Instructional Technology

Blog Forward!

Investigation time.

Looking at blog tools is pretty fun. Over the years, I think I’ve tested most of the popular brands of blog — although I forget what some of them looked like. 

Right now, I’m having a good look at WordPress. I have a personal WordPress blog, set one up for the DH’s band, and now I’m looking at the moster of all WordPresses (WPMU – WordPress Multi-User) for work. Yes, we already have Roller (the blog software that I’m currently authoring this post on — but not necessarily the software you are reading it on!!!!), but it seems time to move forward.

In general, WordPress is a top-notch blog system, with sooo many theme and plugin options, and is used by pros and amateurs alike. In general, it can be easy to use, can look professional, and can be customized to some extent. There’s also a pretty large community of users and developers that are on top of problems, developing new tools, etc.

Let’s ditch the traditional ‘Pros & Cons’ list and instead post a list of things we have already found in WPMY, thing we need to have in order to go forward, and things that are nice to have… (I may use ‘WPMU’ instead of typing out ‘WordPress’ from here on out)

Got it!

  •  LDAP Authentication –  This is required so that users don’t have to have a different login & password to access the system. They can use their usual my.ryerson login. There’s a plugin to provide this, seems to work pretty well so far.
  • Great Looking Themes – There are many many many themes for WordPress. It’s up to us to track down the ones that work well with WPMU, that offer different layout and style options for our users – and possibly some customization at the user-level. I’m working on this…
  • Ability to easily add RSS from other sources – Users can use the Widgets in WPMU to add feeds from their Twitter, Flicker and other blog accounts. There are actually quite a few really useful widgets.
  • Simple Podcasting! – Users need to be able to generate a podcast without having to do too much legwork. By default, WP podcasts any appropriate media files that are added to a post. I’m working on extending this by adding a plugin that also embeds the audio/video in a blog post without the author having to do anything else (see below).

… There are lots of things that I like about WordPress, but I think I’ll leave you with those few items.

 Need to Have

  • Post Aggregation – Basically, we need to be able to aggregate posts from various blogs (different from having many users contribute to a single blog). We have tried a number of plugins, but none of them provide exactly what we are looking for.
  • User-level Theme Customization – WPMU does not give the users access to customize the themes, as the changes would affect the themes for EVERYONE. That leaves the responsibility on the theme designers to code in some customization ability. Most of them don’t offer any — and some offer customization, but the interface is confusing. Le sigh.
  • A Decent Site Homepage – We either have to code this ourselves, or buy a premium theme to get what we want. I haven’t found a really good free theme for this.

Nice to Have

  • Group Creation – Admin should be able to group users and give group-level access to resources. The aggregation should tie into this.
  • Podcasting w Embedded Player – We’re pretty close to having this. There are a few bugs with the plugin we’re testing, but it works well for the most part.

Any Ryerson folks reading this blog post — what features are you looking for in a blog? What are the  most important things that you would need to have to run a successful blog? Your suggestions don’t even have to be reasonable — this is a "blue sky" wishlist.

Instructional Technology, Personal Technology

Me, the Twit – Day 1 ends

Ahh, a mass of posts all in one day, after not posting for a year or so. Yeah, that’s how I roll.

Me, the Twit – Day 1 has now just about come to an end. I’ve done some digging, found some info on how it makes sense as a social tool, how it can be used academically, and why it isn’t as stupid as it looks. (Ha!)

My own limited experience with it started with "following" a bald guy I know, and evolved to:

  • finding comments from people all over the world who attended a music festival I went to this weekend
  • finding comments from people who mention Ryerson (but not always the U)
  • finding comments from people who mention a band I like (listening to, excited to see upcoming concert by, just bought CD of, here’s a new video clip of…)
  • finding people who are following people who are following people I know
  • finding supposed celebrity Twitterers, but still not feeling like following them

I now have 2 followers, one of which is probably some spammer (since I have NO idea who this person is). I still have to wrap my head around a bunch of it, though, because it’s evolving into something I didn’t expect. Although I suspected that may be the case. (double HA!)

Below are a few collected resources and articles that I found compelling, in my search for the twit-truth. Enjoy!

 

A Bunch of Twits…

 … and before this gets lost in the mess below, there is actually a way to create a private group Twitter, via http://grouptweet.com/

This sounds perfect for course use! Any Rye faculty out there want to try it out with one of their classes?

Twitter for Academia

While I obviously spend a great deal of time online and thinking about the potential of these new networked digital communication structures, I also worry about the way that they too easily lead to increasingly short space and time for conversation, cutting off nuance and conversation, and what is often worse how these conversations often reduce to self-centered statements.

 

How Twitter Creates a Social 6th Sense

Critics sneer at Twitter and Dodgeball as hipster narcissism, but the real appeal of Twitter is almost the inverse of narcissism. It’s practically collectivist — you’re creating a shared understanding larger than yourself.

We Travel in Tribes

My tribe is not your tribe because you’re not using Twitter how I do. You wrote an Academy Award-winning screenplay, only follow a few people, but have thousands following you. You sell shoes and follow each of the thousands of people who follow you. You are a major airline, but sound surprisingly human.

Twitter’s value has nothing to do with the technology.

 

Contribute to: Twitter for Teachers

 

Private Members Only

I also feel that I have to make mention of the privacy issue here… I know, it feels like the biggest ball & chain on the leg of creativity, but it’s important to keep it in mind. Twitter is a public service, and probably has servers housed in the U.S. Due to the Patriot Act, your information (user info, what you say, when you said it, who you communicate with – EVERYTHING) can be accessed by the U.S. gov’t. This is against Canadian policy, and certainly against the policies that we try to adhere to at Ryerson. I’m no expert in such privacy and legal matters, but it’s important that any users (faculty, students, TAs) being asked to use these systems for class work have some understanding before signing up.

Instructional Technology

Me, the Twit

There it is, I am now a twit.

 Today is Day 1 of me on Twitter. Not sure how often I’ll update it, but I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t at least give it a try.

Not all social networking is suited to everyone. I believe that very strongly – actually, I believe that about ALL technology – especially when it comes to using it academically.

Twitter wasn’t something that appealed to me initially, and then a few folks I knew signed up and I started peeking at it. I resisted signing up for an account — isn’t that always the way it works? Today, I smacked myself in the forehead and said "girl, you can’t ignore this tool and hope to be able to explain what it is and isn’t good for".

In case this blog doesn’t make it obvious, I explore various technologies for other people to use. I learn how to use tools, and then try to put myself into the shoes of others — educators, researchers, students, etc. and come up with ways different people will use the tools.

It’s really part of my job to sign  up for every social networking tool that has gained any sort of popularity and try it out for myself…

So here I am on Day 1, a newly crowned Twit. I’ll let you know how it goes 🙂

Exploring Instructional Technology