The College of Arts and Humanities here has started a new educational technology newsletter which takes the form of an MT blog. It’s exciting to see blogs beginning to make institutional inroads like this, at least when it’s your institution. Oh, and they were kind enough to mention one of my spring classes.
I said the following:
Posted by mgk at February 8, 2004 08:50 PMI find Movable Type blogging more flexible, easier to maintain, and more
aesthetically attractive than regular courseware. Since everything on the site—the syllabus, assignments, discussion topics, etc.—is built around individual blog entries, cross-referencing and linking them is effortless. Everything is also open to student comment; we’re only a little more than a week into the semester and the blog already has over 50 student-authored contributions. Students, I’d imagine, find the blog less intrusive than constant course-related email in their inbox, and they get to see their ideas instantly “published” on the Web. Moreover, since the blog, unlike many courseware systems, is itself part of the open Web, the possibility exists that others—the general public, colleagues of mine in related fields at other institutions—can read, comment, and interact with the students (this has also happened). The site as you see it is a mixture of a standard Movable Type installation, a set of wonderful, free courseware templates designed by Elizabeth Lane Lawley at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and some further refinement and tinkering of my own. If more courses at UMD had blogs they would quickly begin to cross-pollinate and we would see exciting new webs of knowledge spreading through the campus’ cyberspace.
You might also inform them about MT-Blacklist. Not that the following doesn't give me great amusement:
http://www.development.umd.edu/ARHU/archives/000276.html
Posted by: Jason at February 12, 2004 12:25 PM | Link to CommentAh -- Blank Main Page Syndrome. That's one of the many weird design decisions that went into Movable Type: in an out-of-the-box install, the main page displays the last "n" days' worth of posts, and "n", I seem to remember, defaults to 7. This means that you end up with a blank front page if you neglect to post to the weblog for seven consecutive days.
Happily there's a fix: set the Main Index template to display the "n" most recent posts -- those will stay put. Simply modify the MYEntries tag and add the "lastn" switch, eg:
[MTEntries lastn="5"]
(angle brackets for square brackets, of course)
Posted by: Rudolf at February 14, 2004 04:17 AM | Link to Comment