Tag Archives: edublogs

Why Edublogs Failed CLRN Review

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I’ve two stories to tell today: one about how i came to begin this blog and related one about how Edublogs failed CLRN review, leading me to look for another home for my ongoing conversations.

The Story of Professional Development in a Flat World

I celebrate two years of blogging next month and this is my 83rd post on Edublogs. While I have a personal blog on Blogger, I’ve reserved my Edublogs home for professional conversations. Two years ago, while still working for the California Technology Assistance Project, I began preparing for a three-day blog and wiki class for their summer technology festival. Researching blog platforms, I quickly found and fell in love with Edublogs, which offered free, and advertisement free blogs for educators. In addition, the company included a variety of themes and plug-ins. Now, Edublogs runs on the WordPress software, which is free, open-source software anyone can download and install on a server. So, after installing WordPress on the CTAP server, I spent a weekend searching for and installing a variety of themes and plug-ins for the CTAP blog platform. Still, I chose to continue adding posts to my Edublogs blog, a habit that will continue, although probably not on Edublogs.

Why Edublogs Failed CLRN Review & Why I’m looking for Another Platform

I understand that Web 2.0 companies need to make money and that educators can’t expect to get everything for free. However, my California-funded state project, the California Learning Resource Network (CLRN), only publishes information about free and advertisement-free web sites. Yes, we do review more than 350 commercial electronic learning resources each year, but our free Web Information Links (WILs) have grown more popular as schools tighten their budgets.

Last week, CLRN added two new categories to our WILs, Free Software/Web 2.0 Tools and Free Supplementary Course Materials. In building a base of sites to post to these categories, i returned to Edublogs to explore the features that i could include in our WILs review. To my great disappointment, I discovered that Edublogs is no longer a platform i can recommend. Last fall, to generate income, Edublogs created a new class of user, a Supporter, who pays a yearly fee to enjoy Edublog’s benefits. Those of us who aren’t supporters have seen our features disappear, much like the rights that disappeared in the middle of the night in Orwell’s Animal Farm. Gone are all my plug-ins, so good-bye to my Twitter link and my Google Analytics. So long personal avatar on the front page. Finally, we non-payers were reduced to 10MB of space, meaning that with the next few posts, I’ll run out of space to post.

What keeps Edublogs from CLRN isn’t the cripling lack of features, the poor visual editor (there are so many great ones they coul have added), or the severely limited space for blogs. The clencher was that non-supporter blogs now contain Google ads, placed before the blog entry’s title and the blog post. Because Google ads are context driven, CLRN does not approve any web sites that contain them.

In the meantime, I’ll be looking for a new home for Professional Development in a Flat World.

Blogs and Wikis: Writing Across the Curriculum

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by Brian Bridges

While CLRN will be presenting several hands-on sessions at the CLMS conference, I’ll be sharing about our blogs and wikis course. Session information is listed below, but I encourage you to arrive early for my special BONUS presentation. I hope to see you Friday ant 2:30.

Blogs and Wikis: Writing Across the Curriculum

Discover a variety of online, collaborative writing tools, and see how teachers are using them to engage their students, participate in online writing projects, and publish to an authentic audience. We’ll review and demonstrate a variety of free resources including Edublogger, pbwiki and Google Docs. Handouts include content standard connections, 100 ways to wiki and blog in the curriculum, and tutorials. Come early for a BONUS presentation.

Abstract

Each summer, I teach one of the four-day technology integration strands at CTAP 6’s Technology Festival. This summer, I focused on writing in the curriculum using blogs, wikis and Google Docs.

During this writing across the curriculum session, we’ll first look at a variety of ways that teachers and schools have utilized blogs and wikis to add relevancy to the writing process. Writing, reporting, and analyzing is woven into the content standards of every subject area. To that end, one of this session’s handouts outlines specific standards that teachers will be addressing when their students create blog or wiki postings.

We’ll explore a variety of educational blogs and wikis and compare and contrast their best uses. Using two handouts, Blog Strategies and 50 Ways to Wiki, we’ll make connections both to the standards and to current and potential class projects in several subject areas.

I’ll also demonstrate setting up a new Edublogs blog and a pbWiki wiki and show how to customize them for your class. Handouts will include tutorials detailing how to set-up each blog or wiki component. Links to other tutorials, resources, curricular projects, and clients (wordpress) are included as well.

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