David Scotson

Is there not a difference between someone else having to approve every post, and having an expert that you can consult with on tricky subjects and who occaisionally catches you when you don't know you are making a mistake?

It's like the difference between educationalist giving their content to a technologist who then puts it on the web for them, and a technologist providing Moodle and getting out of the way, until they are asked or feel that they can help. From certain angles it seems like a matter of degree, but in my experience it makes all the difference because of ownership.

Note also that my link to Sun's Policy was about the public, conversational nature of blogs rather than my point about ownership. For example Martin says that some Moodle's will have a potential internal audience of tens of thousands. However if, like most blogs, your focus is incredibly narrow, then your potential audience may be only one in a million (if that).

The Sun blog policy suggests that you talk about what you know and people who are interested will come even if your speciality or interest is something utterly esoteric. Being asked to write regularly (rather than follow your own schedule and interest) for an audience that is unlikely to be interested again strikes me as un-bloggy, though obviously you can use blog technology to do this with ease.

The trackback angle is intersting as I had heard that Trackback is Dead with Technorati, Bloglines, Tagging and Folskonomies tipped as the new contenders for linking to related posts, but I would have thought that they mostly make sense in a globally distributed sense i.e. if I'm only linking to other posts within the same Moodle then each post is sitting on the same machine, in the same database table even, so a complicated trackback mechanism that allows you to send messages from one machine to another over the web is unnecessary. Rather, as I think has already been discussed, a 'blog this' button could be added into the interface just as easily as a 'comment on this' and behind the scenes the two would be essentially identical.

In other words, trackbacks allow you to build what is essentially a distibuted discussion forum, once you take the distributed element away, most differences from a discussion forum are primarily vestigial artifacts of the previously distributed nature.

A final point about the spectrum of conversational tools in Moodle: I've occasionally wondered why Moodle doesn't (optionally) allow comments on resources, as it does on Glossary entries and, I guess, Blogs. This technique is often used to build on, annotate and even correct online documents such as the PHP reference.

I mentioned earlier that, to me, non-public Blogs don't make much sense. This is a link to the Sun Microsystems Guidance for blogging which kind of describes that perspective:

http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/05/02/Policy

Because further up the discussion people were talking about ownership and control as defining what is a blog. For example, someone can start a forum thread like this one, and be considered an equal with the various respondents. On a blog other commenters are more like guests. Indeed this imbalance is often demonstrated by the commenters having to submit to having their comments moderated by the blog host before publication.

I was under the impression that only recently (if at all) did wordpress support what are generally called 'group blogs' where an editorial team, rather than a single voice is presented. Holding back your own thoughts until you decide they are ready to publish is substantially different from having your work approved via an editorial workflow systems that many CMSs (C for content, not Course) implement and which, I assume from your comments, Wordpress now supports. (edit: it turns out I was confusing multiple-blogs, with multiple authors, the latter of which Wordpress has done for a while and with some degree of complexity since 1.5, as far as I can tell--the codex is unreachable at the moment)

Blogs are of course close cousins of Content Management Systems, with a genuine and personal voice being generally held to be a part of that difference, even though the underlying technology is the same (or at least capable of being the same as it expands it's features set, perhaps at some point beyond blogging alone).

As another example, there's been a lot of discussion about corporate blogging recently, where members of staff of an organisation are encouraged to engage with the wider world via blogs. I don't think I've ever heard anyone suggest that company lawyers or managers should be allowed to pre-approved entries and I suggest this is because it would be un-bloggy to allow someone else to intermediate the conversation in this way. Instead each person generally has their own personal blog, which perhaps is aggregated into a planet.

I guess my main point is that what Wordpress can do, doesn't define a blog, as there's plenty of blog software out there that does less, and proudly proclaim themselves as blogs. Just like one of those fancy Forums doesn't define a Forum, and Moodle's Forum does less than they do, because Moodle has access to Wiki's and Blogs and Resources etc. and so doesn't have to do everything within one tool. Do we want the best blog, or a simple blog, or maybe a special educational style blog, or one that includes the sum of the features of every blog tool out there? Even if that overlaps to a great degree with other elements of Moodle?

Answering my own question by looking at the demo site linked to above.

It appears there are two modes, moderated or not.

If not moderated then the student blogger makes the decision of the scope of the blog post (public, course-wide etc.)

If moderated then the teacher approves each post, and at the same time chooses the scope of publication (public etc.)

This seems relatively simple, though somewhat restrictive. It does however raise the question of whether this is a blog or not?

Maybe someone should start a wiki page (or two) on the differences and similarities between Moodle forums/blogs/wikis/glossaries and standard blogs.

Note that blogs, unless you allow students the choice to publish in any way they see fit, must always be moderated by teachers. (This capability could easily be added to forums too, I'm guessing that it wouldn't though, as it somewhat disrupts the conversation).

I also note that the 'private blogs' that I thought were bizarre, make much more sense when referred to as 'drafts' that can be later published.

That's not quite what I meant.

I'm not overly familiar with Moodle Blogs but I had heard that the 'blogger' had some level of control over their own output. I was wondering whether the creator of the course had a similar degree of control, or if they merely had the option to say either you can blog or nothing at all, with no options in between, say 'only non-public blogging' (which would seem appropriate for young children).