cogdogblog

Mena Wants to Know How We Use MT

Mena at SixApart is fishing for trackbacks to share how MovableType is being used. Here's another one for the education realm.

My initial foray with this CogDogBlog has been to document our instructional technology projects that support the 10 colleges of the Maricopa Community College systems, as well as commentary on technology. This server supports 10 blogs with about 14 authors, many whom are colleagues at our colleges tghat I am trying to get exposed to the educational potential for blogs.

Three are from our college centers for teaching and learning, including Mesa Community College's CTL, Chandler-Gilbert Community College's TLC, and South Mountain Community College's TLC. Another is an art faculty member who is describing how he has been using Photoblogs with his students.

In June 2003, I created an online workshop, or "BlogShop for teachers at one of our colleges to introduce MovableType as a potential electronic portfolio tool, and to provide a step by step tutorial on using MT. I have provided this workshops 2 other times, and it has been taken to Canada as well.

We have incorporated the MovableType Trackback standalone server and the autodiscovery code into our repository of instructional innovations, the Maricopa Learning eXchange (MLX)- and recently have re-engineered this as what we have termed "sharebacks".

One of our innovative faculty members at Mesa Community College experimented with having some 40 students use MovableType to blog their reflections of learning in an Anthropology Course and to work in "co-horts".

Most recently, we are creating 4 new MT blogs for our 4 Ocotillo Action Groups (8 authors), faculty led teams that will explore and promote 4 key instructional technology initiatives. The server will not be publically viewable until June 1, but will be located at http://graphite.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/ocotillo/-- each blog will be linked to its own phpBB bulletin board and its own wiki space. We are using MT plugins such as "otherblog" to combine the post summaries from 4 blogs into one central vbog.