this summer for our folks to get up to speed with this pile of new tools, I looked at our “map” and saw some places to tie in a bit more RSS…
When Blogs Soar (Like a Pb Balloon?)
I fervently believe in the power of potential of weblogs, for students, teachers, and people in general, as a powerful, expressive platform, and have been beating the drum for the last year and a half. At the same time, I also wonder, with a Keith Moon accent, whether they will fly with the speed and grace of a lead balloon. Some people who have contacted me have assumed that all of Maricopa is blogging at the cogdogblog pace. Hardly so- going into the 2004-2005 academic year, blogs are on the rather low rise of emerging technologies, not even understood as a term among the broad spectrum of teachers and staff in our system. We do have some excellent early examples (here too) of our pioneers who have stepping into a more or less experimental use. However, this seems to be at the 1-2% innovator level. It just takes time or [...]
