Mathemagenic

Sebastian Fiedler in Please Excuse Me While I Snap for a Moment

James Farmer askes in his new edu-blog:

So why doesn't Blackboard or WebCT or, well, any of them offer effective blogging tools?

I generally maintain an even keel here at Tuttle SVC, but let me shout in the direction of nobody in particular:

It is because they are not paying attention!

Can't the people who develop these applications be bothered to read O'Reilly Network? What do they do all day?

Watch the alpha geeks and steal a march on the fearful! ["Tom Hoffman"]

Hmm... even if they included blogging tools they would be left with the problem of "ownership". Would they allow their users to quickly download the content of a particular blog, move on, and host it with an ISP of their choice? I don't think so...

This brings me two questions:

1. What do you do if you want to have blogs next to LMS? If you want to make blogs part of the course then you should provide some support for them. Most likely solution is to provide some kind of blogging infrustructure, but then you run into similar questions: would your blogging tool allow their users to quickly download the content of a particular blog, move on, and host it with an ISP of their choice?

2. Who owns learner-created content in LMS (e.g. reflections on readings, assignments, feedback)? How learners can take it with them after course ends?

Go to CNN: Blogging goes mainstream and check the poll "Have you ever used a blog?" results. Then I voted 52% were saying "No and I probably won't" :)