using blogs at Earlham

So, now you're all probably raring to go ahead and start blogging with your class. But before you dive in, you'll want to create your own personal blog to mess about with and get a feel for using the tool.

Earlham uses the Moveable Type blog system and it's integrated with Earlham's "authentication" system by means of some nifty hacks. What this means is that the ECS System Wizzo John Littell sets things up so that you can access your Blog with the same username and password that you use for everything else on the Earlham system. If you're at ESR, you'll contact Zach or Steve Spyker and they will set you up with a username and password for the Moveable Type system they have running on their server. So:

  1. email John Littell (littejo at earlham dot edu) and ask him to set you up as a blog author. Indicate your possible interest in blogs for the whole class so that there are no surprises.
  2. follow the creating weblog instructions to:
    1. set up a folder in your web area
    2. set its permissions
    3. create the blog
    4. set some preferences

      You may notice that a bunch of web pages get created when the weblog is built. In fact, every time you "rebuild" your Blog new web pages are created and moved around.

      You may also realise that you can have more than one blog. This means that you can have a blog for as many classes as you like and your own separate personal blog.

    5. Adding stuff ('content') is simply a matter of clicking on the New Entry and filling in the form:

  3. Access - how do I see my Blog page and where do I go to add stuff? This can be a wee bit confusing because there are two different locations.
    1. Let's take an example. I have set up a Blog I called Instructional Technology. I created it in a folder called "it" inside my "www" folder on my home drive. On the PC my home drive is H: so the Blog is at H:\www\it. Since my www folder is accessible on the web from the address "http://www.earlham.edu/~markp", the I.T Blog will be at "http://www.earlham.edu/~markp/it". For a fuller explication of viewing your page on the web. This is how students, or anyone else, can get to your page.
    2. To add stuff to any of your blogs you go to one place:
      http://www.earlham.edu/moveabletype/mt.cgi and login and choose the blog you want to work with. Somehow the system figures out who owns what!
    3. I can't remember that!
      For each Blog make a Bookmark or Favourite (on Netscape 7 you can select Bookmark -> File Bookmark : choose Create In: Personal Bookmark Folder to get it to appear on the personal bar)
  4. Student access. How will my students find their blogs? Firstly, they can use the same technique that you used in 3a above. But to make matters simpler you can have them email you the URL to their Blog and then add it to a list of links in you own class blog. That way, they only have to bookmark a single location and they can easily find each other's blogs to add comments.
In the spring semester 2003 Janet "Scottish person" Russell used Earlham's Moveable Type blog with some groups in her "Street Level Science" class. Here they are: