Another silly quiz, claiming to calculate one’s blog addiction score. pfff. it’s waaaaay off.

85%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Definitely skewed low. Some MySpacers are probably blowing the curve. Good thing they didn’t include Twitter and Flickr. I’d be in the triple digits easily…

I was asked to share my Edublogs reading list, which is published automatically by my copy of BlogBridge, in the BlogBridge Topic Guides website. It's basically a web front end for the .opml file generated by BlogBridge, but it might be a handy way to share the list.

So, now I'm a "BlogBridge Topic Expert" - I'm rather uncomfortable with the term "expert" but it's their word, not mine. The new Edublogs Reading List is online, and (I think) should stay synced with my list in BlogBridge, so maintenance won't be a problem.

BlogBridge Edublogs Reading List

This blog is about 2 posts away from devolving into a bona fide cat diary (and I’m not exactly a fan of cats). I’ll be trying to stop barfing banality into the internet tubes, so as a result I’ll probably be posting much less. Hopefully, as quantity goes down, quality (and relevance) may go up? Or, I might just wind up raising the bar so high that I finally fall out of this whole blogging thing. Either way, meh…

After a couple of hours of running with Drupal as my blogging platform, there are some areas that are definitely behind WordPress as a pure blog-friendly system.

• Comments. Typical blogs have "name", "url", "email" and "comment" fields. Drupal has an optional "Subject" and a "Comment" field. It works, but makes it harder to follow contributions in a conversation - you have to remember to put your name in the comment each and every time you post. Not friendly I was a bonehead - there's an option to make this behave as expected, under admin/comments/configure.
• Subscrbing to comments. Email subscriptions to a post's comments is the most powerful and effective way to maintain a conversation on a blog. The "subscriptions" module would work, but it only understands Drupal's users. The vast majority of commenters (i.e., everyone but myself) won't have an account in this copy of Drupal, so Subscriptions.module is useless to them. Close, though. All it needs is Anonymous user support, with a way to provide an email address. Not friendly.
• CoComment support. Lacking. I'm going to miss that, at least until I figure out how to properly implement it. Not friendly.
• Flicker Photo Album. There's a Flickr module that claims to do something similar, but it just isn't working for me. So, in the meantime, the "photos" link in the header nav bar points directly to Flickr. Not friendly.
• Flickr photo posting. There's a FlickrInserter module, modeled after Tantan's excellent Flickr Post Bar plugin for WordPress (which, in turn, is modelled after the awesome Flock Flickr Post bar). For now, I'm copying and pasting HTML directly from Flickr. Not friendly.
• I miss PodPress. Have to find a comparable solution for Drupal. Not fatal, but it sure was nice.

Of course, it's not all cloud - there is some silver in there. I did decide to switch, after all, and am not regretting it one bit (yet). Things that are good:

• MUCH better search function. Booleans. Filters. Lots of goodness there. Friendly.
• Tracking what's new since I (or anyone) visited the site - which comments are new? Friendly.
• Throttling. If the site gets hammered (yeah, right) I have it set to shut down the bells and whistles to ensure content still gets out. Friendly.
• Content types - not just blog posts, but forums, surveys, books, etc… Friendly.
• Unpublished content, and unpromoted content. I can stage stuff without it being public until I decide to make it so. More powerful/flexible than drafts in WP.
• Stats and logs within the admin interface. I can see what's working (or not) without having to go anywhere else.
• Blocks and menus. Very flexible ways to add functionality without having to hack a template or theme. Friendly.
• Lots and lots of other great stuff.

I've been spending so much time in Drupal lately that I've been contemplating moving my blog from WordPress to Drupal to take advantage of some of the flexibility in Drupal. I've even gone as far as migrating a copy of this blog, and it's basically working now - it may even look familiar.

But, I'm holding off on throwing the switch (I came within about 5 seconds of a full switchover, but finally decided against it). Why? WordPress is still nicer for individual blogging. Sure, it lacks the super-handy Book structure. And the better Menu and Page management. And a bunch of other cool stuff.

Drupal has far better searching - advanced searching with booleans - and better ways of organizing content (multiple taxonomies, tags, paths, etc…). It has better "website management" and a pretty decent upgrade process.

But, WordPress (for now) has better integration with things like image uploading, Flickr images, podcasting (via PodPress) and a bunch of other little things that tie into the "workflow" of blogging, as opposed to content management. These are all things that I use my blog for now, so it's silly to switch to something that doesn't currently rock at doing these tasks.I'm absolutely confident that I could eventually bend Drupal to do my bidding, but WordPress already does it now, so there's not a Super Compelling Reason To Jump at this particular moment. Also, the migration process isn't the smoothest one on the planet, and appears to be a one-way trip.

Update: I mentioned in one of my comments to this post that I was afraid of using the WordPress DBook plugin, because I didn't want to introduce any non-standard content types. I was completely wrong about what DBook does. It's sole function is to do the heavy lifting to provide better inter-page navigation between WordPress Pages. No new content type, no change to the database at all. Sorry for not checking facts better before posting that comment! 

My copy of Will’s book “Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms” just came in. Looks like it’s going to be a pretty good read, providing the perspective of an in-the-trenches teacher, rather than just the geek echochamber I usually expose myself to…

The book is definitely on top of my nonfiction reading list (my fiction reading, on the bus ride commute, is currently another Gregory Benford book I’m deliberately reading out of sequence…)

I just about spaced and missed this online conference on “blogging” in higher education: HigherEdBlogCon 2006 (thanks for the reminder, Brian!)

The first round of online events (April 3-7 - right now!) is on the teaching implications of blogging. Topics like case studies, integration with LMS, blogs as personal learning environments, information literacy, etc…

The next round of events (April 10-14) is on library & info resources, followed by admissions/alumni/marketing (April 17-21) and websites & web development (April 24-28).

I’ll try to keep track of the events as the occur, but am assuming/hoping they’ll all be available in archive form for use/reuse after the conference.

Oh, and it’s free. That ain’t not half bad. It’s going to be bad to take over Flickr like we did for Northern Voice 2006, but it’s a start…

Stephen Downes is taking a hiatus from publishing his awesome OLDaily resource. Stephen - I have no idea how you’ve managed to keep up the volume and quality of publishing you have done so far! You definitely deserve a break. I’ll miss OLDaily while it’s gone.

I’m feeling a bit like Rob - our Gandalf has just disappeared into the depths of Moria, and we’re now left to stumble through on our own. Hopefully his hiatus is a bit more relaxing, but I’m looking forward to meeting Stephen The White…

This is welcome news indeed! Greg Ritter has returned from his long, long silence, and has begun blogging again! I’m guessing Greg found it easier to go underwater during the whole Bb IPO and WebCT shindigs, but now that those things have been dealt with maybe he’ll be able to blog more often.

Excellent news, Greg. I’d been keeping your old blog in my subscriptions Just In Caseâ„¢ and have already subscribed to your new one.

Thanks to Scott and James for the heads-up on Ritter’s Return. Greg’s already hit the ground running with some great comments from Blackboard users about weblogs, wikis and podcasting.

Another thinking-out-loud topic here… I’m re-evaluating weblogs.ucalgary.ca - what’s worked, what hasn’t, what could be done differently. It’s best to take a long, hard look at it before it really takes off. There are a bunch of users in it now, but a critical evaluation of it is pretty important before we get into the hundreds of users level… I’m also colouring evaluation in light of the PLE/EduGlu concepts being rolled around. Perhaps the need to have a communal blog hosting service on campus is less important, or unnecessary, if that function is pushed into an aggregator service where it should be, rather than in the hosting side of things.

Elgg has improved a heck of a lot in the year since I quietly rolled out weblogs.ucalgary.ca (powered by Drupal at the moment). I really like the simplicity of the Elgg interface - helped by the fact that it’s not trying to be a Swiss Army Knife, as Drupal is.

In the back of my mind, I had been hoping to keep WordPress MultiUser as the backup plan in case Drupal didn’t work out. Elgg might be a more appropriate alternative.

Also, it’s not that Drupal isn’t working out, it’s just that weblogs.ucalgary.ca doesn’t have the right feel - it’s not a personal environment, it’s a commune. That makes it harder for an individual to find their own voice in the mishmash of common spaces within it. Elgg and WPMU are better as individual spaces, with varying degrees of built-in aggregativeness (Elgg has some cool Friends features, WPMU would rely on external aggregation).

So, in assessing plans B and C, has anyone successfully migrated from Drupal to Elgg or WPMU?

I hadn’t heard of this one before, but I stumbled across Deepest Sender while poking through the Firefox extensons database. It’s a XUL app, so should run nice and fast. At first blush, it looks like a pretty handy way to quickly post stuff. It took maybe 10 seconds to configure to point at my WordPress blog here.

The editing interface only appears to let you select one category, though, but nicely handles keyboard input to select a category quickly.

If you can read this, it worked. And you can even edit posts via the Post History interface. Cool!

I was initially looking for the Tab Mix Plus extension (which rocks, btw. get it.) Thanks to Chris for the tips!

In my neverending quest for The One True Blog Management App, I downloaded the latest beta of Qumana. It’s pretty cool. Cross platform now (well, MacOSX and Windows). It’s got its own ad manager system, which I won’t be using, but that’s how they’ll be trying to pay the bills.

The WYSYWYG editor is pretty decent. Haven’t tried to break it yet, though. Let’s see how it handles preformatted code:

public void Main() {
    System.out.println("Trying out Qumana");
}

Hmm… didn’t handle that well… They all seem to bork on that.

Oh, and the app is free (but not Open Source). By default, it adds a “Powered by Qumana” link at the bottom of every post, but that’s apparently removable.

Categories are nicely sorted in the editor interface, so that’s a benefit (still prefer the freeform text entry field in the WP interface via Cat2Tag…)

I’ll give it a shot for awhile and see how it fits. If you can read this, it’s off to a decent start.

Update: It didn’t like Categories, either. And gave XML-RPC errors on posting (although it posted OK). Maybe I’ll hold off on using it for awhile…

Update 2: The pre/code block was created by Qumana as invalid XHTML - it was inserting paragraphs in funky places there. I’ve re-editid this post (in Deepest Sender) to remove the funkiness.

Over the last few days, I’ve been privileged to be a part of some extremely interesting and engaging discussions about the nature of “blogging” in education. The Social Software Salon and Edublogger Hootenany sessions were incredible, unstructured, free-flowing, and unbelievably interesting. Essentially, there were no “presenters” and no “moderators” - both were completely open and lively discussions that I was lucky to be present for.

There were several recurring themes that emerged from these sessions, stated from multiple perspectives by several people with different backgrounds. Here’s my Colesâ„¢ Notesâ„¢ version of these sessions. It’s not unabridged, and if I’m missing (or misrepresenting) anything, I’m going to Trust In Blog that I’ll be corrected. I’m sure I’m forgetting large tracts of the conversations - they were recorded, and will be available as podcasts as soon as Jason and Brian have had time to edit and publish the audio. In the meantime, the wiki pages (linked above) for both sessions provide some background (thanks to Brian for setting those up).

Blogging is not a classroom/class activity

We talked about the current implementation of blogging in the context of a class. Someone mentioned that a student may have 5 different blogs - one for each class - and must post content to each blog in order to get “credit” for their work. And, at the end of the semester, the blogs are nuked from orbit. So, not only is a student’s work divided across several quasi-related locations, it is so closely tied to the Class that in ceases to exist after the Class is over.

But, what we’re hoping to approach is the mythical “lifelong learning” - if content is tied to a Class, that implies that Learning occurs only in that Class. And that learning starts from scratch in the next Class. And for the following cohort.

Learning can occur outside of the classroom

If we assume that Lifelong Learning is a fact of life, we likely have lives outside of the Classroom - even outside of the School. People learn, teach, share, publish, connect, etc. in all parts of their lives. The real value comes from being able to make the connections between the activities - by valuing “non-classroom” activities as much as Classroom ones. One example was about an individual that was extremely active in their community, but that activity wasn’t valued as part of their Education.

The learner is in control

The current model places the Teacher or the School at the centre. Blogs are provided as part of The Institution, tied to a Class. But - what happens when the semester is over? When a student graduates? Moves to a new school? If they don’t own their own online presence, their incentive to making it a meaningful part of their practice of teaching and learning becomes very small. If the learner is at the centre - and they own their own stuff - they are able to use their own content in all parts of their lives, at all times. Instead of having a “class blog,” why not have a class aggregator - pulling in the relevant feeds from the learners in a cohort? Learners publish to their own space (blog, Flickr, del.icio.us, digg.com, etc…) and tag content as being relevant to a course or topic - and have a “class aggregator” do the work of bringing the content together into one place.

By placing the learner at the centre, and assuring that they are in control of their own online presence - and taking advantage of that presence in various contexts (including within and between Classes) we can reinforce (or at least model) Lifelong Learning.

The Teacher/Professor/Instructor is not the boss

By extension, the current teacher-is-boss model isn’t valid. Everyone in a Class is a learner - including the one(s) being paid to be there. Cluetrain applies as much to education as to business. By taking advantage of the connections between all learners, and using the various pieces and types of content that they all publish, the role of the Teacher can shift from being a disseminator of information to a mentor/coach/guide.

It’s about more than blogging

It’s about the read/write web, not blogging. Take advantage of the stuff that learners are publishing in whatever modality they are using. If they have a blog, use that as part of their learning program. If they post photos to Flickr, use them. If they bookmark in del.icio.us, use those. Stories flagged in Digg? Comments on Slashdot? etc…

This stuff doesn’t need IT support

This was a radical idea - but obvious in hindsight. IT provides services that are difficult or impossible for individuals to access outside of The Institution. Email is the classic example. But, the read/write web is composed of tools that enable individuals to publish their own content. IT isn’t required for this to happen. How can The Institution better enable integration of the various bits of content that is being published by the individuals who are associated with it? What if IT and The Institution shifted its focus to that of aggregation rather than publishing?

There was a coComment invitation waiting in my inbox this morning. I activated it, and tested it out on a couple of blogs. It actually works! It provides a simple way to track comments I’ve left all over the place. Very very cool.

I do have a couple questions about the service though. It’s provided by a Swiss startup company - so, will they pull a bait-and-switch and start charging? What are they going to do with the data? These conversation threads could be mined for all kinds of good/evil. Can we opt out of sharing some conversations? Can we delete (not just hide, but nuke from orbit) a monitored conversation?

There is a minor bug when dealing with comments on WordPress blogs that aren’t using the default theme, however. *cough*myblog*ahem* The tracking bookmarklet parses the element of the page to get the title of both the blog and entry. But, with a non-default theme, this parsing may bork, resulting in an item being listed as “Untitled: Untitled” - it still works, but it’s hard to tell which Untitled thread is which…

Regardless, this is one of the coolest, most useful “web 2.0″ innovations I’ve seen. Well done, coComment!

Here’s my “conversations” page: coComment - Blog comments by dnorman

I just saw a link to coComment (via an OReilly blog, IIRC - can’t seem to find the link at the moment) It looks like a way to track comments that you make on various blogs, providing a way to keep on top of conversations distributed throughout the blogosphere.

I’ve been doing a low-tech version of this by tagging blog comments on del.icio.us with “blogcomment” so I can periodically check in on them. But this appears to but some intelligence, or at least some automation, behind the concept.

coComment is in a closed beta, by invitation only. If anyone has the goods and feels like hooking me up, I’d love to take it for a test drive. I’m just sayin’…