Humanitiesin the Digital Age

Blogging for Teachingand Research

Jeremy BoggsCreative Lead

Center for History and New Media

What are Blogs?

Weblogs are database-powered, date-driven, syndicated web publishing systems. They let you easily publish “posts” or “articles” to the web, and notify readers of new content. Readers can subscribe to your blog, leave comments, or write posts in response.

Twitter to connect, blogs to reflect

Great Examples‣ CUNY Academic Commons (commons.gc.cuny.edu/) - Blog

network for the City University of New York.

‣ UMWBlogs (umwblogs.org) - Blog network for the University of Mary Washington.

‣ Hypothèses (hypotheses.org) - Research notebooks in the Social Sciences (France).

‣ Planned Obsolescence by Kathleen Fitzpatrick

Individual vs. Group Blogs

Group Blogs

‣ Everyone posts to the same blog, as individual authors.

‣ Course content is much more centralized, makes it a bit easier to manage.

‣ Group blogs may affect types of assignments, number of posts/comments.

Individual Blogs

‣ Each individual has her/his own blog.

‣ Content is much more decentralized, makes news readers more important.

‣ Provides opportunity for individual identity and ownership to develop, “A domain on one’s own.”

Blog Planets

‣ A blog planet is a blog that aggregates and republishes the content from other blogs

‣ Useful for small courses, where students have individual blogs. Can be aggregated in a larger course blog.

Hosted vs. Self-Installed

Self-Installed Blogs

‣ Requires server space, other skills to install and maintain.

‣ Much more freedom for customization; Add whatever plugins and themes you wish. Install as many blogs as you want.

Hosted Blogs

‣ No need for hosting account or server space; The blog is hosted for you.

‣ Little opportunity for customization, installing your own plugins and themes.

‣ Universities increasingly installing their own hosted blog systems.

Contexts

The Teacher‣ Goals—Share course materials and updates, provide students with a space

for students to publish, discuss, experiment with ideas.

‣ Tools

‣ WordPress.com/Edublogs.org

‣ Self-installed blog

‣ ScholarPress Courseware - easy course management

‣ WP Book - turns WP blog into Facebook application

‣ Role Scoper - More granular control over use permissions

‣ User Extra Fields - Add more fields to user registration

Courseware

‣ Easy course management.

‣ Add schedule entries, fill in bibliography items, and create assignments

‣ Calendar syndication

WP Book

‣ Helps make your blog a Facebook application

‣ Another way for students to access course information

Role Scoper

‣ Lets you add more granular permissions to a group blog.

User Extra Fields

‣ Plugin that allows you to add extra fields to user registration

‣ Useful for:

‣ Biography

‣ Links to other accounts

‣ Images

‣ URLs

The Researcher‣ Goals—Create a space for sharing and reflecting on research process, try

out ideas, publish (and take ownership of) ideas early!

‣ Tools

‣ WordPress.com/Edublogs.org

‣ Self-installed blog

‣ CommentPress

‣ Citation Aggregator

‣ Myriad plugins for footnotes.

‣ News reader

CommentPress - Granular comments and discussion

Citation Aggregator - Pull in citations from other services

Thanks!A list of resources, with links to every site mentioned here, is available at:

clioweb.org/wiki/AHA_2010

More Questions? Lets talk later!

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‣ Email: jeremy@clioweb.org

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