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Two more WPMU plugins for K12

February 17, 2009 in Blogging, Technology, open source, wordpress | 1 comment

As I ramp up our school’s WPMU blog platform, I look forward to rolling out the new 2.7 interface. I have updated and tested my favorite plugins. DSader’s More Privacy Options, and Peter’s Collaborative Email still work. To make things even better I found a pair of plugins that will make our configuration more secure and give greater control over user privileges.

First off, there was a security hole wherein students could view pending comments that have not been approved by an administrator. Dean Matteson discovered this flaw when he realized that student comments were appearing without his having reviewed them and wrote about in his blog. He came up with a plugin that blocks access to the comments page.

Looking for new plugins for our school site I found the WPMU Menus plugin that not only solves this problem, but it allows you to enable or disable not only comments, but almost every other function in the dashboard interface. Site Admin Options reveals new choices.

wpmu_menu

The screen shot encompasses only half the options available. Beyond security, this allows administrators to greatly simplify the back end user interface making it easier for younger students to navigate.

wpmu_menu2

This takes care of the comments security issue. I tested it further by appending edit-comments.php to the blog backend urls. I was still unable to access the comments page and it redirected me to the profile page.

The next plugin of particular interest is Role Manager. Role Manager is not a WPMU plugin. It must be enabled and configured on each individual blog. Role Manager allows you to change the permissions on any existing role or group of users. It also allows you to create new roles as well. Go to Users–>Roles.

roles1

While logged in as admin, you can also configure the permissions of an individual user by accessing their profile.

roles2

Of course, if you give a user the permissions to access a feature, you also need to enable access in the Menus.

I look forward to relaunching our school blogging platform this March with a fresh new back-end interface, greater security, and a simplified dashboard for our students. If anyone has any input regarding use of WPMU for the K12 setting, I’d love to hear from you!

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WPMU 2.7 improves navigation

February 2, 2009 in Blogging, Technology, open source, wordpress | 2 comments

WordPressMu 2.7 was released a few days ago. I have been using the beta version on my BuddyPress test installation and our school’s blogging platform. At school the updates from 2.6 to 2.7b to 2.7 went without a hitch by means of ftp. On the BuddyPress site, the svn switch from trunk to tag 2.7 was a breeze.

I have been using WPMU since December 2007 for our school’s blogs starting with version 1.3. In the space of 13 months, there have been ten versions of WPMU, each representing significant improvements.

Version 1.5.1 brought a badly needed overhaul to the administrative interface and each incarnation including 2.6.x and 2.7 have built upon these improvements. To contrast the differences take a look at the following screenshots. The first one is an administrative view of the blogs page in version 2.3:

Credit Jim Groom

Credit Jim Groom

In version 1.3 all administrative options are under the site admin tab. Most weren’t as cluttered as Jim’s installation, but it gives you an idea. In stark contrast, here is the blog view in version 2.7:

wpmuadminblog

The new version looks strikingly better, but it also adds much to the navigation. The left side navigation. Clicking on a menu item brings up any submenu options. The Top menu bar were moved above the blog header and integrates viper007bond’s WordPress Admin bar. The bar can also be configured to appear on nonadministrative site pages once a user is logged in.

I look forward to customizing WPMU 2.7 for our school blogs. It will also be time to revisit the plugins that will help secure and administer blogs in a K12 setting. I’ll be writing about options soon. Are there any others using or considering use of WPMU for the K12 environment?

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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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Prologue and Microblogging

February 6, 2008 in Blogging, Technology, open source | No comments

I have been intrigued by Twitter since going to our state Educational Technology conference. I know it has potential and I’ve been eager to give it a try. When Will Richardson blogged about the WordPress theme Prologue, I was excited. First, I am reluctant to use “hosted solutions” especially with elementary students. Secondly, we already have a WordPress MU installed on our server space.

The first obstacle was that the theme was not packed into a zip file as most templates are. I had to learn to use a subversion client to gather the file for the template (Subversion or SVN is very cool as I have discovered and I plan to explore this avenue more). Once I put the files into a folder to ftp up to the server, it is a simple matter of selecting the Prologue template. Next, I wanted to change the opening message. After a brief look through files, I found the text in line 13 of post-form.php in the template folder. I created accounts for my students and I was good to go–or so I thought. To make this work, users had to be set to “author.”

It is all working now and my superintendent has given me the go ahead to try this out with the provision that I keep it out of public view. Only the students and I can view the contents (Using the “More Privacy Options”) extension for WordPress). Students will give it a test run today. I’ll post later along with a link to a folder with all the Prologue files for easy download.

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Gender and Blogging

February 4, 2008 in Blogging | 2 comments

While the sample is miniscule, I noticed a tremendous difference in the amount of blogging among my students along gender lines. No matter how you cut it, the girls create more blogs, longer posts, and more comments than the boys. This was surprising because the majority of the blogs that I have encountered were written by males.

I wondered whether this was a quirk in my classroom, or did this reflect a larger trend. Searching the Internet I found a research paper: Effects of Age and Gender on Blogging. This little tidbit summarizes their findings:

We have assembled a large corpus of blogs labeled for a
variety of demographic attributes. This large sample
permits us insight into the demographic distribution of
bloggers. We have found that teenage bloggers are
predominantly female, while older bloggers are
predominantly male.

This is consistent with what I have observed in my fifth grade classroom. While they each have a blog, the girls’ participation is clearly greater. They are more likely to comment upon their life in and out of school. They clearly view it as an extension of their existing social network–a way to keep in touch with their friends beyond their face-to-face time. This is particularly important as we are very rural and many students have limited opportunity outside of school. The research also reflects some of my observations:

Male bloggers of all ages write more about politics,
technology and money than do their female cohorts.
Female bloggers discuss their personal lives – and use
more personal writing style – much more than males do.

While the boys are enthused about having blogs, many seem to view it more like graffiti. They enjoy making their mark and showing everyone they have been there and are capable of showing it. The challenge is to increase their meaningful participation.

I wonder if other educators whose students have blogs have noticed the same trends. If so, then what strategies facilitate greater participation among the males in the classroom.

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Students Start Using RSS

February 2, 2008 in Blogging, RSS, Technology, open source | 1 comment

I was satisfied with my trial of the open-source RSS reader Rnews. While it is not perfect, it has a very simple interface that was easy enough for my students learn. I installed the program on our school shared server space and set up accounts for them. Thursday, they started populating their account with feeds from their classmate’s blogs.

Rnews has a very simple, clean, no-nonsense user interface. It is not as cool as some might want it and it does not support themes. Changes of appearance can only be done by editing the css file. Students add feeds by clicking the blue plus sign on the upper right side (see below). There are a few other controls that are straight forward and students are unlikely to get themselves into trouble.

Screenshot of Rnew Reader

One problem with Rnews, is the lack of an administrative interface. To an extent, this program is so simple, there is little need for it. On the other hand, there is no way of monitoring the feeds to which the students have subscribed within the program. This can be worked around by examining the MySQL database through phpMyAdmin–which is fine if you have access. It works for me, although, it would be nice to be able to browse all accounts as an admin. Of course the lack of such features keeps this program nice and lean. Registration requires a secret pass phrase. Student must log in to their individual readers. There is no access without a log-in.

Students thought the RSS reader was very cool because they were able to see all the blog posts at once. After they logged into their readers, I modeled subscribing to feeds. Feed URLs must be typed in. Many students had errors with their first attempts, but soon became much more attentive to details and began typing more carefully. Since each feed required a url for the blog and one for the feed, students got plenty of practice with cutting and pasting shortcuts.

The kids see the utility of the RSS reader. They also like having their own personal account to manage. Between this and their blogs, they feel empowered. Students can publish and control a part of the web plus they can show their friends and parents. Next, I plan to give them some feeds beyond those of our class. I also plan on creating a class RSS reader using a more full featured platform. I hope to demonstrate the benefits of a class RSS reader to other teachers.

Rnews works fine–it gets the job done. I will continue searching for and testing other open source server side RSS aggregators for future applications. I look forward to seeing how this impacts my students.

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RSS Readers for Elementary Grades

January 28, 2008 in Blogging, Technology | No comments

Now that the students have blogs, I think they will soon see the benefits of using rss readers. Instead of hunting through blogs that may or may not have new content, a rss reader could deliver any new content to the reader. Unfortunately, all the web based rss readers such as pageflakes and bloglines that I have encountered require a minimum age of 13 because of CIPA regulations.

Alternatively, local computer based readers would not be individualized. The only remaining option I can see is installing a server based rss reader that supports multiple accounts.

I’ve looked into a few possibilities for the open source community. Rnews looks like a good candidate because it has multiple users accounts allowing students to customize the feeds. It must be installed manually in that one must upload the files via ftp, create a database, and run an installer through a browser. The installation went smoothly, but I got a 500 error because of the .htaccess had a php override turning magic quotes off (not Kosher on my server). I tossed it out and all works fine. If I find there is an issue in the future, I’ll run a php.ini override.

The Interface is simple. It does not require an email address or any other personal information. Those wishing to register must type in a pass phrase to create an account. One issue is that it reports a permissions error even after I corrected it. Knowing that the permissions were correct, I hacked the error message oout of the file and it now looks fine.

There is plenty of research and testing to undergo before I settle on a solution. There is also the issue of how it will work with our school’s Internet filtering. Hopefully our filter will block the feeds coming in through the reader.

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Blogging: The Haves and Have Nots (and the Do and Do Nots)

January 23, 2008 in Blogging | 2 comments

I have had the blogs set up for my students for a bit over a week. While I posted a question for the students to respond to on my class blog, I have left them to their own devices for a little while.

Some have really taken to it. One student, Blue Butterfly, has made several posts and leads the pack in terms of writing posts. She has made 10 posts since we got started on January 10 (13 days–she has me beat!). She clearly has access to the Internet at home. She has submitted a journal entry based upon literature that she is reading. I noticed that her writing is somewhat different than it is with pencil and paper, and even different from what she does in word processing or on an AlphaSmart. She has reflected upon her experiences in and out of school. She has also discussed her good friend’s motto: “Be happy.”

Purple Monkey, while not as prolific, has three posts all reflecting on life at school. Purple Monkey is a very social individual and has channeled her energy more into comments on other students’ blogs. This included a remark chastising a classmate who still has “Hello World” at the top of his blog. Again, she is one with good access to the Internet.

There have been a few surprises. One student has unfettered access with multiple Internet connected computers in his home has only worked on his blog with the time given at school. I am puzzled because he is extremely enthused about having a web presence. How do I get him going?

There are others with limited access. Some have to compete for computer time with parents and older siblings. They have managed to make a few posts, yet tend to focus on comments. Many of these are the same students that struggle more with writing in general. Can blogging help them get past their reluctance to write? Obviously, it would be helpful if they had more time.

One student, without Internet at home composed a burst of comments when he was visiting his grandparents. He too is a reluctant writer. It was great to see him seize the opportunity to write–even though they were generally one sentence blurbs. You have to start somewhere.

I am trying to provide more access at school, but it is tough to work the time in when more state test loom in the future. I am trying to provide access to the 30% of my class with no Internet access. Perhaps we can create opportunities after school. I am going to offer a few minutes during recess after their lunch.

Overall, I am delighted with this blogging experiment. Students are writing more and are have a greater awareness of audience. On the other hand, it certainly has accented the inequalities in access to technology.

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Moderation for School WordPressMU

January 16, 2008 in Blogging, Technology | 3 comments

I need to moderate all posts and comments for my students’ blogs. Out of the box, WPMU has a good system for taking care of comment moderation. Post moderation, while possible, is difficult to administer without a great little plugin.

To activate comment moderation you need to go to: Options –> Discussion. Under “Before a comment appears:” Check “An administrator must always approve the comment.” You can make your life easier and moderate posts via email links by checking both the “E-mail me whenever:” options. It works great–you are notified by email, through the dashboard, and the “Manage” tab that there are comments awaiting moderation.
As installed, you get no notifications of new posts. Instead one must go to the backend of each individual blog: Manage –> Posts. At the top, one must toggle status. If any are in queue for moderation, the option “Pending Review” Appears. Click the filter button and those pending review are listed. Click edit on each one to review and approve.

This is incredibly awkward and time consuming. No fewer than 8 clicks from navigating to a blog to approving a post. Initially, I couldn’t even distinguish those awaiting moderation and drafts. I honestly thought it was a bug.

Finally I found a great plugin: Peter’s Collaboration E-mails for WordPress. A new post submitted for review triggers an email with a link directly to the edit window of the post. Click the email. Click the link. Click publish. Done. No ferreting through blogs looking for new posts. It appears that most technical and administrative difficulties have been removed. At last–viable work-flow!

I’d love to discuss anyone else’s experiences using WPMU in a school setting for a technical or learning point of views. I haven’t found a place dedicated to WPMU and Education, so I set up an area on the Moodle portion of this site with a forum and a wiki dedicated to WPMU.

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Blogging: Shift from Technology to Pedagogy

January 16, 2008 in Uncategorized | No comments

My students and I are finding our way through WordPressMU (WPMU). I have worked through security, configuration, and administrative work flow. The kids post and comment. Now we focus more on learning.

Students customized their sites using themes, widgets, and blogroll. I set them to contributor so the posts would be moderated before appearing. Comments are also moderated. It was time consuming and awkward to trudge through each site to approve everything, so I set the blogs to email me any time new content is submitted. The email includes the message and handy administrative links to approve or delete. There is only one glitch–when a new post (as opposed to comment) is created, it is not put into a moderation cue, so I have to either have a contributor tell me when they have submitted content for review, or check through their drafts for content not posted. It appears to be a known issue and I hope to work through the hacks to make it work. I’d love to ask for a fix in the WPMU support forum, but unfortunately it is not a very friendly place and I suspect the response would be that I have no business using the software with my lack of PHP coding knowledge.

Most students have made a few posts. Now they use the blogroll links to visit each other and comment upon each others’ posts. It’s interesting to watch the interaction among the students. Our district superintendent asked for a login and replied to student posts.

Beyond that, I  will shifting my attention from the technology to the teaching aspects of using blogs with my students. Right now, I am watching an on–line community start to take shape among my students.

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Students Begin Blogging

January 11, 2008 in Uncategorized | No comments

My students began blogging today. As mentioned earlier, we are taking baby steps, but baby has taken several steps already. There were a few obstacles and unexpected little glitches, but went very well. The kids are incredibly excited.

To begin, I had to create an account for each child. As a security measure, registration was set so that users had to be created by an admin, rather than allowing anyone to create a login. Users must be created one by one–no big deal with my small class size. Unfortunately, WPMU requires a unique email address for each user. While a few children had email accounts, most did not. Others could use a parent’s email addresses. A surprising number had no access to the Internet at home. I ended up creating email accounts to receive the passwords that WordPress generated. Entering a class of 25 students would be a chore. I’m sure there is a way to do this through the SQL database, but that is beyond me at this point.

Once I dealt with this, all went fairly well. I guided them through the log in process on the class blog. Then we created profiles (after a long discussion of Internet safety), and changed their passwords to something secure, yet memorable. Next, I showed them how to comment upon a post that I had created. After they commented on two posts, we went on to the next step.

Since they caught on so quickly, I created a blog for each student. I had to give them admin access to their sites to allow them to customize them with templates and widgets. For the sake of security, I set the each blog’s privacy setting so that they only could be viewed by me and the individual student. Once done with customization, I will set their privileges to contributor, and open their sites to the world. With this setup. I will be the administrator for their sites and will moderate all posts and comments.

Overall, I think I have the security figured out and I am beginning to establish an administrative workflow. The kids feel empowered and energized. I also have one one of our high school teachers ready to do the same with one of his elective classes.

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WPMU for School: Security Quick Overview

December 28, 2007 in Uncategorized | 4 comments

WordPress Mu is now installed on our school’s shared server space. It appears to be functioning as I’d like it–now that I hacked together a nice .htaccess redirect making it easier to access individual blogs. Before we actually let the students loose on their blogs, I need to think through security and make sure I can deliver on the promises made at our last tech meeting.

First, can it be set up so that individual students can submit content that will only be published upon administrative approval? The answer is yes–although there are limitations. Let’s explore the roles/permissions system:

  • Subscriber: can view site (only relevant if blog is set to be visible only by subscribers).
  • Contributor: Can write and edit posts, but they are not published until and administrator approves the content.
  • Author: Can write, edit, publish, and delete own posts
  • Editor: in addition to author permissions, can moderate comments, manage categories, edit pages, and other people’s posts.
  • Administrator: Has control over any option or setting in the blog, including moderating posts and comments.

Clearly, in terms of security, students would be best set at the Contributor level. I worked through a post as a contributor–indeed it worked as expected. Just to be sure, I went back to my test post to see if I could edit it as a contributor after is was published/approved by the admin. I couldn’t–that is a good thing from a security point of view. With Joomla, an administrator must change a post’s ownership to ensure that it is not edited after.

Unfortunately, the Contributor setting does not allow a student to customize their website/blog. There really isn’t another setting that would allow adults to moderate posts by students, so there is no other choice. Perhaps a teacher could log in and change their template.

Comment is another area of concern. At first glance, it appears that comment settings must be done on a blog-by-blog basis. Comments can be disabled, held for moderation, or allowed to appear when created. These options may be over-ridden on a post by post basis. At first glance, it looks like we can satisfy the tech committees needs, by moderating comments, although I will be testing this further examining all aspects of the commenting and notification of comments via email.

Registration can be disabled allowing only an administrator to create new accounts. Unfortunately, this requires a unique email for each user. This can be a hassle as you need a working email account to receive WPMU generated password. Not good news for elementary teachers whose students often don’t have email addresses. I will be looking for a hack to change this.

Finally, you have a few means of controlling who can view the site. First of all, each blog post can be password protected–effective in keeping non users out (which I have mixed feelings about). That’s about it if it weren’t for a plugin called private blog. Normally the privacy tab only allows you to keep out search engines. With private blog, you can set each blog be visible to only members of the individual blog, the blog community (by all users of the school’s WPMU installation), or only to administrators. While I feel that blocking the general public from a blog defeats its purpose to some degree, there may be times and circumstances where a “walled garden” is appropriate or the only acceptable option in accordance with policies.

Overall, WPMU appears to provide the security options needed to proceed. In some cases, implementation could be less awkward. I would like to see more of this controlled globally rather than at the blog level. I will be testing it more closely with dummy accounts to more closely examine any potential security problems, and to work through a workflow to administer the site. If anyone would like to help out, let me know!

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