1. Step One: Hardware.Make sure that everyone who has a laptop can connect to the internet. Have them access any webpage, google is a good bet. If they have a flash drive make sure that it works in the classroom, if they have one of those evil u3 drives and they have not reformatted, they can hold down shift as they put it in the computer will prevent the autorun from running.
2. Step Two: Software. The first thing that needs to get done is getting all of the students a copy of Flock. There are two ways this happens in the class, one for students who bring their laptops and another for students who have flashdrives:
   1. Laptops: This is the simple one. Visit Flock and download the browser onto your desktop. Now install. Once installed students can open up the browser.
   2. Flashdrive: If students do not have a laptop and they come to class with a flashdrive, they will need to install Flock on the flashdrive so that they can use Flock from any computer to which they can plug their flashdrive into. First students should go to Outraged-Artists and download Pocket Flock-this is a version of Flock that is built for installing on a flashdrive. When the file is downloaded it comes as a .zip file, which means that students will need to extract the file onto the flash drive. Most computers at schools have a program called winzip which will let you do this, some you will need the Tech Services people to enable this feature, so it is worth checking out before you get there. At any rate you click on what is downloaded from Outraged-Artists, and click on the button in winzip to extract it to the flashdrive. Now have students click on the Flashdrive to open it, click on the folder labeled “Pocket Flock” and click on the icon of the world (in grey) this will launch Pocket Flock. I noticed for whatever reason that the first time you install Pocket Flock it takes a while to load (like a minute) but after that it is fine, so be patient.
3. Step Three: Tab Browsing: It is my experince that many students (over half at Albany where I teach), particularly those raised on Internet Explorer have no idea about tab browsing. I plan to write a longer post here about explaining the importance of this to students, but for now here is a quick intro. If you are unfamiliar with tab browsing visit the explanation at Mozilla. This is specifically about Firefox, but covers the concept for all browsers except Internet Explorer which does not have tabbed browsing (although IE7 apparently will). Tabbed browsing is a must for doing academic work on the web, and it is important for using Flock. Most important is that students learn that they can click on a link and have it open in a new tab (this way the old page stays open, but the page they just clicked on is also now open). To open in a new tab, usually you hold down control while you click, (command on the Mac) or right click and select open in a new tab. (In the preferences menu you can also make it so that new tabs open behind, that way you never have to leave the page you are reading.)
4. Step Four: Configure Flock to Blog.Students should have blogs set up, but rather than acces them through the dashboard of wordpress, if students are using Flock, it is much easier. The first thing to do is to set up Flock to recognize a specific blog.
   1. On a Mac: Select Flock from the Menu Bar and select Accounts and Services. A new window should open up. Select the blogging icon and click the button for “Add Blog.” You will be promoted to enter the web address of a blog. The next screen will ask for username and password. You are now set to use Flock to Blog.
   2. On a Windows Machine: Select Accounts and Services from the Tools menu. A new window should open up. Select the blogging icon and click the button for “Add Blog.” You will be promoted to enter the web address of a blog. The next screen will ask for username and password. You are now set to use Flock to Blog.

   Now Flock should be able to “talk” to the WordPress account students have set up. With WordPress this is pretty seemless, with other blog providers there can sometimes be a bit of a hick-up.
   
   Important:If students are using a flashdrive they will have to enter their password each time, as the passwords are erased each time you close Flock. This prevents someody from finding a left behind flash drive and acting nefariously.

5. Step Five:Blogging. There are two ways to post to a blog using Flock. The first is just like using a word processor. From the file menu select new blog post. A window will open that looks like a small word processor page. Type whatever you want to blog in here, hit publish. At this point Jenn is going to have them all try this, adding a short post to their blogs. The second way is unique to Flock. Highlight a bit of text with the mouse, and right click (or control click on a Mac) and select “blog this” from the menu that pops up. This will automatically open a blog post and insert the selected text. I am not going to explain this too much because you can read the much better explanation at Flock, or better yet watch the video on the Flock site. This also shows how to add photos to blog posts etc. At this point Jenn will have them add a blog post this way.
   Important: Currently there is a small glitch in Flock that when you start a blog post with text from the web it formats in such a way as to make it impossible to add text before the quoted text. To fix this all you have to do is click the source tab in the blog post which will take you to the html, move the cursor before the first tag that reads {blockquote} and hit return a couple of times. This wll create space so you can write before the blockquote.
6. Step Six: Set Up RSS: By now every student should have at least two new posts in their blog. So now the trick is to get all the students set up with the RSS features of Flock. You can see the Flock demonstration here. And if you are unfamiliar with RSS read my previous run down of the “Joys of RSS”. Students should click on the newspaper icon at the top of the flock window, located just to the left of the web address. This will open up a new tab with all of the news feeds. First students need to delete the default news feeds they do not want. I would recommend deleting them all so that students don’t feel overwhelmed by the information, and they can always add in more later. To delete a feed right click (on a Mac control click) and select delete. Once they have a clear feed list, it is time to set up the feeds for all of the students blogs. Jenn has previously added all of the student blogs to her own reader and exported the feeds to a .opml file. (I will do a step by step break down of this later-for now just know that Jenn has a file with all of the students blogs listed in it specially formatted for all of their feeds.) Jenn emails all of the students the copy of the opml file. Now students download this .opml file (works just like downloading a .doc or .rtf) to the computer they are on, or their flashdrive. Go back to Flock, click on the , located all the way to the left and just below the My News Feeds, and select “Import News Feeds”. Select Browse and locate the recently downloaded .opml file and click import. The RSS feeds should all now load, along with each students two new posts.
7. Step Seven:Show them How to Use RSS Refer again to the previous run down of the “Joys of RSS”. The key here is to show students how they can view all of the new posts by their classmates as excerpts, and than right click (or command click on Mac) and open the selected one in a new tab to read the whole thing, how they can navigate thru all of the feeds, and how they can mark them as read.

RSS: The Key to Reading the Internet . . .at least for now.

If you haven’t tried RSS don’t be worried you are not alone. I have read that upwards of 95% of those who use the web have no idea what RSS is, or the related concept “feeds.” I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to explain RSS to people who are not familiar with it, and this is the best explanation I have come up with (if you have a better one let me know):

Imagine that you could get a newspaper delivered to your house that was made of all of the pieces you wanted. For example, you could say, “I want the sports section from the Chicago Tribune, the educational section from the NYTimes, the world news from BBC, the opinion pieces from my local newspaper. That’s it nothing else, you wouldn’t have to read through all of the stuff you didn’t want in other sections of those papers. This newspaper would come with just the sections from whatever media you wanted. Now imagine that you could get that newspaper anytime you wanted, let’s say at 9:00am you want your own individual newspaper, and at 3:00pm you decide again you would like to see what has changed, so you order a copy of just the new stuff, only the things that have become available between 9:00am and 3:00pm. Okay now imagine that in this individual specially designed newspaper you are not limited to newspapers per se, but any available digitally written material. So not only can I have all of those above news ”parts“ but I can also say that in my individual newspaper I also want entries from my friends blog, a cooking site that features new recipes, and updates on any new developments in my particular field (let’s say the Chronicle of Higher Ed). This is what RSS allows you to do. (Not to mention so many other swanky tricks.)

Navigating the web can seem like a sea on endless information, it is impossible to keep up on all of the changes that take place. It is simply not efficient (or productive) to have a list of web sites and click thru them to see what has changed. You might miss something important, you might forget to check a site (when was the last time you checked your friends site that he updates every once in a while?). With RSS you get this ”newspaper“ delivered to you with all of the changes to these web-pages since last you looked. Depending on how you count I read about 100 web sites a day using this technique. Now this doesn’t mean that I read all of the articles on all of these web sites all of the time. What it does mean is I have a way to look through all of these web sites quickly to see if anything has changed that I want to read. Seriously while many people without RSS will spend half an hour checking their usual 5-10 websites and reading new/interesting information, I check all of these 100 and read only the articles that are important to me. And what is more, I don’t have to worry about remembering which web sites to check, it is all delivered to me.

A brief Technical-not so Technical-explanation of how this works.

Most web sites (especially those that change often like news sites), and nearly all blogs (in fact if you have a blog chances are that it has these feeds even if you don’t know about it), have ”feeds“ associated with them, the process of putting these feeds together is called syndication . . .but whatever. . .The point is that these websites ”put-out“ these feeds every time the site changes, and all you have to do is have a program that collects them and presents them to you. The program grabs the feeds you want, ignores the ones you don’t, and presents it all to you in a way you can easily navigate.

How do you get ”fed.“

First you need a program that is designed to read these feeds. There are lots out there and I am not going to cover them all, I will just mention a few here (some are free some are not): RSS Owl (PC and Mac), Feed Demon (PC), Vienna (Mac), NewsFire (Mac), Blogbridge (PC and Mac), NetNewsWire (Mac) . . .and so many others (those who use others feel free to add into the comment section). You can use a web based reader, that is yahoo and bloglines mimic this feature, but you really need a program built to handle RSS. This is what mine looks like, notice the three panels.

The one on the left is all of the sites I subscribe to, the one on the top is all of the updates from the website that is currently selected (in this case inessential.com), and the one at the bottom is the text of the update currently selected in the top panel (”Great Jobs“). Also notice the number at the top (3544) this is how many updates I have yet to look at. Any time you want to see if new things have been put on sites you just click ”refresh“ and the program updates. It also keeps track of which ones I have read, or I can mark ones for later reading. (Okay, I lied this is not my NetNewsWire it is the one from News Gator, I don’t subscribe to Money Magazine-but this is a good example, even if there are 3544 yet to be read items, which is way more than I ever get.)

Once you have a reader, you just need to subscribe. If you have ever noticed the following three symbols on a website and had no idea what they do, this is what they are for: or sometimes you see just the words, ”RSS“,”Atom“ or ”Subscribe.“ In fact if you go to the homepage of this site and look to the column on the right under the listing for ”RSS“ you will see three links that allow you to subscribe in different ways to academHacK. Different programs handle subscribing differently, but most make it easy.

Seriously, if you have not tried this out do it, download one of these readers. (Actually download one of the paid readers as they give you a free trial and they usually come with tutorials for beginners.) I do not overstate the point when I say RSS is the most significant web development in information processing/communication in the last few years (I know RSS has been around longer, but it has only lately become widely used). Forget Web 2.0, wikis etc., this is the one that is of the most use to the average person who just wants to read about things.

Why Flock?

So by now many of you have figured out that for Jenn’s class the students are going to need an RSS reader. (In the terms of the above metaphor there is going to be a newspaper for each class designed with the students blogs that everyone in the class will get). This way they can get the feeds from each others web sites. As I talked about earlier this solves a lot of problems that are often talked about in regards to classroom blogging. Specifically students will know that there written information is going out to at least the other 20 students in the class, that is that they are not just writing on a blog that is only read by the professor. (I know nothing guarantees that the other students will read the feeds, but at least they are getting them.) RSS also makes it easy to read the 20 students in the class, you can quickly scan to see which writings interest you, and make it markedly easier for Jenn to see what the students write, she won’t have to visit all of their sites to see when and if they have been updated. In a later post I will cover the particular ”how-tos“ that got used to set up all the students (making sure everyone gets subscribed etc.), for now I just want to give an overview of the process.

One of the problems with RSS is getting subscribed to web sites that have feeds. Many make it easy, just clicking on a link, but some not so easy. Flock makes it super simple regardless. Basically just clicking in the menu bar. If you see the in the url of the web site it has a feed to which you can subscribe. Look at how Flock sees academhack.

This way students can add feeds to their RSS collection (again specify what goes in their newspaper), but should keep all of the students in the class in their feed collection.

It could have been a problem to teach students how to use an RSS reader, not to mention to find one that would work on all of the various computers students will have, Mac or PC, their own or library. But Flock solves all of this, it is a web browser, like Firefox or Internet Explorer, that allows you to open a special window that is all of your RSS feeds. Look at the image below.

This is how flock displays RSS (notice it is much different than my above example). In my experience Flock is not as high-powered as an RSS reader designed specifically for that purpose, but is more than adequate enough for handling classroom blogging (3544 feeds might be a bit much, 20-100, no worries). Plus it is easy to read. Under mysubscriptions you can see the 12 feeds I have loaded in here, these are all from Jenn’s class. To get this view you click on the newspaper icon just about invite a friend. To the right you can see six of the new posts from those students, if you scrolled down you could see all of the rest. (Many are labeled Hello World, which is the default post for WordPress.) Notice how you can select to read excerpts from the feed, headlines, or the whole post. Plus it indicates which ones you haven’t read. Now if a student sees a post he or she want to read, all she has to do is click on the link while holding down the control key (command key on Mac) and that particular web site will open in a new tab for reading. In this case if you look below where it says ”invite a friend“ you can see the first tab I have open is the subscriptions and just to the right is a tab labeled ”hello world-jerry lee”. If you are not familiar with tab browsing don’t worry I will also cover this later. But for now this gives you an idea of how students will be reading each other blogs, and joining the conversation on the web, hopefully in a way that teaches them how to manage all of the digital information, and to become “better” readers and writers.

You can see video demonstrations of this at Flock

If you want to learn more about the technical side of this check out RSS at Wikipedia.

The first think that Jenn did for classroom blogging was to have them set-up their blogs. While course management software (e.g.. Blackboard) makes this easy, they do not allow students to customize the blog, or have it viewable from the outside. The set-up process here is a little more tricky but the end product is a lot better: invested students. (Actually getting students blogs set up went surprisingly easy-especially given the fact that none of them had used WordPress before.) Mostly I think this worked for two reasons: 1. WordPress is user friendly. 2. Jenn set up a step by step guide at her classroom blog that was easy for students to follow. As of yesterday there were only a few students that had trouble setting up their accounts. Reposted here below are Jenn’s steps from Expos-i-story, I have added some commentary to explain why certain steps are important, and dropped in some screenshots. (Jenn’s words are in italics.)

blog assignment #1: create your blog

due: Sunday, September 3rd by 4pm

Part of the strategy Jenn and I discussed was whether or not to have them set up the blogs in class, or to have them set it up over the weekend. In class has several advantages, most significantly is that you can ensure everyone gets it done, and that they all have working blogs. However having them set it up over the weekend has a few advantages that led Jenn to choose this option. First, students have time to select a theme and name for their blog, if part of the idea here is to have students invest in their authoring spaces, the more they feel they can customize their space the better. And if they take time many of them will come up with creative names. Second, and perhaps functionally more important is that creating the blogs over the weekend allows Jenn to collect all of the web addresses ahead of class time. (Why this is important will become apparent when we get to the RSS (how students are going to read the blogs.)

1. Go to wordpress.com

2. Click on “Get a WordPress Blog now”

In the end Jenn picked WordPress over the other blog systems for its ease of use, integration with Flock, stable platform, customizable themes (although not as customizable as Blogger.) This turned out to be a “lucky” choice, as when Blogger updated Flock now has trouble with integration. (Given Flock’s connection to WordPress this shouldn’t be a problem.) The other choice was edublogs, but Jenn liked some of the features on WordPress a bit better (although these are minor differences as edublogs is running wordpress, the choice is more a matter of preference than pedagogy or technology).

3. Choose a username. Please note that this username will become part of the URL for your blog. For example, the username for this blog is expository, and the URL is www.expository.wordpress.com. In other words choose something that isn’t overly complex, is easy to remember, and is a little bit unique and/or “catchy.”
4. Enter email address; check yes to “the terms of service;” and choose “gimme a blog!”

Below is the screenshot of what the registration page should look like. A few things to note here. First students should know ahead of time (as Jenn spells out here) that the username will become part of the address, this way they take time to select one (often these are the same as titles, but not always. Again this is giving students the ability to create an identity in their writing environment, rather than just accepting what others dictate to them. Given some of the names that students used, both for their username and blog name, they seemed to have taken time in this process.

5. On the next screen, create a title for your blog and click Signup.

Here again is a screenshot of what the students should see. (Note: The title is different from the username as it is what appears at the top of the page, in the header, when the blog loads. For example Jenn’s own blog, not the one for class, can be found at http://vtgrrlscake.blogspot.com/ but the name if you look at the page is “The Most Cake” not “vtgrrlscake.”)

6. Go to your email and activate your blog. When you activate your blog, you will be given your password. Please write this down and don’t lose it. You can change your password, but for now be sure you are able to log-in.

Students will have to go to the email account, and get the generated password, usually a collection of random numbers and letters. They will be able to change it later, and probably should (see the end) but students should know that they will have to keep track of this temporary password.

7. Login; click on your blog name/link on the right-hand side of your screen. This will take you to what is called your “Dashboard”–this is the place from which you control your blog–writing posts, making edits, changing the look of your blog, etc.

Conversely if they click on the link to go to their blog, all they need to do is login and click “My Dashboard” or “SIte Admin” all of these will get you to the “dashboard.” This is what the dashboard for a blog looks like. Students can actually write directly in here, but it is a bit cumbersome, so using Flock is better. Also the dashboard doesn’t work properly in Safari, Camino, or OmniWeb, so students need Firefox if they are going to be writing pages from the dashboard.

8. Click on “Presentation” and then choose a theme. This is what your blog will look like.

Students can select from a variety of themes that will let them customize their look. We found a couple of themes that didn’t work with RSS so Jenn had to get students to pick a different one.(Jenn had problems with the one titled “Regulus.“

9. You now have a blog, and I need the URL or blog address. Again, this should look like www.username.wordpress.com. Your blog address appears at the top of browser screen in the Address or URL line. Please copy this address and email it to me (by Sunday at 4pm). Remember to follow the guidelines for emails as stated in the syllabus.

This step is key for the prof. as it lets you have all of the addresses for creating the bloglists (later of tremendous importance for the RSS aspect of this project). It will also let you sort the blogs if you have multiple classes, as Jenn does, but more on this later when we get to Jenn’s set up. A couple of students had trouble with this step, they cut and pasted the address from inside the dashboard, which will have a different url than the “home” of their blog. But if this happens it is an easy fix for the prof. as you really only need the first part of the url. For example if someone emailed “http://expository.wordpress.com/wp-admin/themes/htoeim” to you, just cut off everything after the “.com” and you should get to the homepage of their blog.

For a brief tour of/tutorial on your new wordpress blog, click here

This is useful in case any of the students get lost, it is a three minute video viewable thru a web browser.

10.  To change your password go to Users and Update password.

If students loose their password they can get it emailed to them, but they should pick something that they will remember. And it also might be a good idea to tell them not to email it to you, as several students did this in Jenn’s class. Students should feel as if they have control over the space, not as if they are subject to some sort of Panopticon. This is something I never would have thought of, but apparently students trained to feel as if their Professors have absolute control just thought they should.

Here is the first post in the semester long series about using blogs in the classroom, if you haven’t already please read the introduction as it will give you a better sense of what this is all about.

I thought I would start by sketching out the technical tools, programs, web services etc. that Jenn has decided to use, as well as provide some background on those decisions. If this is not all clear here, please have no fear, I intend to develop this all in much more detail later. For now, though this should give a general layout to how this is going to get done. Keep in mind the general philosophical/pedagogical principles here throughout: 1. This is going to be done with open source tools. That is no Blackboard, WebCT, or other paid software applications. This makes the students blogging “open” rather than closed (to reflect Jenn’s—and mine—educational view). Also it makes it hopefully free for the students. 2. We need to make all of this cross platform, students could be expected to have both Macs and PC’s—Jenn and I both use Macs, but the common computers at Saint Rose are PCs. 3. Jenn wants students to really blog, that is not post written assignments to a blog, but rather engage throughout the semester in a sustained writing project that reflects writing in this new medium, not just carries over old writing practices onto the web. Again this is just an overview of the tools, I will go into much greater detail on each later.

The Tools

• First Up—a Blogging Platform: The first thing that the class will need is a place to host the blogs. Again, Course Management Software like WebCT or Blackboard is moving towards incorporating this in their packages, but these really aren’t blogs, they are just online student writing that looks like a blog. There are many free places that host blogs, which students could utilize and maintain if they want after class is over. And again if the idea is to get students to experience how writing changes across context, the writing needs to take place in that context. Jenn could use Live Journal, WordPress, or Blogger just to name a few. All of these offer free hosting. In the end Jenn decided to go with WordPress. There were three key reasons for this choice: 1. The web interface for setting up and customizing the blog is particularly easy. 2. It plays well with other programs (particularly Flock—more below on why this is crucial.) 3. And this is the key, the one that tipped the balance so to speak: RSS. WordPress makes RSS syndication easy, it is actually already set-up when you create a blog. If you are not familiar with RSS this is what is going to allow Jenn to easily read all of the blogs, and solve the problem of students feeling as if what they write is not being read.
• Second: Flock. This is really the key piece to the blogging puzzle. Part of the way that Jenn is going to be able to monitor 60 something student blogs is by using RSS (if you are not familiar with RSS don’t worry it will get outlined here in a later post). But it was also important to figure out a way to encourage students to read each other’s blogs and have students feel that they are being read (these are two of the pedagogical concerns often cited by those who have already used blogs in the classroom). RSS helps to solve both of the problems, since everyone in the class will be getting a look at everyone’s posting’s for the week, without having to rely on them clicking thru 20 links. (Again more on this later, but the way information is written and read has drastically changed in the last few years, and while most students know how to use a web browser few know about RSS-so this also serves the important pedagogical function of information literacy.) One of the other barriers to blogging in the classroom is the concern that navigating the technology will take away from time spent writing, that is students will dedicate an hour for the homework, and spend 30 minutes figuring out how to do the writing instead of actually doing the posting. Flock helps solve this problem, in addition to having an RSS reader built in, it has blogging software. Students only need to select “New Blog Post” from the menu and a window opens that operates like a word processing window. Type in the window, hit return and send the posting to your blog. Again really simple for students who are not as tech savy. Finally Flock makes it really easy to incorporate info from other websites into your posting, basically highlight and click. As one of the things that Jenn is going to be doing is having students read and respond to news articles, this feature makes it easy for the students. Jenn’s class could use a separate RSS reader, and let students blog thru web interface, but Flock makes this all way easy. And here is the kicker, it runs on Linux, Mac, and Windows. It is probably worth the time if you are interested in blogging in the classroom to go over to Flock and take a look around, especially look at their blog, their annoucements and most importantly look at the Tour as it has an interactive video that demonstrates all of this much better than I can in words.
• Third: Flash Drive or Laptop: Students enrolled in Jenn’s class are going to be required to bring one of the following to the third class (this is the one where she will set them up in the computer lab): either a 256mb flash drive, or a laptop. Requiring a laptop for class would re a ridiculuos expectation, in fact one is apt to encounter students who rely on the public computers. So by doing things the following way Jenn can make sure every one has access to the tools. Those with laptops will bring them to class, and install Flock and go thru the set-up in class on their own computers. If they have a desktop at home they will install all the software onto a flashdrive, take it home and all they need to do is plug the flashdrive into their desktop and they are set. Those without their own computer can carry their flash drive around plug it into any PC and do the writing for class. Flash drives have gotten relatively inexpensive ($25 for one this size, so it is roughly the cost of a textbook) and will be useful throughout their college careers for transporting papers etc. so the cost is not too much of a concern. Also any campus bookstore will carry these.
• Fourth: NetNewsWire (Jenn only). While students will read the blog posts thru the RSS in Flock, NetNewsWire is a bit more robust and can handle the workload of monitoring 60 students a bit easier, also there are ways to sort the feeds (assignments) easier in NetNewsWire that will make her job drastically easier (like always looking at them in the same order, not just whoever posts first). There is a free version of this program NetNewsWire Lite, as well as several other RSS readers, this is really a matter of preference and choice. The set-up for this (which I will again get into in later posts) will work pretty much the same across a range of readers, so if you have a different preference, or work off a PC it should be pretty easy to do in your RSS reader of choice.

I am working with Jenn on a project about using blogs in the classroom. (Really this doesn’t capture the idea so just read the long explanation below.)

The Long Explanation:

There has been a lot of talk recently online regarding the patent filing by Blackboard, a patent which could create serious hurdles for those in academia who want to use technology to open education rather than close it off, or profit from it. (If you can’t tell I really don’t like closed/corporate education.) You can read about the contrevorsy over at e-literate, Michael Feldstein has done an excellent job of posting about the issue as well as collecting links to other places to look. Also, if you are interested in using technology in the classroom, particularly blogs I highly recommend readings James Farmer’s blog Incorporated Subversion specifically see his presentation both the audio and slides of which can be downloaded. James lays out the problems with the way technology has been used, and points towards better directions.

And so it turns out that Blackboard has incorporated in its product a module that allows teachers to have students blog for class. This seems like a good idea, as many professors I know would be interested in using blogs in the classroom especially if they were easy to use, presented a low “entry barrier.” But here’s the catch, Blackboard doesn’t let you use blogs. They offer blog “inspired” software, the blog would not be public, students wouldn’t have the flexibility to modify the blogs in the same way, and all of the content will be stored in a propeitary form, which means the students can’t take it with them. This hardly sounds like a blog to me (and they want a patent for this???). Which is just really ridiculous since there are many sites which allow people to set up blogs for free.

Enter Jenn. Jenn is both a colleague and friend of mine who I respect as someone who is commited to teaching, and as the saying goes she has forgotten far more about the pedagogy of rhetoric than I will ever learn. (In other words she knows her stuff.) Jenn wanted to use blogs in her classroom this semester, but was cautious about the technical hurdles that this would require.

The Plan.

Jenn has 60 students spread across 3 classes at Saint Rose college in Albany, New York. Jenn is going to have all of the students blog for class, it is a writing class, and I will leave the explanation at that. Jenn can say more about this and her goals for the class. What I am going to do is help Jen figure out how to get all the students set up, with minimal technical difficulties, and to help Jen figure out how to track all of the students postings.

There are a lot of details here which I will get into in future posts. But as an overview, I will be posting here on Academhack about the technical side. I am going to try outline step by step how this gets done. I will also hopefully create screencasts so that others can reproduce the efforts, borrow or change as they see fit. My goal is to create the tutorials on the level of web browser interface. This means if you are familiar with a web browser, can use Firefox, IE, Safari . . .than you should be able to follow the steps. Like I said, low entry barrier, open source.

Jenn is going to cover the pedagogy end, figure out how this all works into the pedagogy of teaching students to write. And all of this is going to get done in an open access way, no Blackboard. And if I can handle the technical side, hopefully help other professors who want to do the same. After all education should be as open as possible. So, in an invite I will recreate often here, if you are interested and are confused, having problems with any of the steps that get outlined here please feel free to email me. Also if you have ideas/contributions you would like to make, ways to make things easier, experinces to share please send them this way.

So stayed tuned throughout the semester for these posts. They will be filed here under the category blogs, as well as the category “Blog Project” this way people can follow this thread easily. Also you might want to start by checking out Expos-i-story this is the blog for the class, and you might also want to suscribe to or start reading Jenn’s blog as this is where she will discuss the pedagody of her experience.