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BuddyPress user test drive part 1

December 29, 2008 in Blogging, open source, Social Networking, Technology | 28 comments

BuddyPress has a trial site in which you can sign up for an account and give it a test run, much like the folks at Curverider did many months ago. It gives everyone an opportunity to experience the user interface. I signed up for an account and gave it a quick test drive. I will look deeper into the details over time. This is an overview of the registration, progile, and the blogs.

Going to testbp.org presents the following screen:

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Click on of the registration links to set up an account. You are then prompted to give a username, email address, reply to a captcha and to provide some profile details including an avatar. You are also given the option of just creating an account, or an account with a blog.

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If you selected the option to create a blog, you are prompted to give a subdomain and title for the blog, and have the option of allowing search engines to index the site or not.

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Next you are prompted to look for an email to activate your new account. Once you activvate your account, you are assigned a password and asked to crop your avatar. Once you log in, your are brought to your profile page.

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Notice the navigation on the left side displaying menu options, the submenus in the next column. Clicking on the “Blogs” option brings up a new submenu. Note the ability to create additional blogs.

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When you click on your blog, up comes something that should look very familiar to WordPress users:

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If you click on the site admin link, you are brought to the familiar WordPress 2.7 blog interface.

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As in WordPress you can customize the look using themes.

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Overall, with BuddyPress, the blogs have an individual identity outside of the BuddyPress installation in that they have an independent subdomain, and that they can be customized like any other blog.

Clearly, Elgg and BuddyPress are very different. While this is more of an overview than a comparison, it is easy for one familiar with Elgg to see that these two packages take very different approaches to what might appear the same when one simply looks at a list of features.

I plan to overview more BuddyPress user features in the future and look forward to a discussion of the merits of each.

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Edublogs inserts content link ads in free blogs

November 11, 2008 in Blogging, open source, Technology | 6 comments

The popular “free” educational blogging site Edublogs has begun inserting inline content link ads in the posts of their free blogs. Once users are logged in, they no longer appear, but anyone view the blog sees the ads.

To disable the ads, one must become an Edublogs supporter costing $25 per year. There are other benefits such as more server space and Twitter integration. Alternatively, schools can set up Campus subscriptions starting at $900 per year for 100 blogs.

On the popular Classroom 2.0 site, teachers are registering shock and dismay at this unannounced development, saying that they feel “bamboozled.” Concern has been expressed about control over the content of these ads. Teachers and students have invested much into this blog platform and suddenly find the landscape has changed.

In fairness to Edublogs, the potential for advertising has been in their terms of service for some time–I looked into it many months ago. (You DO read the TOS before clicking I accept, don’t you?). In this tightening economy, the flow of easy captial has been shut off. The free hosted social applications need to pay their bills to keep their servers up and running and to pay staff.

I have always expressed concern about hosted Web 2.0 solutions for these very reasons. There is also the issue of data ownership. If one of these companies goes belly up overnight as has been the case with so many major corporations of late, what happens to your data?

The solution is free and open source software on either rented web server space, or on in-house servers. No, these are not “free” solutions, but they are inexpensive. Webhosting accounts can be had for as little as $5 a month and most offer ample resources for hosting your own Web 2.0 solutions. Furthermore, you will not find yourself blindsided by changes in policies and terms.

There are many options for software. Multiple blogs can be hosted on WordPressMU, Social Networks on Elgg, and the list goes on.

Stay tuned for more such developments and start studying up on free and open source Web 2.0 applications. As has been said so many times before: there is no such thing as a free lunch!

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Moderation and Student Blogging

October 9, 2008 in Blogging, Policies, Technology | No comments

Karen Fasimpaur and I have been discussing student blogging recently as we are mulling similar issues.  She just posted a request for comments on her thoughts regarding moderation and student blogging.

She posed her main question: Should all student blogging be moderated? My answer is: It depends. Let’s look at some of the issues raised:

I am really conflicted about this. I believe strongly in the benefits of student blogging. I think that if blogging is done in a closed (non-public) environment, it isn’t really blogging and doesn’t have the benefits of writing for an authentic audience.

I agree that blogging done in a closed environment isn’t nearly as beneficial as publishing to the world at large. This is a separate issue from moderation. Indeed, in many settings, the only way you could allow students to publish to the open Internet is by having the posts and comments moderated. Policy makers are more likely to object to students publishing to the world at large if they are unmoderated.

In general, I think that teaching students to be responsible is a far better approach than trying to block or filter everything that might be dangerous. We should more time talking about 21st century skills and how to act prudently in the world that is out there.

I can’t argue with any of this. Unfortunately, we face the reality of filtering. I think it is a lazy approach, but that’s way it is. We must make a case for what we know is right, yet work within our constraints.

Also when making a district-level decision about blogging policy, the feelings of the administration, board, and community need to be considered. Or do they? Is this a cop-out? This has been keeping me up nights.

When we are using school and community resources, we have an obligation go beyond the feelings of the administration, board, and community. We need to have policies formulated by stakeholders and approved by the school board which represents the community. To proceed without doing so is risky.

We also must consider that when blogging from a school website, what students post represents the school–not just the individual. This could become a source of community objections putting the whole enterprise in jeopardy.

One of the most important stakeholders are the parents. How do they feel about all this? Before we ask them to sign a document, we need to do our best to educate them about the importance and benefits of creating an on-line presence and navigating the Internet. Risks and benefits need to be put in realistic perspective and fears may need to be dispelled. We want them on side. It may mean compromise.

There are options regarding moderation and range of audience. We need to find a shade of gray that works for all. Different settings may be needed for different students for any variety of reasons.

Here is another option. Perhaps students and parents that prefer unmoderated blogs could be allowed to create their blogs in another acceptable setting. This may allay fears about student mayhem on the school’s website, yet allow those preferring more freedom another choice.

Decisions regarding moderation depends on many factors. With a wide array of options it is not a matter of black or white.

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Security Matrix: WordPressMU

August 16, 2008 in Blogging, Policies, Technology, wordpress | 3 comments

In my previous post about Web publishing security, I proposed the following security matrix:

While this is an oversimplification of the options, I think it gives a framework for making decisions on what web publishing software to deploy, when to deploy it as well as how. As an illustration of how this framework can be used and the potential complexity, we will examine the popular multiple blog platform WordPress MU. Another reason is that we have deployed WPMU in the past and there has been some debate about how it should be used if it should be used at all.

Out of the box, WPMU has two options for access to content: Open to the world and open, but blocking search engines and archivers. It has four options for moderation: Unmoderated, Posts only moderated, comments only moderated, and both posts and comments moderated. With WPMU, then, our matrix looks like this:

As one can see, there are already eight potential options in terms of access to publishing and content. While all the content can be accessed by anyone in the world through both choices, blocking search engines and archivers would significantly reduce access unless one has a link, or goes to the site directly.

WPMU has a plugin that I discussed in an earlier post called More Security Options. This plugin offers three more content access options: Community members (all users with accounts on the WPMU installation), Blog (People who are at least subscribers of an individual blog), and Administrators (only the administrators of an individual blog). The security matrix with this plugin appears:

There are now 20 options in terms of publishing and content access! Arguable, there are even more. For example one could choose to allow unmoderated comments, but restrict comments to logged in members of a blog. Clearly there is enough flexibility in WPMU to accommodate a wide range of Web Publishing Policies.

It is up to school tech committees to consider the ramifications of all of these options in terms of security, audience, and ownership and weigh the pros and cons of each before committing to a particular configuration. Teachers can then decide within the constraints of the school web publishing policy which option best suits their class. Publishing student content to the web is not simply as choice of yes or no. There are several shades of gray. These are not the only considerations and options for deploying this software. For further discussion, refer to my other posts about WPMU for more information on managing and securing the software.

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Experimental Prologue Microblog

February 14, 2008 in Blogging, open source | No comments

My students now have a Prologue microblog that they are using actively. I thought that I would also set up a microblog as a companion to this regular blog site for my own use and that of others.

Unlike the student microblog, this one is open for public viewing and comment. In addition, I set it up so that anyonce can register and post as well. I’ll leave it this way unless there are any problems.

Take a minute to view the Prologue counter-part to this site. Feel free to register and post yourself, if you would like to get a feel for microblogging.

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