UKOLN - Web Focus - UCISA WLF / UKOLN Workshop 2004 - Annotation of discussion group on Blogs page

Please use this page for notes on the discussion group on Blogs

Question posed: why use blogs instead of for example e-mail?

Report on Blogs Discussion Group

This is the report of the red-team discussion group. There were several users of blogs, mostly personal.

There were two structured implementations discussed: at University of Warwick and a JISC-supported project on Mobile Blogs. Most of the information comes from these groups.

Identify ways in which blogging might be used in teaching, learning and research

as part of the personal development portfolio
peer review of work-in-progress
providing feedback to the university on course and instruction
recreational use

Blogs vs Wikis

blogs where there is a voice
blogs where the timeline or historical record is useful
wikis for collaboration
wikis where the current status is useful

Selection and Deployment

set limits to the size of the inplementation and set expectations
there are several free/oss packages that can be tried out
- but they will lack features useful in a learning environment
- often aimed at individuals rather than a corporate hosted environment

AUP, Training, Support

All needed.
AUP before starting!
Training and support and selling the concept needed for students and staff

Likely Technologies

other software mentioned:
- pepple - free/oss, lightweight functional
- roller - Java, used at Sun

Other Issues

Retention of data?
Use by non-current staff/students - external staff, alumni
AUP: monitor vs report-and-takedown - choose the later
Export of data
Access controls: important to be clear: Warwick system provides levels e.g. private, groups: peers, staff, public

– 2004-11-23 ChrisBenson

The blue team had a similar discussion but a great deal centred on acceptable use. This was brought up in the Wiki discussion and the closing remarks also. Just to stir it up, my opinion is that trying to create a distinct AUP/Computing Reg for each and every new "thing" is complete folly. Have your generic policy as vanilla as possible and use that to catch everyone. If anyone can persuade me of a reason not to do so I'd be pleased to hear...

JeremySpeller