Tag Archives: blogging

Blogs, Instructional Technology

Privacy in Blogdom

Privacy is a big topic on campus these days. I think the biggest issue is that we don’t know what we don’t know… and maybe we didn’t know to ask.

Currently having a brainsplotion around the “reality” of privacy on this very blog system. I realize that I don’t know everything I need to know, to fully understand how our information is protected (or isn’t).

I thought we were covering our bases with the privacy settings plugin applied to the blog site.  The users could choose from a number of options, of which these three are most widely used: making the blog visible to everyone (including search engines); block search engines, but allow normal visitors; and registered subscribers. There are pros and cons to all of the settings, but it felt like we had offered the public everything they may need to protect themselves.

Is this, in fact, true?

Continue reading Privacy in Blogdom →

Instructional Technology

Sharing Experiences with Educational Technology

It’s hard to sum up an experience in under 200 words.

This is all I can think about right now, as my mind tries to wrap around the idea of writing an abstract for a conference. I need to encompass the experiences we’ve had so far with our WordPress system – why did we bring it in? who was involved? what was it supposed to do? how has it evolved? where are we moving with it?

The point-form topic is almost more than 200 words!

It’s funny to think back on the beginnings of a system, to see what the challenges were in comparison to now. It’s also nice to be able to say that along with whatever road blocks we’ve come across, we’ve been able to get over them and have some really rewarding experiences.

After such a rich experience, it’s hard to narrow down the topics to a few talking points. It’s hard to know which areas to drop from the topic – they all seem so important now!

Just a quick brainstorming of possible topics, trying to ignore the technology itself,  for my own reference:

  • Why did we bring in x? What needs were we trying to fulfill?
  • Why did we choose this particular product, as opposed to one of its top competitors?
  • What were the initial challenges faced, and how were they resolved?
  • How has the service/system evolved since implementation?
  • What are some of the greatest rewards?
  • How do we see the system/service evolving over the next year?
Blogs, Instructional Technology

Welcome, Thelonius!

We just upgraded our WordPress MU installation to the latest version, 3.0 “Thelonious”.

I was a little bit worried when this version first came out, after seeing posts about things breaking for sites that use certain plugins. Almost luckily for me, I was too busy with the Blackboard upgrade to even think about thinking about testing WordPress 3. Now that I’ve finally found some time to devote to my other main project, I’m extremely relieved to see that these issues have been resolved by the tireless WordPress community.

Now we’re ready to roll! Check out the video below for a taste of what’s new with Thelonious!