May 04, 2005
Campus-Wide Blogging Initiatives
Campus-wide Initiatives
- Weblogs at Harvard Law (Manila)
- UThink: Blogs at the University of Minnesota Libraries (Movable Type)
- Warwick Blogs - this site has an attractive up beat design, nice FAQ, tours and description (custom ?)
- Virginia Commonwealth University (Movable Type)
- weblogs.ucalgary.ca experimental (Drupal)
- UPEI - University of Prince Edward Islandv(Drupal ??)
Weblog Software as IT Service
Weblog software is available as a "utility" like mailing lists, BBSs, etc.
- Professional Writing at Purdue (Movable Type)
- Seton Hill University (Movable Type)
- Weblogging with Movable Type - Pomona College
Student Experience Weblogs
Designated students are asked to blog about life on campus. This is usually to help support student recruitment.
- Northern Michigan University - Weblogs
- University of Waterloo Blogs
- Simmons College Student Blogs - 2004
- The RWU Experience - Roger Williams University
- Wharton MBA Program: Student Diaries
Other
- De Anza faculty blog sites (Manila)
- De Anza faculty blog sites (Manila)
Posted by dmf527 at 06:02 PM
April 28, 2005
Do We Need a Weblog Policy?
Our blogging service will follow under the University of Saskatchewan Computer Use Policy of course. But we may want to consider some weblog specific policies. Harvard Law Blogs has this clause:
By posting your Content using the Services, you are granting Harvard a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, and worldwide license to use your Content in connection with the operation of the Services, including, without limitation, the license rights to copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, translate and reformat your Content, and/or to incorporate it into a collective work.
This allows Harvard to aggregate headlines, create channels and tags, create the "best of Harvard blogs" compendium, etc. ... I like it.
We should think about this policy in terms of services we would like to build that campus webloggers would find useful - the right to aggregate headlines, create keyword searches that become channels for PAWS perhaps, show what's popular, show what's new, show what blogs have the most comments or trackbacks, or show who has blogs in a directory.
To do this well, we need to have the right to "rebundle content" and Harvard's reserved that right to aggregate and publish some of the content created in the blog area.
I like the idea of setting up the content under the Creative Commons license, with the option for authors to change this.
UThink at Minnesota also has some items in their policy to look at. The address "advertising on your site" and that's probably a good think to spell out up front.
Posted by dmf527 at 10:59 PM
April 27, 2005
Planning Weblog Service - Communication and Launch
I'd like to see us launch as early as possible and start talking about the initiative and spread the word.
May through July is the time that faculty can explore a new tool and see how it might help them. This is when we should offer short talks or hands-on sessions on getting started with your blog (if Kevin has time) or a panel of people that blog on campus that could talk about the experience and get an article in On Campus News PLUS a list of dates of information sessions.
I think we need to demonstrate how blogs can be used in a dozen or more ways on campus. We should keep it short and sweet -- "show" rather than tell by using screen snap slideshow of "What can you do with a weblog anyway?".
We could show samples (including made at U of S) of:
- classroom blogs for fostering discussion, posting assignments, answering questions that students may have, etc.
- scholarly groups and societies that share information and news
- departmental blogs to make it easy to keep "what's new" new
- faculty/professional blogs than can replace your "faculty" page
- reflective journal blogs to exchange ideas with other researchers and bloggers on particular topics or themes your exploring
- sabbatical weblogs are common and serve a reflective and documenting function for PKM (personal knowledge management)
- student experience blog initiatives like Wharton who have students who blog about their application, acceptance, through their courses at Wharton, ...
- e-portfolio student blogs where they can showcase work
- committee and project blogs that support discussion and sharing documents between meetings
- blogging for fund development
- blogs part of student recruitment initiatives
- weblogs as part of communications and writing course to improve the practice of writng
Posted by dmf527 at 12:52 PM