Recently in Blogging Category

This semester we have created course blogs for

• Connie Woodhouse: Drought, Climate Change, and Water Policy
• Amy Fountain's INDV101, Language
• Crescencio Lopez two sections of Spanish 333
• Jeannine Relly's Journalism 205
• Virginia Rich's GEOS 478/578
• Jonathon Reinhardt English language/linguistics
• Nicolas Rattray's INDV 102 class

Interested in using a blog to further communications with your class? contact the LTC for more information or visit our Best Practices and Case Studies website to see how instructional blogging has been used by your UA colleagues.

We have a plug-in installed on our Movable Type (server-side) that makes posting from an iPhone or iPod Touch simple.

In fact I am doing it now. You can add it as an icon to your iPhone or Touch desktop by touching the plus sign and selecting Add to Home Screen. Like making a bookmark but I think more direct because you then just tap the icon and it opens your Safari to our MT login page. Once logged in to MT, you see a screen to "create entry," "manage comments," and "manage entries." I think this has potential for instruction with students being more and more connected. And students don't need to buy an app from the iTunes Store.

When we migrated to the new version of Movable Type, the Flash movies and illustrated guides that I had developed over the years were no longer of any use. Today I created new guides and added them, via text links, to the Tip Sheet. These are illustrated with screen shots and saved to RTF so that they will open in any word processing software. I emailed the list of current bloggers. Most blogs have a link to the Tip Sheet on its homepage. Viva La Difference

Last summer when I taught IRLS573 IT in Libraries, I had the students listen to the audio of a Science Friday episode, called Digital Libraries, from May 2007. The topic involved a discussion of three different e-books projects: Michael S. Hart's Project Guttenburg, Brewster Kahle for the Internet Archive, and Stanford's Michael Keller who spoke about Google's e-books project.

I was reminded of it today was I listened to TWIT 144: The FBI vs. The Internet in which host Leo Laporte and panelists listened to Brewster Kahle discussing his experience dealing with a National Security Letter from the FBI "asking for records about one of the library's registered users, asking for the user's name, address and activity on the site." Kahle's part of TWIT 144 is about 30 minutes long and you can easily listen to it while working on other things.

Here are three articles about it. Any one of these provides a good review. 1) Zdnet's "Brewster Kahle offers a cookbook for fighting security letters" 2) Wired's "FBI Targets Internet Archive With Secret 'National Security Letter', Loses" 3) EFF's "FBI Withdraws Unconstitutional National Security Letter After ACLU and EFF Challenge"

There continues to be a number of book digitization projects outside of libraries and archives. After reportedly digitizing 750,000 book and indexing 80M journal articles I read today that MS is bowing out. See "Microsoft Shuttering Book Digitization Efforts"

I've updated the Blogging @ the LTS website to reflect Spring Semesters instructional blogging. Visit this page for a snapshot.

Casey Ontivares (he's in the next cublicle down) sent me an email with a link to odiogo.odiogo offers a free service for bloggers so I signed up my own blog. The idea is that it takes the text in one's blog and converts it to voice. And it also provides an RSS feed so you can subscribe to a blog and listen to the computer voice recognition of it. It is said to be “'Near-human' quality text-to-speech" and IMO it's as good as any other computer generated speech I've listened to.

Unfortunately, it isn't working properly. It took about ten of my previous entries and made ~30 seconds of MP3 audio out of them and it provides an RSS feed that shows up in my podcasts section of iTunes but does not pull in any media. on this page. Those 30 second MP3s are eaten up with 12 seconds of an odiogo introduction. Not mention that thirty seconds merely covers a couple two sentences in an entry. If this worked, or if it does work and I'm mucking it up somehow, it could have great potential for ADA.

It is working for Red Herring's blogs because I have successfully subscribed to the RSS feed and have received tracks for the podcast. I'll keep playing around with this to see if there's something I'm missing. If anyone reading this can point me in the right direction to get this working, please email me.

Aaron Barlow is an assistant professor of English at NYC's College of Technology. Barlow has had two books published this year about blogs. The Rise of the Blogosphere published in March 2007 according to Amazon and Blogging America: The New Public Sphere due tomorrow, November 30th. I've not seen either but will order them from the UA Bookstore today or tomorrow. Descriptions from Amazon follow.

I do like reading the mass media's take on different technologies or aps/resources like Web 2.0 resources. As I was flying on Southwest on Sunday, I thumbed through Southwest Air's in-flight magazine, Spirit. Over the past few years I've seen a number of pieces of interest, such as an article about iPods, and last year met guests of friends who had a short piece on Wikipedia and I was called upon to explain it. I got the same look that I get from my students -- what the heck is he talking about?

If you thumb through the current Spirit, you'll find an article titled "Everyone Should Blog." I don't think it will convince other readers that they should be blogging. However, the author did get the point across that blogs serve different purposes and beyond sharing your laundry mishaps with eight of your friends, blogging is good for engaging in journalism or political activism. It opens a door "that the media and political establishments used to keep shut to people like you and me."

In a totally different part of the magazine, the Free Time section, is a very short piece about a blog called License to Rant. Seems someone saw a license plate with the tag SIZZRZ and found the idea that anyone other than Edward Sizzorhands would want such a vanity tag was too bizarre for words. So, Kjaere Carpinteria started License to Rant. So people shoot dig photos of the oddball vanity tags they see and send them for the blog. Nothing particular philosophical about it but I find it fun to look at. And if I ever have my EasyShot with me when I see one of those stupid plates, ...

Just pulled together some stats for fall semester's blogs. There are 202 discrete blogs for courses and programs at the UA (We only support blogs in instruction) and a total of 722 authors. I put a list of fall semester's blogs together on the Blogging @ the LTC website.

Blogs used in instruction this semester display the usual mix of individual blogs for each student in a class, a single course blog where all students may author entries, a professor's blog where the instructor posts entries and the students comment on entries, a professor's blog where the instructor posts entries about course news, assignments, events, etc., and blogs for programs related to instructional applications.

About half a dozen of the blogs and authors created were never used, which is par for the course. Of more interest to me are the new-comers, like Al Classen, who embraced the use of blogs and wove a course blog into their pedagogy. There are also a few on-going blogs that have had a number of new authors added. My favorite is e-mentoring, a blog accompanying MCB396i, an "initiative was borne of the desire to encourage and retain more [female] students in science."

There is an anniversary of sorts this summer and a lot of news sources are picking up the thread and putting their own spin on the story. What is it? Blogs, it seems, have turned 10 years old. And with the widespread use of RSS feeds pushing entries to one's desktop, [watch a Flash movie from Common Craft, "RSS in Plain English"] it's easy to subscribe to particular blogs and stay attuned to the news, topics of interest, and pithy comments from all sorts.

In mid-July the Wall Street Journal ran a story, "Happy Blogiversary," and described the origins of blogging:

We are approaching a decade since the first blogger -- regarded by many to be Jorn Barger -- began his business of hunting and gathering links to items that tickled his fancy, to which he appended some of his own commentary. On Dec. 23, 1997, on his site, Robot Wisdom, Mr. Barger wrote: "I decided to start my own webpage logging the best stuff I find as I surf, on a daily basis," and the Oxford English Dictionary regards this as the primordial root of the word weblog.

To borrow the catch phrase of Arte Johnson's cigarette smoking Nazis soldier, "Verrry interesting..." And if you don't remember who Arte Johnson is, read the Wikipedia article on him.

Now what's so interesting? I was just reading about Movable Type's plans with version 4. We're running version 3.3 since last summer. Here's a copy paste from MT's website.

• A completely reinvented user interface with a dashboard overview of how all of your blogs are doing
• Support for publishing standalone pages and managing file assets and images right within MT
• Brand-new community features like OpenID, and a built-in user registration systemA completely redesigned component architecture that makes MT faster and more scalable than ever before
• And it’s going to be available in a completely open source version with its home at a completely relaunched community site that revives an old, beloved URL: movabletype.org.

The last bullet is very interesting. Seems SixApart has regained religion, that is, the Church of the Open Source. Somewhere out there, I think Henry is smiling. It's not clear to me yet if there is still a value added version we get for having paid for the product. But in the meantime, if you ask me if this is interesting, my reply is: You bet your sweet bippy it is.

For those you involved with instructional blogging, here are two recent articles of possible interest.

Dunnewind, Stephanie "Teachers are reaching out to students with a new class of blogs," The Seattle Times, October 14, 2006.

Parry, David “The Technology of Reading and Writing in the Digital Space: Why RSS is crucial for a Blogging Classroom,” Blogs for Learning

Students have asked about a way to check spelling in the entry body and extended entry in the form we use in these blogs. This morning I happened to use my MS IE browser instead of my trusted Firefox and noticed that I have, at home, the Google Toolbar installed on my browser. Low and behold, it has a spellcheck option that checks the spelling in forms. The entry boxes you type in when creating a blog entry, use HTML forms.

I ran the Google spellcheck on my previous entry and it worked very well. It highlighted in red the words it did not recognize in its dictionary and I could correct them or add them to the dictionary and it no longer highlighted them.

You can download the Google toolbar from Google's more section. I also see that it works with Firefox versions 1.5 and higher. I'll be adding this to my Firefox today too.

Here's a timely resource! Just yesterday I was talking with a colleague on campus about a question involving what was okay to put in one's blog. Electronic Freedom Foundation has a valuable resource to anyone involved in blogging. If you visit the EFF's EFF: Fighting for Bloggers' Rights page, you'll find "... a basic roadmap to the legal issues you may confront as a blogger, to let you know you have rights, and to encourage you to blog freely with the knowledge that your legitimate speech is protected" and a link to the EFF: Legal Guide for Bloggers. Thanks EFF.

Leila wrote an entry recently about the indictment of Libby. I am having flashbacks to G. Gordon every time I hear Libby. I too listened on NPR to the press conference. The press conference also served to show again what a bunch cheesie journalists cover important national stories. Nothing of substance asked; just a bunch of questions designed to get them a story. I happened to catch Helen Thomas on with Bill Maher last night and she spoke to-the-point (of course) about how the White Press corps has been cowed into submission.

Wayne Brent, the LTC's Breeze Guy, sent this alert out. Sounds very interesting. If you can hook up in time for it on Thursday check afterwards to see if it has been archived. Lots of times these Breeze webinars are archived.

Title: Narrowcasting 101: Using Blogs, Podcasts, and Videoblogs in Higher Education

Presenter: Cyprien Lomas, UBC and Nick Noakes, HKUST

The practices involved in "narrowcasting," including Web logs (blogs), podcasts, and videoblogs, have become significant elements of the new Web. These practices are emerging on our campuses, employing RSS feeds and aggregators to distribute increasingly rich "amateur" content.

Join Cyprien Lomas and Nick Noakes to explore the vibrant and rapidly evolving world of narrowcasting and the impact it can have on teaching and learning. They will explore several facets of narrowcasting and the new Web, including:

• What is narrowcasting? Where did it come from and where is it going?


• How might narrowcasting fit into a campus e-portfolio or content management system?
• What are the implications of having increasingly media-rich (and resource-intensive) content on campus?
• How can we filter and focus all of this new content?

When: Thu Sep 8, 9:00 AM (Arizona Time)

Where: Using Breeze [http://breeze.ltc.arizona.edu/r31522178/ ] and phone conference +1 877 944 2300 [ enter 99200# when requested after dialup ].

This is an open session to Horizon VCOP members and non- members alike. All welcome!

A new Web document is available for instructors and faculty interested in how blogging is being used at the UA in instruction. Instructional Blogging Best Practices & Case Studies describes how this easy to use technology is flexible enough to suit a number of different pedagogical styles and learning objectives. Comments are welcome.

"Instructional Blogging: Promoting Interactivity, Student-Centered Learning, and Peer Input," is now available in Innovate: Journal of Online Education, vol.1, no. 5, June/July 2005. As you can tell from the volume number, Innovate is a new journal. If you've not been to the site yet, do check it out. The articles are quite good, and provide a mix of application and innovation with scholarship. You will need to create a username and password but that only takes 30 seconds. Comments on my article are welcome. Here is the synopsis that appears on Innovate:

Stuart Glogoff expounds on the educational applications of blogs—simple Web pages that can have surprisingly complex classroom applications. Situating his commentary in the context of pedagogical theory, Glogoff outlines the ways in which blogs can enable receptive learning, directive learning, and guided discovery. Reflecting on successful practices in his own classroom, he also reveals how blogs can build community, promote interactivity, and increase student comprehension. This account of blogging technology as a learning tool provides models that instructors of both online and hybrid courses will find helpful.

Hank points out that notifications do not happen automatically just because you an email address is added to your notifications list.

"Notifications are never sent automatically when you post a new entry. To send a notification to your readers on a particular entry, select that entry for editing. In the Send a notification section, enter the text of the message you would like to send. You can also include the excerpt from your entry, or the entire body of your entry, by checking either of the checkboxes to the right. The message sent to your readers will include a link to the entry, followed by the message that you enter."

So, what you need to do is to scroll down on your entry page and click in the box down the bottom of the page that reads "Include entire entry body" to get the notification sent. I had been assuming it did this automatically--it doesn't. I proved the old saying about what happens when you assume. Seems from my test today that it will send the notification whether you click in the box and click either of the send buttons.

With the 3.16 upgrade installed to Movable Type, it looks like the capability to subscribe to email notifications for blog entries is working. What does that mean? It means, there I (or you if you have the privleges to edit your main template) can add an HTML form to your homepage. Visitors can then subscribe to receive emails when a new entry is added to the blog. Check it out on my blog in the upper part of the right side of the homepage.

If you have the privileges on your blog, you can download this Download file text file with the HTML and paste it into your main template. Otherwise, I'll be glad to do it for you.

Here's what it looks like.