cogdogblog: BlogShop 2.0 Comments and Trackbacks

CDB Entry: BlogShop 2.0

Wed, 05 Nov 2003 17:48:51 -0700

Maybe a bit ambitous to call this a complete revision, but today I ran the second iteration of our weblogging workshop, or BlogShop 2.0 for a group of 20 faculty and staff at Phoenix College. Pretty much the sections for...

comment by: Scott Leslie

Thu, 06 Nov 2003 08:55:51 -0700

Hey Alan, I'm really interested to hear more about how it went with the 'playpen' blogs - in the etugblog experiment the one thing we really didn't accomplish was give people a chance to actually produce a blog themselves (other than showing them how to do it and expecting them to run with it themselves...)

How hard was it? Did you use MT and just create guest accounts/separate blogs for them all? That was really our issue - not having administrative resources/not wanting to force people to get accounts to participate. Did you find that the penny dropped more for those who tried the playpen blogs?

Also, the etugblog site is going to come down in the next day or so - it's a typepad account and unless I want to keep the payments going I need to take it down. I've created a static copy using an offline browsing tool and may re-post the entire site as a static archive, but that is kind of C2T2's call. If you wanted you could point at http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000393.html for the 'matrix' stuff and I will put up the word doc there to.

Great job. This looks like it was lots of fun. Cheers, Scott.

comment by: Alan Levine

Thu, 06 Nov 2003 10:06:05 -0700

The "play" blogs were used, but mostly it was just junk that people threw up there. The purpose was to expose them to the editing environment, less than to ahve them actually produce some meaningful content (if I was doing a multi-meeting session, I might create some assignments or tasks for them).

In Blogshop 1.0 I created accounts for 27 individuals (it took about 90 minutes of time to do all this), and about half got used in that session, and none got used later.

So what I decided to do this time is make fewer "test" blogs, and created 12 generic named accounts (some people had to share) that I can just re-use for the next go-around.

I do sense some penny dropping for those who tried- a good number were already convinced of the value and were looking for the go-ahead from their college to support this.

Thaks for the note on the disappearing ETUG blog- that is too bad as it is a great resource. I would be curious to see what it takes to make a static archive (can it be exported from TypePad and imported into MT??)

comment by: Scott Leslie

Thu, 06 Nov 2003 10:23:19 -0700

Thanks for that - I think the idea of just a fixed number of shareable test accounts makes a lot of sense and is a way more manageable way to give people a taste of the editing side. That was all I had really wanted to do as well, not really expecting folks to start writing a new blog then and there. Was this blogshop wholely online, or was their a f2f component as well?

As to the disappearing etugblog website, well damn the torpedos, you can now see an archived version at http://www.edtechpost.ca/blogtalk_archive/default.htm

I created it using Maximumsoft's Webcopier (http://www.maximumsoft.com/). I've tried a bunch of these type of products before, and I've found this one to work the best in dealing with dynamic sites/urls etc. It takes a few minutes to grok its interface, but basically it was under 10 minutes work from downloading the software to creating the archive, which is pretty darn good. It handles all the url re-writing itself which is sweet.

I'll post a note about this on my own site in case there are other's who are linking directly to material here, but this is likely the spot (until I get told off ;-) to find the archive for now. Cheers, Scott.

comment by: Alan Levine

Thu, 06 Nov 2003 10:35:13 -0700

This was all F2F for 2 hours. The web content is something I have done for just about every workshop since 1994-- to provide the materials iin self-paced format for them to return to, for others to sue that were not there, or just for those in the audience that can do better at their own pace rather than mine.

In fact, my first version of this concept still lives:
http://realgar.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/aaim/

The archive is perfect! I'll have to check out the webcopier.

Trackback from "blogs"

Thu, 06 Nov 2003 13:03:31 -0700

Excerpt: Archive of ETUG BLogtalk Typepad site .
��Weblog: Bruce Landon's Weblog for Students
��Tracked: November 06, 2003 01:03 PM

Trackback from "Archive of ETUG BLogtalk Typepad site"

Thu, 06 Nov 2003 10:39:25 -0700

Excerpt: http://www.edtechpost.ca/blogtalk_archive/ Prompted by Alan's generous references in his latest Blogshop to last month's B.C. Educational Technology User's Group online 'blogtalk' and his links to materials there that will soon disappear when I disable...
��Weblog: EdTechPost
��Tracked: November 06, 2003 10:39 AM