Didn’t take your ideas as a criticism at all, just a smart examination of the implications of the project and the value of it. I was really just applauding how much better you framed the power of such an experiment than I ever could. Having someone like you pick up on an idea like this just gives me that much more ammunition to take to the higher-ups–so thank you! And forgive me if I always respond to everything, it is a compulsion i am learning to deal with

Please don’t interpret that portion as criticism of the idea – as I said I think it’s a fascinating proposal. I included the reference to 3rd party services as more as more of a contingency in the event the first one was knocked back.

Having used WordPress.com in particular I know that there are fairly strict limitations on which plugins you’re able to use, and what you can or can’t embed in the blog. Seesmic is a prime example there. You can’t even embed the player – let alone the video comment plugin. So you might say that use of the free service comes at a price.

In the case of UMWblogs, its nature as a hub or portal to a wider community is a real strong point too – and one that you wouldn’t have to nearly the same degree in an external host. Sure WP.com has thousands of blogs, but there isn’t the same sense of a shared wider experience or perspective (e.g. students of UMW) to help draw people together.

And as you say, the exercise: “is far more of a conceptual opportunity to re-enforce how important it is for folks to have their own space in this day and age to frame their online identities which are an amalgam of the work they do and who they are.”

The knowledge of how you map a custom domain to a personal blog may not be widely apparent as well, so having it be done by the university might be the only way it actually is. Sort of planting a seed that leads to further inquiry and exploration.

I’m late for work right now though so I’d better cut this short.

Great idea!

Cheers,

Mike

To be realistic though, a blog hosted at Blogger or WordPress.com could address the same issues of continuity and to a lesser degree personal ownership. So in that sense it could be considered to be a middle ground which is easier to set-up and requires no financial investment (for either organisations or individuals).

And I think you are right, folks could and should do this already with their own blog space at a free service–or ideally host their own. The issue about mapping it on UMW Blogs as opposed to mapping their domains on wordpress.com or typepad almost seems like we are trying to pull them into our creepy tree house. As I imagine it the option for them to use another service would be open from the outset of such an experiment. We already enable and encourage students and faculty to blog from where they are (not necessarily UMW Blogs) and use plugins like FeedWordPress to pull their work into our community. Though, by creating UMW Blogs, we have also created the impetus for them to create their blogs on our platform, partially out of convenience and partially out of control–I freely admit that.

I think of this as a kind of intermediary space to push the power of these tools and show what is possible, and I think ultimately UMW Blogs will become less and less a focus as more and more students and faculty start thinking along the lines you frame here. Keeping a consistent URL so that conversations aren’t broken, and connections aren’t disrupted is absolutely key in this regard. I think this experiment (if it happens) is really to get at that fact, and make it apparent why having one’s own space that follows one’s work over time (well beyond their time at our school) is so important. So, it is far more of a conceptual opportunity to re-enforce how important it is for folks to have their own space in this day and age to frame their online identities which are an amalgam of the work they do and who they are.

But, you say this all far better then me in this post. This is a really great example of taking a half-baked idea and focusing on the issues that matter to make it that much more coherent and powerful–so thank you!