Doctor Saves an African Boy, and Vice Versa Nice piece from today’s NY Times…

This past week was a good example of why I like weblogs. Will Richardson started a discussion about student publishing that was picked up by serveral other folks. With comments and trackback the conversation took off. Greg Ritter over at Ten Reason’s Why has listed a nice chronology of the discussion.

This morning Matt Jadud wrote to me to suggest…

The fastest way to hide your content on the webserver (password protect it, etc.) will be to do it via an .htaccess file… (assuming you’re running Apache)

I have been able to have MT save the alternate index file in the seperate directory, now will look into what Matt has suggested. Over the weekend I’ll work to set up a demo…

This past year, I have been on leave from Portland Public Schools, and have had the opportunity to work in Intel’s education web group. The folks in the group are interested in learning more about the use of weblogs in education and have offered to sponsor an informal birds of a feather type meeting at NECC (National Education Computing Conference) in Seattle.

I’m hoping to get an idea of the number of folks that are going to NECC and would also be interested in getting together on Monday evening (June 30, 2003) for an informal gathering of webloggers.

If you plan on attending NECC and would like to hook up with others, please let me know via a comment, trackback or email. Once I get a better idea of those interested, I’ll finalize the location and then post more information.

Erik and Mark Baard: May 2003 Archives

The personal server runs as a Web server on Intel’s 400MHz XScale processor, and connects to PCs and wireless “information beacons” via Bluetooth and wi-fi. The device also takes advantage of the motes radio technology developed at UC Berkeley.

Want said in a recent interview that the uptake in wi-fi, the introduction of Bluetooth into mobile phones, and the miniaturization of storage media will contribute to the commercialization of his new product. At the moment, the personal server is a stand-alone device, but Want envisions it becoming a part of mobile phones, eventually.

Ten
Reasons Why: Student Publishing and Privacy, Take Two In the past week or
so several folks (James Farmer,
Will Richardson, Greg
Ritter) have been talking about the use of weblogs with students and the
publishing of student work. Legal issues revolving around COPPA
and FERPA are being
discussed along with pedagogical issues.

I have been thinking of this as I work with Barbara
Lüscher at Buckman Elementary
and plan for the use of weblogs with her and her 5th grade students this coming
fall. Am thinking that we will want to have students publish two sites. One
public, and one behind a login. The public site could be for final published
pieces. Pieces the student chooses to share with the public . The private site
can be the site where comments are enabled to facilitate peer review, and places
for drafts to be saved. Am trying to figure out how to do this in Movable Type.
With the creation of an alternate index template in Movable Type, and the use
of category tags, I should be able to create two sites with one blog.

One problem I haven’t figured out is how to save the alternate index file into
a private directory, or make it only readable behind a login. I believe LiveJournal
has a feature like this. Regular posts are published to the public site, but
special “friends only” posts can be enabled that only “friends” can view. Something
like this in a weblogging tool would be very nice to have. Some way to designate
public and private posts. Maybe I’ll post something up on the LazyWeb
site.

Update: Tom
Hoffman adds some more to the discussion. Looks like Plone
might be the tool I am looking for… Also just discovered that Movable Type
will do what I want it to do. Just did a little experiment. I created two index
files, one gets saved in the regular directory, one in the private directory.
With a little bit of work using category tags, I should be able to create two
templates. One with all of a student’s posts (the private area) and one with
items in the category that is published to the public site. But I still have to mess with file permissions…

My-Expressions
Expressions! is a hosted media blogging system that makes it easy for anyone to create and maintain their very own photo or media blog. It has been designed and developed by fellow photographers, artists and bloggers to meet your specific needs. [by way of... Ben Hammersley.com]

Hammersley also points to a new blogging tool - Rantelope a standards-compliant weblogging and content management tool written in the object oriented scripting language, python.

We intend to combine the best features of Movable Type™, Blogger™, Radio Userland, and Blosxom (as well as our own ideas!) into a single, flexible system that’s easy for users and developers alike.

Russell Beattie Notebook
Russell Beattie points to an article about the integration of PDA features into cell phones and believes that in the business world more companies will choose to develop applications that hook into phones rather than PDAs. Lots of interesting points comparing cell phones to PDAs…