Friday, October 17, 2003

More than one tool round here. Dan talks about a basic strategy for providing faculty web presence. And notes that the main problem is "many of the discussions are not so much about which tools to provide, but about which one tool to provide". Oh, you don't know how much I agree! Here are his 3 prongs: A basic and easy web-based content-management system is a first priority. Most faculty members simply need to create a few web pages that can quickly and easily be updated, and possibly post some other file types for downloading. Frontier from Userland (and its Manila component) is the one I am most familiar with. Yes, it is a "blogging" tool, but it does a lot more than that, and I can vouch for the ease with which faculty can adopt this solution. A learning management system is needed by some faculty members, particularly those who provide standalone online courses and/or need integrated grading features. In my view, while this type of software is necessary, it is not the best thing for most faculty members. Support for "traditional" uploaded static sites is needed for those who use web design tools (e.g. Dreamweaver) to create their sites. Fewer and fewer faculty members will choose this path, but it is fairly inexpensive to support them. [dan mitchell's teachnology weblog] [incorporated subversion] 11:07:09 PM

B.C. Educational Technology Users Group 'Blogtalk'. http://etugblog.typepad.com/blogtalk/ Today is officially the last day so I can finally let the cat out of the bag for those who haven't seen this yet. As I mentioned in an earlier post, for the past two weeks I've been helping to facilitate, along with 4 other educators from B.C., an 'online discussion' on possible uses of blogs in education for the B.C. Educational Technology Users Group (ETUG). Many of you will recognize at least one of the other facilitators, Brian Lamb from UBC... [EdTechPost] 11:05:34 PM