Other University blogging systems
Browsing around the other day I managed to end up at a blog on the domain wsu.edu and it got me to thinking about what other universities host blogs.
A quick search of my memory and the web brought up these:
Middlebury College, Vermont, have an MT install that has around 200 or so blogs. Not sure what support there is for this project.
Washington State University has a blogging system, not sure what software it is though. Pleasingly they do provide a home page for the system which lists the most recent entries and provides a few stats:
- Journals – 124
- Posts – 358
- Articles – 40
- Comments – 118
- Trackbacks – 211
The system is run by their Center for Teaching Learning, and Technology. There is more information about their blog project here.
Harvard University have one of the oldest blogging systems out there as it was created by one of the old men of blogging, Dave Winer. It is very difficult to see how active the Harvard blogs are, however, judging by this page there are anything from 2 – 20 blogs updated a day out of a total of 623 blogs. Harvard are running Manilla.
University of Minnesota are also one of the early entrants into the university blogging fray. They are running a custom version of MT again, but much more customised than Middlebury. They also provide some stats:
- Total number of blogs: 771
- Blog authors: 1333
- Blog entries: 9977
- Comments to all blogs: 5350
Unlike the other systems covered so far, they provide a list of latest entries and an A-Z directory of blogs. The system is run by their Libraries, under the watchful eye of Shane Nackerud.
The University of Waterloo have used blogs in a slightly different way. They have installed a custom version of MT also, but have used it to create a very small set of highly controlled publicity type blogs. There are 6 blogs written by different students that are updated relatively often, at least once a week that provide insights into life at the University. A good publicity tool I think, unsurprising when it is run by their communications office.
And then there's us…I'm sure there are other systems out there that I've missed or that are just keeping quiet or private. But I would love to find out if there are more, and perhaps contact some of them to share ideas/experiences.
17 Nov 2004 12:49
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Tags: Blogging
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6 comments by 2 or more people
[Skip to the latest comment]It's amazing just how little there seems to be out there. I had noted that Stanford seemed to be moving towards something (what?) – Stanford1 and Stanford2 with an associated news report .
Maricopa College, Arizona discuss a range of blogging facilities and plans here
There is a scheme at the University of Bergen Norway (with a list of bloggers)
Finally, on Nov 8th a UCL blog noted our existence in this entry.
17 Nov 2004, 14:19
Robert O'Toole
Currently I'm having an email discussion of blogs with Pia Marks, the Arts Faculty E-learning Advisor at Waterloo. I think they are starting to think about doing more with them.
17 Nov 2004, 16:55
Found another one:
Weblogs@upei, University of Prince Edward Island. They are using Drupal as a basis for their system, a PHP CMS. Looks like it is mainly a student built project that is co-ordinated by staff. As of 7th Nov 2004 they had 200 users.
Interestingly Drupal has built in support for a sitewide taxonomy, so everyone categorised their entries in one set of categories that are easily aggregated together, which is nice.
18 Nov 2004, 09:51
Richard Akerman
I found one
link
I have some info on this topic in my (non-collaborative) wiki page
link
20 Nov 2004, 20:14
Case Western Reserve University have Blogs@Case
01 Feb 2005, 10:16
This is was emailed to me from Nil Peterson:
10 Feb 2005, 17:02
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