Jason: I’m not, to be honest, a huge LJ fan, although I’m not against it. The major reason has little to do with the formal design of the system, and a lot to do with the social expectations built up around it.

LJ, like Xanga, as many users will claim is “not for blogging.” I find this claim to be very silly, but it indicates, I think, something important. LJ users do not think of their blogs as public voices but as ways of communicating with their friends.

I suspect we differ on this, but I want to foster among my students the idea of *public* blogging, and many who are already LJ bloggers can’t make that shift. Moreover, I think both kinds of blogging are valuable; I am sympathetic to those who don’t want to mix the kind of public blogging I’m interested in with the kind of private blogging they (meaning, especially, undergrad-aged folks) they are now increasingly familiar with.

Courseware is anti-blogging because it locks the user into a system does not extend beyond the boundaries of the course or institution, right? Well, WordPress locks the user in too, but that’s a different question. Not to mention Drupal :) Courseware is course admin. Blogs are personal learning and communication environments. And never the twain shall meet… me thinketh.

Blackboard has floated the idea of a blog feature on multiple occasions, both inside the company and to clients. And, honestly, it has never gotten a lot of interest from clients. Mostly the response from clients has been “What’s a blog?”

So you can put your suspicions aside; the entry is not part of a pre-marketing push. Blogs are one of many feature additions we’re considering for future releases, but no decision has been made or timeline set. The entry simply was yours truly trying to solicit feedback on the idea from the readers of our corporate blog.

Unless we have the critical mass of a fairly large number of teachers wiling to work with blogging, I don’t think we will see as significant a return. The idea of an entire department integrating blogs into their course designs, and students using their blogs to personally integrate across courses and semesters, is a very exciting one for me.

I think we over-estimate the intensity and drive it takes to be a regular writer/reflector. Those I find who stay with it over the long haul have a mild variant of OCD that creates a “need” / “desire” to blog… will that drive exist for a larger general population? I’ve set up a fair number of blogs for folks in our system that start with a little spark, and slowly fizzle to a dull silence. Is blogging for everyone… or is everyone for blogging?

I would urge any institution with a site license (or contemplating one) for one of the major CMS tools (Blackboard, WebCT) to consider the wisdom of contributing to SAKAI now to make it a production-level reality as opposed to paying licensing fees for many years to come for a CMS that they have no control! (what’s a highly extensive API when you can get down and dirty with the code… or hire someone to do it!?)

Actually, it might be possible to do that fairly easily if there was a simple form that allowed you to add yourself to a feed. That may be the way to go.

But two weeks brings blosjom integrated in Apple’s “Tiger” OS (server version). I’ll try that and see how it works. The trick is a) making it open, which is easy, AND b) making account creation and setup easy, which could be automated but will still likely be a pain if it isn’t “through the web” like blogger.

The bigger story is keeping track of all those blogs – that’s where a *really good* RSS reader makes it possible to keep up with 110 blogs. NetNewsWire did that for me…

“(no, it’s only easy now because you are a geek)” :D

More seriously though this is spot on… but the only way to escape it, I reckon, is to look at the whole philosophy that underpins the rise of the 1-size CMS…

Ways and means…

Cheers, James