Bloggin Comes to Harvard: Harvard has hired Dave Winer to help the students and faculty create weblogs. Dave is the author of Scripting News and founder of to UserLand Software (makers of weblog software, Radio). The idea is that weblogs can be used to unite different parts of Harard community by increasing information flow.
I have been wanting something similar at Waterloo for a while. I feel that a University is a perfect example of a place where a weblogging community could florish.
Weblogs could be used by teachers to create course website that can easily even by profs with little tech knowledge. As was stated in a newsgroup post by Kevin F. Johnston, Blackboard tries to do too much. Documents (such as Word, PDF, PS, etc) can easily be linked to from a simple website. While securtiy may be an issue, it is possible to put simple password security around files. Weblogs provide a good structure for content, making it easy for a prof to post announcements or links to information she feels would interest students. Sure newsgroups can be and are used by some profs. However it is easy for a prof's comments to be drowned in a ton of comments by students. Weblogs also allow for more personal expression from a prof and allows for a much richer user interface than a newsgroup.
Weblogs could also be used by clubs and other university organizations to provide up-to-date information to students. There is a lot of stuff that happens on-campus that few people know about, and currenly getting informed is not easy. The use of weblogs along with RSS and news aggregators could make it easier for students to be informed. More on RSS and news aggregators later.
Posted by Matt Langeman at February 26, 2003 10:30 PM