Well, they’re nothing as ambitious as what that rascal Chuck is up to, but I am experimenting this semester with using blogs as my course websites. Mind you, I’m not calling them blogs in my class. Each class has a main site, where I just post announcements or followups to class discussions, and students can comment or ask questions using the comments feature of MT, but then each class also (now) has a blog for students to discuss the readings, if they are so inclined. I expect a lot of in-class participation, but for those who are less than comfortable being on the spot in meat-space, they will now have an online space in which to hold forth, either under their real name or a pseudonym. I warn you, though, there’s nothing interesting there, yet:
Many thanks to Jeff for providing the server space and the technical assistance in getting MT running properly in the first place.
The course blogs look nice. I’m still struggling with getting cross-blog participation for my students, and in the spring I may switch to MT in order to make that easier (if I can find enough server space). For my own blog, I’ve found the immediate update feature valuable as a way of quickly passing information along to my students. Both classes look very promising.
I didn’t know I was a “rascal.” ;-)
Students are required to pay for books; you could always require them to pay for a Typepad account for the semester (http://www.typepad.com/ – like blogspot only it’s MT-based). $4.95 a month is the cheapest plan. Next two are $8.95 and $14.94 for more features.
As Elmer Fudd might say, if you were to direct a lot of students to his weblog: “You’re a wascal.”
I’m certainly willing to entertain ideas about setting up a teaching space (for course pages) on wordherders, but we’d have to figure out how we could set things up so that you can create whatever blogs, etc., that you would need without having to rely on me too much.
George’s idea about Typepad isn’t a bad one for *student* pages. The really nice thing about that option is that it allows students to create something and then decide whether or not to continue supporting it (even beyond their academic career).
I know that Tech students have server space reserved for them, so I may have them use MT and then FTP it, but for *my* course blog this might be a useful option. I’m still not sure how I’ll use blogs in the Spring because the Composition 2 course is much different than Comp 1. TypePad is certainly a good idea, too. I’m still having some good conversations about audience/writing issues with my students via blogging, so its certainly something I want to keep in mind.
I would think that many Tech students would have the wherewithal to do the MT installation themselves in their own webspace. And I wonder if the IT department might … nah, that’s a pipe dream.
It’s certainly worth keeping in mind, but the IT department has enough problems on its hands….