Whip Blog

There seems to be a bit of excitement with the “New Blogger” that has recently been introduced by Google.  We’ve been using Blogger sites for a couple of years to manage homework and student/subject blogs, and have mostly hosted these on our Department of Education server space via FTP. 

However, a couple of changes are causing us some concern.  First of all, our DOE is “encouraging” us to look for alternatives to FTP – mostly due to security concerns surrounding providing Blooger with a network login/password for server access.

We have used Blogger blogs hosted on blogspot, but the NavBar on the top of these blogs is concerning, especially the random “Next Blog” link.  We have been able to remove the NavBar with a small, and suprisingly easy to install, bit of HTML code, but we are unsure as to what Blogger is saying about this (the TOS is unclear…)

The other is the fact that DOE restricts access to external, web-based, anonymous email services.  This includes Yahoo, Hotmail and G-Mail.  Our teachers are not able to create Google accounts from school that will allow us to migrate homework and student blogs…we are still trying to assess the impact on our use of this service.

We have also used Classblogmeister for some student projects.  It is a nice alternative, but it’s weakness lies when it comes to providing space for uploading files and pictures. 

We are hoping that we might someday have a dedicated server for our schools province-wide for blogs, wikis and other w2.0 tools…but that may still be a ways away…