PSU Blogging

Blogs at Penn State – The Real Thing!

/ Cole Camplese / 3 Comments

So this semester (after about a year of work) the Blogs at Penn State will be used in classrooms to support online conversations (and probably all sorts of other stuff). We decided after much debate to restrict the pilot to 1500 people, but probably have the capacity to jump to 2000 if requests and numbers continue to flow in. In all honesty we could probably handle more, but the point of a pilot is to learn. We’ll be doing a while bunch of that this semester! As I type there are students clicking the links for the “self-enroll” process so they can start blogging right away within PSU. To me it is very exciting — the Daily Collegian even ran a little story about the new opportunity this morning.

We are already evaluation Moveable Type 4 as it offers all sorts of new features we think will be critical. We are also starting to build our list of features we think we should be providing when this thing hits production status and the whole of the University can have at it. One thing I am noticing is that the Blogs at Penn State Community Hub is picking up steam — people are showing up and posting questions and answers. It is very cool to see the community rise up and work to support itself. One of the things I thought I’d link to is a page that has a bunch of links to help faculty get the most out their blogging experience. I’ll be reporting numbers and reaction as they roll in. Exciting stuff!

Twitter is Evolving … A Bit

/ Cole Camplese / 2 Comments

I know I haven’t been posting all that much here … I have been spending most of my time over at my PSU Blog getting ready for the launch of the Blogs at Penn State project. Just today, Brad Kozlek setup about 100 users to extend the pilot offering … it is getting crazy. I am predicting a solid Fall turnout — maybe a 1,000 PSU Blog bloggers on campus. I have no idea what students will do, but I bet over a two year cycle there will be some nice traction. Either way, keep an eye here for a big post exposing the whole process — from selection of tools to rollout strategy. It does feel very gratifying to know we are on the verge of potentially changing he way faculty, staff, and students perceive web publishing.

Ok, on to the topic of the post. My use of Twitter has been reduced to a few tweets per day … I think that is a result of a very busy schedule and a bit of personal backlash towards transparency. I’ve been trying to focus on a less is more strategy as I organize my thoughts for a couple of speaking opportunities that have come my way … trying very hard to organize all these random thoughts into a not so random stream of thinking for an audience is something I haven’t had to do in a year or so. I have spent a ton of time working my space here on campus and haven’t ventured out to give many talks other than a web 2.0 infrastructure talk at Apple a few months back — and to tell you the truth that was 9/10th briefing and not so much a talk. Anyway, back to the topic … am I rambling again?

I have noticed that Twitter is evolving a bit. I have been noticing for quite some time that those people who have been a part of the Twitter stream for several months are changing the way they are using he environment. Most of the people I talk to are saying things like, “I am using Twitter in a more intelligent way …” I would have to agree that I am finding real value in Twitter that I didn’t expect in the early days of my lustful utilization. Allan Levine has an amazing piece of infoporn that describes the typical lifecycle of Twitter use … I am completely there with him on that.

I am seeing more and more people use it to invoke conversation between individuals and within a community. I am seeing that many of the people in my friends list are always keeping either Twitter itself or Twitterific open all the time … stalking tweets to gain inspiration from their trusted sources or direct pointers to things that must be explored. Last night while watching a few new friends move up the Levine Twitter Law Curve I saw a new feature emerge — the “in response to” tag under a tweet. This to me signifies a new realization on the part of the Twitter developers that this tool can serve as a powerful organizational/friend/social communication tool. They have essentially invoked public IM in a way I never thought people would want to engage in. Conversations can now be part of a massive broadcast or directed to an individual — but both are in the open. Is this the result of the whole open, connected, and social space many of us are trying so hard to be a part of or is it simply an ego trip — is it simply an, “I want everyone to see my thoughts” trip? At the end of the day, my blog is open to everyone, but the way Twitter works it feels (and potentially is) tied more directly to the community I am a part of. No idea, but I am interested in the thoughts out there … maybe I should have Tweeted this — oh wait, the Twitter WP plugin will do that for me.

in_response_twitter2.png

Should We be Worried?

/ Cole Camplese / 11 Comments

As we race towards the release of our Penn State Blog pilot I am bumping my head into the same question over and over again — will our students care? This isn’t really something I am being asked by people in general, this is one of those nagging questions that one of the various voices in my head is repeating. We all know that students do live fairly digital lives and the fact of the matter is that they are doing it more and more — especially when it comes to participation in social sites. Not sure if you’ve heard of MySpace, Facebook, or YouTube but PSU students have. Here’s just a couple of data points for you from a November PSU PULSE Survey on social software usage at our University:

  • 83% of Penn State students use Facebook (with the number at 90% at the University Park campus)
  • 50% of Penn State students report having a MySpace account
  • 85% of Penn State students report watching video on YouTube

So if you look at those numbers you can see they are consumers and producers of the digital lifestyle. You might argue that simply watching a video isn’t really taking part, but if you consider that about 16% of our students have posted video you see that there is a solid percentage contributing (BTW, at 80,000+ students 16% is a nice number). The results of the survey are not really surprising, but they do paint a very interesting picture for us to build a case for new services and opporutnities at the University — or do they?

At second glance I have to return to my question of will they show up if we build it. I am fumbling over this specific question and I am obviously going to take a wait and see attitude. Will they come out of their existing spaces to participate? Probably not … but the better question is if we can come up with reasons to pull them out and participate in our environments. The funny thing is that when I say “our” environment I am actually talking about their space. We want to publish their blogs/media/stuff into their personal webspace so they can actually take it with them when they go. I wonder how Facebook feels when you say, “thanks for the free account, but I’d like to take my stuff with me.” I can’t imagine they make it all that easy.

Another strange thing going on with all this is the Facebook’s CEO recent comments about becoming a publishing giant … relying on new tools within the FB environment to encourage its users to create and contribute stories. I found it both very interesting and disturbing. I can say from experience that it is very hard to maintain identity at too many places … in other words, blogging in both the FB and at their other PSU sites may be a lot to ask. They spend a lot of time in the FB — consider that about 25% report spending five hours or more a week in there! I know from other results that is more than they report spending on homework and is close to half of the typical weekly class load!

So, the question is being asked again in my head — will our students care? I’d like to know what you all think and I am really interested in seeing what we do about making it important to them. Or should we?

The META Blog

/ Cole Camplese / Leave a comment

I am getting really excited about the potential for our PSU Blog Project … just last week we made some significant progress that I am hoping will lead us to the potential of a pilot for the Spring — maybe a specialized call for a series of Engagement Projects. What is great about that is the fact that I am teaching and could use our environment to support my efforts. I’m working on a post that will highlight parts of the PSU Blog solution … for now I have a question.

If I give all my students blogs in the new PSU space I will want to aggregate all their posts into one META Blog for the class. I know it can be done, but what is the easiest way to pull it off? Anyone have advice for me?

Back to Blogging at a Big University

/ Cole Camplese / 8 Comments

Even as I am neck deep in a podcasting and iTunes U implementation here at PSU, I am gearing up for the next BIG project for us. That project is figuring out how to create a platform can support all sorts of web-based content production — I had written a post about when is a blog not a blog that seemed to get quite a few people thinking and talking here at my campus and beyond. The big thing that we have started to really explore and explain is that the tools that support this whole blogging thing really have the power to support a lot of what is going on on our campuses. Let’s see, ePortfolios? Yep. Blogs? Obviously. Personal note taking? Sure. What else? Well, anything that relies on faculty, staff, or students creating and publishing content.

Just yesterday I was lucky enough to be in a meeting with an amazingly open-minded faculty member who was asking for a blog platform to support his writing course. No problem … but, the big thing here is that we were joined by the people who actually support enterprise applications on my campus — you know the smart guys who think in terms of 100 thousands users and routinely deliver. They were there and it made me think bigger about what we can do to offer a single solution to a single faculty member with a tiny class (25 students) that would teach us about how we could scale to say 5,000 faculty and 80,000 students.

If you look back at some of the requirements we were looking at a few months ago the last time the blog team got together, not much has changed. It still needs to stand up to the pounding that an application like this will get on a big campus — but now we are thinking a whole lot about building a platform that enables all the things we need. We are going to try and build some sort of personal content management solution that can support blogging, portfolios, personal web pages, resumes, syllabi, you name it. Call it what you will, but in my mind we are attacking a paradigm shift here — I am looking to tear down the WYSIWYG tool du-jour domination on our campus. What we want is a space that empowers people to think about content, information architecture, self expression, and self-reflextion instead of how do I do that with DreamWeaver, then SFTP it, and then … see what I am saying? It is time to move to the next level.

What I am planning to do is task several smaller, more focused groups to look at the needs behind ePortfolios, behind personal note taking spaces, behind personal website tools, and so on. We’ll then roll those requirements up to the larger PCM Platform team and start constructing a solution. We have a starting platform in mind that I think can really get us close “out of the box,” but we’ll see.

As we started to talk, it became clear that we can create a handful of custom apps that will glue our solutions together to create all sorts of novel solutions. If students are publishing into their personal webspaces, then we’ll have to find innovative ways of pulling content into other locations. Here’s an example … if a class is blogging, but they are doing it into their personal spaces, the faculty member will want to aggregate every student’s post into a single class blog that she can control and manipulate as if it were a multi-user blogging environment itself. That is where we build.

I know this is a rambling mess, but my thoughts are still coming together. As they develop, I will share more. Any thoughts for me so far?

When is a Blog not a Blog?

/ Cole Camplese / 26 Comments

I was having a conversation with a colleague of mine last night about the PSU Blog project and we started to consider a strange concept — not branding it a blog service at all. I have recently been talking to people about the notion that more and more students are showing up on campus with personal blogs and are not making the jump out of that space and into University-provided environments. It got us thinking about what a blog really is under the surface … a personal content management system.

Fast forward to this morning and I had the opportunity to sit down with Glenn Johnson from the Dutton eEducation Institute to talk about ePortfolios with a group from Elmira College. Glenn is Penn State’s project manager for our ePortfolio project. You can see some of his work by visiting the Institute’s ePortfolio research site. Glenn showed us some of his data (1, 2) that showed how students are actually beginning to use the 1 GB of space the Univeristy allots us for academic work.

Why do I bring this up? In my mind the power behind common blogging tools can/should/will empower students to store and manage their portfolios. Should they have to care about html and web design? I guess if they want to, but in my mind once you get over the html stuff a personal content management system (like WordPress or MT) is the key to tracking and exposing their intellectual development. All of my notebooks from undergrad were lost in a flooded garage … all my work from grad school is locked in Zip disks labeled “stuff” … how do I take a look back? I have been blogging for several years now and have the unique ability to look back and see where I have been to help inform where I am going. I wish I had access to my thinking from 10-15 years ago.

So, when is a blog not a blog? When you brand it as a personal content management system. Think of the power then … you want to blog, publish, take notes, turn in papers, or do anything in an e-model? The personal content managent system can do it and it can do it so it is stored, managed, searchable, accessible, and easy. There is more to come in this space as I explore what it would mean to pitch this idea this way … anyone have thoughts?