WebCT and *ahem* “blogs” !?!
2 02 2006Today Mark Hallam from WebCT spoke at the Annual Teaching & Learning Forum held at the University of Western Australia. Mark previewed a number of WebCT’s next steps including ePortfolio tools and blogs. However, on close questioning, Mark admitted that WebCT’s blogs aren’t really blogs at all because…
1. They are locked behind WebCT’s password protection.
2. They cannot be made publicly visible (there is a complex workaround whereby students could copy there WebCT-blog entries to their ePortfolio and then allow anonymous access via a guest password, but WebCT cannot bypass the password stage).
3. Comments can only be made by internal WebCT users using the same installation of WebCT.
4. The “blogs” don’t have RSS feeds.
Mark actually admitted that blogs are already doing everything that bloggers want, and that WebCT was not providing a blogging tool, but rather a tool which usurped the name for something “blog-like” because that’s what many universities are asking for. For WebCT, I fear, their “blogs” won’t cut it because what people want are blogs … not a different tool which borrows the name.
I suspect WebCT’s efforts in this area are fairly similar to James’ report on Blackboard’s latest “developments”, even thought both teams are still, in theory, developing their tools independently.
(Despite all that, WebCT’s sponsorship of the Teaching & Learning Forum did provide a really good barbeque and drinks, so kudos to them for that, at least!)
Hiya Tama,
Noticed that the WebCT rep hadn’t deigned to comment (in partial opposition to what you’re saying here) on your blog but has on mine… hmmmmm.
Anyway, if you’d like to comment here it is.
[...] I’ve commented on this over at James’ post, but I thought I’d repost here: While I’m cynical about WebCT’s motives in all this (it’s a bit like the sinking Titanic deciding to order a whole lot more lifeboats at the time they hit the iceberg) given that many universities *are* demanding a blog tool within WebCT, I’ve got to say that an Elgg plugin/interface which seemlessly moves between the two (as far as I can tell) is a far better option than the internal blog tool we’ve been discussing in the past few weeks. Having a fully functional blog tool like Elgg will, to my mind, encourage the use of blogs per se and may, indeed, lead a number of people to the conclusion that Elgg might be one of the core tools they want rather than WebCT. Perhaps WebCT/Elgg will lead to Elgg/Moodle without the diruptions of completely alien systems. [...]