Summary: I am happy to say that Radio is back online. I can now publish there and setup a transition to new CMS site between now and next April.

My troubles began when I tried to merge entries, written while in the Northwest, with entries already on my desk machine at home. Problems involved loss of articles (which I have found and saved ) and nonpublishing. Nonpublishing amounts to inability to send in to the Radio Userland server. (I was able to Publish to my home site).

I must have attempted 20 variations of repair and finally left off because my two Summer classes needed work. Wierdly, the outliner did publish and was used up to actual class start. (I provide it because I think it more accessible when in outline form ala the html-ized outlines that Marc Barrot created for Radio).

[My interim blogging tool has been Blosxom. I have used it to keep up and develop skills but I don[base ']t think it will be the new home . I am looking to set up one or more CMS, since and I cannnot see that Blosxom yet has the ability to be a flexible and deep CMS to the degree, say , that Plone, PHPNuke or Mambo I am planning to move on. Still, I have been enjoying adding plugin features to Blosxom, one by one; the experience has enhanced my OS X literacy and enhanced my already serious respect for what Rael (at http://www.blosxom) and collaborators [plugins] have accomplished.]

Yesterday, as a means to verify and re-examine the problem I put together a one line post and mailed it in. Whah!!?? It published. Then sent in another entry and that, too, published. Am back in business, at least on the portable, and must now think out a transition plan involving my old site, tranferring best of old entries and getting the word out to any that made a habit of reading what I wrote.

Summary: There should be some way to document both the perceived and 'real' benefits of blogging from both teacher and student points of view; Online surveying technologies come to mind for the perceived benefits; online surveys accompanied by tests, online or not, would allow access to both.

As Jeremy Williams and Dan Mitchell point out, there are bloggers out there who are spreading the Word with great energy! Perhaps old fashioned rigor would provide very useful information!

Exploring the Use of Blogs as LearningSpaces in the Higher Education Sector (pdf).

The authors write that "the chief purpose of this paper is to comment, critically, on the potential for blogs as 'learning spaces' for students within the higher education sector," which it does with an examination of how blogs have been used at Harvard Law School and Queensland University of Technology. Some interesting bits, including some reflection on the dearth of refereed literature about blogging (the edu-bloggers tending to put the work in their blogs instead, where it is subject to a rather more vigorous screening). "The fact of the matter is that blogging, for all intents and purposes, is a grassroots phenomenon. For this reason, academic bloggers, if they are true to their ideals, may be more concerned about spreading their message in the blogosphere than in the 'Journal of Obscure Facts'! ... blogging seems to be working in practice, but does it work in theory?" Some empirical research, which may as well be published in an academic journal, where standards are lower, since a sample of 51 self-selected people wouldn't stand a moment's scrutiny in the blogging community. By Jeremy B Williams and Joanne Jacobs, Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, Summer, 2004.

[OLDaily] [Dan Mitchell's Teachnology Weblog]