Recently in Blogs@PSU Category

Something I've known for a few weeks that just went live today -- our personal webspaces have been increased to a maximum of 10 GB per user. That means that in combination with your Penn State Blog and your personal space, you can store and manage all sorts of things. One thing that is interesting to me is that more people are not using their PSU Blogs to act as a simple personal repository. Files can be easily uploaded that become instantly searchable with a few clicks. I think the 10 GB limit is an amazing move for us and one that speaks volumes about how committed we are to providing services that match the pedagogical conversations we are having. If you are a PSU person, just jump over to work.psu.edu and dial up your quota.

Kudos to the people at Applied Information Technology!

I'm listening to Justin Elliott talk about the changes to the University's streaming server environment and am really excited about a few changes. Clearly what we all measure the video upload/sharing experience with YouTube ... we don't and really can't replicate that functionality, but we can get closer. One big thing his team has added are public videos with embed codes. That is important as it makes it YouTube easy to add video to your blog. Below is an example of an old QTS version of a talk Kyle Peck gave several years ago, but embedded here.

There are so many other things that are being done, including integrating Kaltura into the Blogs, but I thought I would at least share the embed code. Why do we even worry about this? We traditionally ran the QTSS to allow faculty to restrict access to content that may be covered under copyright. The moves going forward will change the way we allow everyone at PSU to work video into their digital lives online.

PSU Overview and Our Use Cases

PSU Basics

• More than 90,000 students
• More than 22,000 World Campus enrollments
• About 20,000 full and part time faculty and staff
• 24 locations across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

Our MT powered blog platform is managed and run by our core ITS organization and was designed to potentially serve our entire user population. We built it upon existing infrastructure, including integration with our Web-Access authentication system so students could move in and out of their blog dashboards with a single sign on and that content be published as static html pages into Penn State Personal Webspace (PASS). What this means is that we utilize the 5 GB of space that everyone gets without worrying about ownership of content, the opportunity for users to have access to their assets, or the need to create new policies to govern blogs. Faculty, staff, and students operate in a self service mode, going to the Blogs at Penn State site to log in and create their blogs.

Blogs at Penn State Back Story

We launched our "blogging" service about 18 months ago after discussions about affordances of a system like this. Our argument to administration revolved around creating an environment that was an open publishing platform -- not just a blog service. When we stopped talking about blogs they began to understand the power.

The growth has been strong overall, with us now serving over 10,000 users -- about 4,500 of them are very active users.

The big stories being the use of blogs for:

• Courses
• ePortfolios
• Faculty pages
• eLearning design, development, and delivery
• Biology 12: And the Design Document
• IST 110
• Unit websites
• Podcasting
• Penn State Voices
• Project sites -- Faculty Fellows

We are promoting the idea that faculty shouldn't require a separate course blog for each course they teach, opting instead to talking to students about how one overall space is more powerful. One overall space can be used across a career by effectively employing categories and, more importantly, tags to keep things organized across their academic and personal lives. This is ultimately the direction we are taking this -- a Learning Life Stream. In this way students are collecting evidence of learning and their overall experiences in one searchable archive.

What is emerging is that people are getting the fact that blogs are powerful personal content management environments. Because of the way one can instantly post, tag, search, and edit, students can organize materials in an online space like never before.

ePortfolios

In two different Colleges (the Schreyer Honors College and the College of Education's Teacher Education Program) Stacks of papers will become a thing of the past as students move their content into integrated online spaces that are fully searchable and belong to them. In these Colleges they have worked to identify and clearly articulate the program outcomes so as students create work (evidence) they use tags to mark posts as related to specific program outcome statement so it is easily aggregated together. When the time is right our Pack it Up tool allows program assessors to create a fully functional archive and move it into a program assessment environment.

Some Portfolio Examples

• Amy's Portfolio
• http://www.personal.psu.edu/awb5000/blogs/andreas_portfolio/
• http://www.personal.psu.edu/hst5004/blogs/helenes_portfolio/
• http://www.personal.psu.edu/pjh5020/blogs/paiges_portfolio/

Technical Issues

In our implementation, we deal with a number of technical issues:

• We need the following hooks added to system:
• Local file system access sanitation:local file read, write, including template linked to static files, asset control, publish to file (page and entry), or "include file=" template tag.
• Path sanitation for blog/entry/page creation and publishing
• Authentication model for openID does not work well with WebAccess
• Dashboard
• Comments
• Private Content Support
• Integrate MT permission table with .htaccess to control published blog read access.
• Prevent private contents from appearing in unauthorized searches.
• MT doesn't really protect private contents. MultiBlog simply changes the default inclusion. Users can still explicitly assign blog ID to access any blog. We had to filter search parameters and template parameters.
• Search cache can be retrieved by anyone.
• Needed to hack DBI driver to do an efficient SQL hack. (MT's ObjectDriver does not allow specifying Inner Join On field). Perhaps MT can provide a hook before SQL is sent out?
• Content TAGs in private blog should not appear in global cloud

Session 2: Discussion of MT-TP Migration Concept

Easily move student blogs to typepad after they leave. transfer content form psu blog to typepad blog. This should be an automated process with simple user interface for the student.

Ideally this would include:

• TP on par with MT 4
• entries
• pages
• comments
• tags w/ tag cloud
• files (images inline, linked images, linked pdfs, word, etc)
• change intrablog links (links to other entries, pages, files. Keep internal reference consistence)
• typepad blog will have option to have static front page
• blog will have header image (? - is this important)
• typepad blog will have primary page navigation (like the horizontal navbar) - some pages will be in primary nav, others will not (we currently use @topnav tag on pages to distinguish)
• PSU Blog will set up redirect from a student's psu space to the typepad space for six months after graduation.

Session 3: Next Steps

Licensing confusion continues to be an issue. Let's find time to discuss how we better plan our costs as we go forward.

We need to evaluate how these would work with our unique set up:

• MT Enterprise
• MT Community
• TypePad Connect for our Horizontal Conversation concept

What are the best way for PSU developers to contribute to open source community. We have our own issues based around large multi-user setup:

• Self provisioning of blogs (verification of paths, auto user creation, more flexible auto blog creation) (The App and interface is not designed as a self-service multi user environment)
• Security issues related to ACLs on filesystem
• MT accounts for commenting does not work smoothly with webaccess.
• Protected blogging
• Use ldap groups for reading and writing blogs.

Here is a crazy idea, but I wonder what it would look like if we allowed others to add new tags to our entries? If you use Flickr, you might have seen this in action. I think it only works if you are mutual friends with someone, but if I am browsing a contacts page I can simply add new tags to those photos to help with the overall discoverability of them.

Could we do that with our own Blogs at PSU? It would be a bit of a game changer for the PSU Voices concept. Imagine that I come across a post that really should be contributed into a Voices page for psuets... instead of me reporting it and using that tag, I could just add that tag to the original post. Interesting? Make any sense?

In lots of ways, by blogging in the open we are already asking people to learn from our work and reuse that knowledge elsewhere.

We've been thinking a lot about building community within the Blogs@PSU environment and wanted to share a couple of things with you. On the whiteboard is an emerging "conversation" related to getting your public blog content noticed -- noticed by whom is a natural question. Jamie Oberdick has been publishing daily content for us on the web for quite some time -- first at the ETS site, but more recently at the beautifully redesigned TLT site. Everyday Jamie finds something interesting and posts it there for us and the World to see. I am inviting you to share comments back on these posts and participate.

So what does that have to do with the Blogs@PSU? Jamie is always looking for story ideas to share openly on the site and I know he's sent emails to people in the past to get them to submit stuff ... I mean to submit myself, but that often falls well outside of my workflow and I don't do it. What I am proposing you do is when you are writing about the projects you are working on you use the tag "psuets" ... this will pull that content into a centrally aggregated results page that at the moment is being called "PSU Voices." These pages aggregate content from PSU and mashes it up with content from the social web -- Flickr, YouTube, Delicious, and Twitter conversations are currently included in the resulting pages.

Check out the PSU Voices page for psuets.

At the moment it is only stuff I've written, but if you update your old posts or create new posts with the tag psuets it will get included. I talked with Derick this morning about the idea of this being a primary way for Jamie to discover new stories ... so if you are working on something you'd like to share this is a great way to do it. Also, if you use a feed reader you can subscribe to the Voices page and receive updates whenever someone adds a new entry tagged psuets.

By the way, if you go to the Blogs Search page you can run tag searches and content searches that produce new Voices pages. Give it a try and let me know what you think. This is all still in the experimental phase, so the result pages haven't been styled yet ... but we are making progress.

I will be updating this entry throughout the day, but I will not take public notes during the more technical sessions as I will be paying closer attention to the details.

The sessions are being streamed via UStream TV.

Brad Kozlek and I are at George Mason University for the WordCamp Ed unconference.

Jermy Boggs

Using WP for a Course Website

Find him online: http://clioweb.org, Twitter

Teaches history 120 at George Mason, is also a web designer, PHD student in History, and WP user sonce 2004. He is covering why he uses WP to develop his course websites:

• Make it easy for students to access course information
• Encourage student participation
• Makes it easy for faculty to manage and maintain

He is part of a team developing a set of plugins to use WP for easily creating WP powered courses sites. It can be found at scholarpress.net ... easily created basic course information, all readings, and assignments. It looks very nice to be able to turn a basic WP install in to a very nicely formatted course site.

This is something we should create at the template level for Blogs@PSU ... I wonder if that would be possible?

Courseware and Microformats

A simple way of marking up content for a computer to read data. What this gives is the ability to move data around easily. Showing how it works with scheduling ... allows the schedule to parse the HTML so another application can use. He can update easily with WP and use the microformat to allow calendars to subscribe to changes. What is nice is that not only are dates pulled into the calendar of choice, but also all related details.

His next step was to utilize WPBook Plugin. This allows the course content to flow directly into FaceBook. Students can get it in FB, while he is still only using WP. He doesn't go into FB, just in WP. He states that about 70% of students used the FB application. Another plugin we should consider for MT.

Teaching with Blogs

• Update or die
• Set an example for students
• Best course blog - 200+ posts with 500 comments

His best scenarios have been where there is one site where he and all students have accounts on one space. This is my experience as well. Begs the question of how easily we can create a way to import class lists into our Blogs. Some other things he discusses:

• Create a sense of community
• Much easier to track
• Protect the students - password protect the class list within the WP site
• Gave students the ability to add additional information about each student (interests, bio, major, goals, Flickr, youtube, slideshare)

Site Guidelines

• Plan site organization to make it easy to use for students
• Use plugins to extend the site -- how do we do this for Blogs@PSU?
• Utilize user accounts for students ... let them use the blog to post and comment with each other

Jeffrey McClurken

Teaching Undergraduates with Blogs

University of Mary Washington

The resources from his presentation are available online.

Interested in getting away from "writing just for me." He wants them to write more than they do, encourage them think and present ideas in new ways, think about where digital literacy fits into history, and more. He is also very interested in revealing the work he does in the classroom and get out of the silo of the University. Public scholarship and how it plays within History.

He has his students have their own blogs ... he wants them to be theirs and become their digital identities. This is much more in line with our view of blogs as personal reflection spaces. He is seeing some of them keeping their same blog and using it across courses. He uses aggregation from student blogs to bring all of their content into his primary course blog.

Great quote, "I want the students uncomfortable, but not paralyzed." Wants them thinking about writing in new ways. He doesn't like BlackBoard for a lot of reasons:

• Craves openness for his students
• Craves openness for his courses
• Likes to see what others are doing

An important point here is that while he likes open, some of his content is protected. This is another important issue for us ... how to make some content easily protected, while other content is open.

What Do Students Do

He hopes students use their blogs as research logs. A place where they can collect resources for their projects and work. He showed examples of students commenting on these posts, providing help and suggestions. Much of it happens well outside the walls of the classroom. One of the thing it gives him is a way to gather intel for helping students with problems.

He uses it as a read and react journal. In his freshman seminar, each student has a blog where they reflect on the readings within the class. Some of the students are using these spaces to stretch well beyond class work. what is interesting is that if he pays attention to it, these posts become part of the learning experience.

Honestly, just too many examples to capture, but it is clear that he is really pushing his students to really think about how a publishing platform can be used to expand education. His students are uncomfortable at times, find blogging difficult, and resist at first ... but, he isn't seeing any negative feedback on his evaluations. He thinks they, for the most part, find the use of blogs to be rewarding.

Issues to Consider

• Writing in the public space: He is at times concerned with FERPA, but makes sure the students are aware that they are writing in a public format. He never uses the blogs to give grades ... that comes privately.
• The ability to change the content of the posts and the time stamps. He worries about being fair, but he wrestles with students ability to change things after due dates.
• Assessing blogs is difficult. What is an assignment? If they are writing quite a bit it gets tough. Also, you can't write on a blog post.
• Getting students to provide contents with substance. He finds if students are working on projects, the comments seem to be stronger.

Jane Wells Road to WordPress 2.7: A Preview

Nice overview of the new versions of WP. Presented by the experience designer for Automatic.

Rob Pongsajapan

Running a University Wide WP Multi User Installation Georgetown University

Offered through their implementation of a Digital Commons. Their DC is a collection of new media tools -- MIT Timeline Tool, Blogs, Podcasts, Wikis, etc. It is very interesting and well positioned as a one stop shopping location for new media tools.

His discussion is mostly technical in nature, focused on WP Mu. Some interesting conversations around how to provide an open environment while still protecting the privacy of students and faculty. Another issue that overlaps with us, is what to do about end of life blog or archiving of sites. They are looking into "site sucker."

Jim Groom

Permanent Revolution

University of Mary Washington

I've been looking forward to meeting Jim in person for quite some time. He is a very open and innovative guy whom I think is really on the edge of the blogging/open publishing revolution going on in higer education. He runs the WPMU install at Mary Washington ... The Blogs at UMW. He has done fantastic work throughout the years and has become a real model for U-Wide blogging.

The "Notion of the Permanent Revolution" is at the core of what we are trying to do with education -- ways to rethink the digital space we are living in. The archive is getting so out of control, how do we think about managing it? In education, how do we take advatage of the power of the instant publishing platforms? These platforms help us think about what it means for us to need to change.

WordPress is a platform for revolution. It is now trivial to publish and syndicate media -- video, text, audio, you name it. We are liberating student content -- in the LMS/CMS model students must pour it in and then after the course it gets packaged up, deleted, and becomes inaccessible to the student. It isolates the contribution. In the blog world, it belongs to the individual.

A revolt from the systems with been locked in. We must make a quick exit ... we are spending millions protecting the interests of RIAA and others only to ignore new media publishing. We have to say enough -- enough to closed systems and enough to outside interests killing the progress of teaching and learning.

At UMW over 2,000 users have blogs. Given they are a school of only about 4,500 this is an incredible number. Their goal is to become relevant to the community through openness.

In many ways, we are thinking in very similar ways -- feed frenzy learning. Letting syndication drive the connections. Students own their content and feed posts into course blogs.

The hardest part of the revolution is sustaining it. A great talk that I could not give the justice to it that I should have ... I got busy listening and being engaged.

Brad Kozlek has been maintaing a simple spreadsheet for the last week or so detailing the adoption of the Blogs@PSU. Very encouraging numbers. Take a look at the graph below, or visit the actual google spreadsheet online:

This is my first post from Blogwriter Lite on my iPhone. It has some limitations -- no photo uploading on the unpaid lite version is a deal breaker for me. You also can't edit the post once it has been written (as far as I can tell).

Time to make some changes ... Brad and I discussed the following changes to blogs.psu.edu today:

• The new blogs at psu homepage should be upgraded to MT 4.2 with the following pages:
• Home - hybrid of existing blogs.psu.edu and new personal start page
• Support - from blogger.psu.edu
• News - blog posts about updates and system features, changes, etc
• Community - patterned after most social web spaces
• Tag Search - Designed like a google search with very basic instructions under it describing how to use it

System wide stats to talk about (as of 11:39 AM on 9/26/2008):

• 3,837 blogs
• 18,225 entries
• 2,509 pages
• 3,502 users
• 7,297 comments
• 10,169 assets
• 5,880 unique tags