44 New Blogs added to the Blogosphere

In my on-campus Transforming Contemporary Culture class this fall, I required each student to create a blog for their class work. For maybe 2/3 of the class, this was their first jump into creating an online presence. The web-savvy remaining 1/3 each created an additional blog that focused on the work for this class.

I'm also giving wikis a front and center place in the course -- each student is part of a team that creates a wiki resource that they update weekly. In the end, the goal is that these projects will not only serve the students as learning tools but that these wikis would remain as a resource to churches.

Consequently, the course is paperless. All personal work and their subsequent peer and instructor reviews are completed through blogs, and all collaborative work through wikis and classroom time.

Its been an exciting road, and we are just in the second week. We are all on a steep learning curve, but I think we are in for quite a ride.

Feel free to check us out and tell me what you think. Here is the class blog (also on the left sidebar): http://thebolgblog.typepad.com/mp520_f05/

Comments

[nate]

Have you considered setting up something like drupal:

http://drupal.org

So that you can host the blogs, wikis, etc on a central site you control?

It would mean being able to see all the logs and prevent tampering etc, which in my mind would be important for preserving the grades offered in this course. Drop me an email if you want some more specific info on drupal.

Nate

[Ryan Bolger]

Nate, thanks for the input on Drupal. I'm sure that it may be a good way to go long-term. I'll need to look at that as we get further down the road a bit.

[Lars Rood]

Ryan- Great idea and I'm interested in seeing how it works out. You are leading the future. Or, the future is what your moving into. Anyways thanks for pushing us...

[John W. Morehead]

This Blog and wiki work with the students sounds great, Ryan, and it will provide a lasting resource to the web savvy church.

I recently met with Curt Watke of the Intercultural Institute for Contextual Ministry, and he is working to create a missional database that draws upon wiki technology. I and others will be working in the area of spiritual neotribes. See this fascinating resource at www.neotribalwiki.net.

[Ryan Bolger]

John, thanks for the tip -- fascinating.

[KC]

That's awesome! Kind of an online seminary blog thang...that other east coast seminary will soon catch up with the idea...

[Nick Connell]

You rock, Ryan. Always pushing boundaries and moving into new territory.

[Tim Griffin]

That is a very cool idea... one that has been dreamed about by a few folks at the missions trainning center I attend.

Way to go!!
I look forward to reading the thoughts at the 44 new blogs ;-)
Tim

[Alister Cameron]

Another Fuller graduate and keen observer of church planting movements (so not just the Emerging Church) is Steve Addison. I've been helping him set up his blog, and he's now going gangbusters!

He's posting here.

[Nick P.]

I know your point isn't to get off on a nerdy tangent, but I would say it would be pretty simple to have a web site (perhaps even on your typepad account or by setting up another) take RSS feeds from all of your students' blogs.

If nothing else, you could set up a bloglines account (www.bloglines.com) and easily view when any of your students post. You could also make that folder publicly shared and that would server the purpose of providing one stop to view everyone's blogs.

[Ryan Bolger]

Nick, thanks for your ideas. We set up a bloglines acct that allowed the TA and I to read students posts. I don't recall if I made it public or not --

Currently I am trying to see how to weave del.icio.us/social bookmarking into the the next class...Ideas?

[Nick P.]

Glad to hear you already thought of a good way to do the grading.

re: del.icio.us - I actually just signed up for an account w/ them. One solution, which I think would be poor, would be to get one account for the class to share. That could cause conflicting logins and isn't good for security.

What you could do is have a special (very unique) tag that you asked for your students to put in all their links.

So you could ask all your students to add a tag of BolgerSystematicTheologyTwo (I have no idea what you teach) to all of their posts. Then you can see everyone's bookmarks by looking at
http://del.icio.us/tag/BolgerSystematicTheologyTwo

You do have a danger that if people outside the class knows the tag they can tag things if they want, and that would be added into your page. So I could bookmark HomeStarRunner.com as BolgerSystematicTheologyTwo and you wouldn't be able to change it really.

There may be more elegant solutions out there, but that sounds like it could be a winner.

Actually one other possibility would be this: http://del.icio.us/help/for . It might require some more work on your part, but this allows you to 'send' a bookmark to someone. You could ask all your students to send their bookmarks to ne account, and then you can log into that account and save them all in one place. That provides a more secure way - no chance of non-classmates getting in without you specifically allowing them.