blogger black hole
Both of my readers probably know that Google’s Blogger service came out of beta in December, but, from my perspective, Blogger seems more beta than ever. This semester, I’m teaching a lower-division “Intro to Digital Media” class of about forty students. I require them to keep blogs to post reading responses and projects. The class is directed toward Web-based media – which irks some of the wannabe Scorseses – and it’s frankly easier for me to manage that many projects online than on paper and DVD.
I direct the students to use Blogger, which generally seems to be the most stable blogging platform, but my students are running into all kinds of problems! Blogs that students created are disappearing, students cannot retrieve passwords or even usernames, and students are running into problems with merging Google and Blogger user accounts. It’s a real mess, and I really do feel for the 18-20 year olds who come up with a clever name and URI to find that they can’t use it because their account has disappeared. I’ve drilled through their dashboards and user accounts, and I’m having the same experience they’re having: their blogs seem to have disappeared down some Blogger black hole. (I’m really impressed with the level of technical savvy these kids show. I did a lab where they were required to create an entirely hand-coded HTML page, and, while a handful acted like I was crazy, no one had any substantial problems.) Moreover, I’ve added these blogs to the Bloglines RSS reader, and I’m not seeing any updates in their feeds. Blogger has some substantial stability problems, and I’m not seeing anyone talk about it elsewhere.
I know Google isn’t in the education business, and I would rather have my students blog in another venue for privacy and political reasons, but Blogger seems to be the best solution I have. I thought about trying to get an installation of WordPress MU on a College of Communication server, but a few issues have stopped me. The bureaucracy of the College’s tech team is daunting, but the pedagogical issue is really what drives me to Blogger. I really, really think CSS is a core digital media skill in this era, and I need a project where students can apply CSS to a dynamic Web site. The template system in WordPress is too complex for intro-level communication students, and I can’t really think of anything but a blog that would make sense for this kind of project. Does anyone have any suggestions? Can students create individual subsites in Moodle or Drupal? Am I lacking in imagination for this project?
Amazing. I *just* posted about this on the blogger account that I never use (I got it to comment on other blogs using Blogger). I also sent something to Bloglines support. It appears they can’t handle the new RSS format from Blogger for whatever reason. I noticed I was losing Blogger blogs from my feeds. Google Reader seems to handle it just fine, which isn’t surprising since Google owns the reader and the publisher. I’ll let you know what I find out.
[…] Blogger have disappeared. I did a test post over on my Blogger account that I never use. Chris also mentioned something about this today. Blogger’s been encouraging people to switch over and use their Google accounts as a login […]
What about Wordpress.com? It’s free and easy. I have a wordpress.com site for a church-related group and it is so simple to sign in and use.
Okay, never mind, I just read about WP.com and they wouldn’t have the ability to change the code in it. . . which is what I’m assuming you’d use CSS for.
Drupal has a complicated role-based permissions system. If you assign “can create blogs” permissions to the role assigned to students, yes, they can create blogs.
But Drupal is also a very unfriendly environment for theme-hacking. If you want to step outside Bloggerverse, you might have to suck it up, install Movable Type, and manually set up each student’s blog within that. Doable, but tedious. On the plus side, MT’s template system “feels” like HTML, so it’s vastly easier to customize than WP, Drupal, or whatever.
[…] World has a story on the Blogger problems I discussed in my earlier post. I was perhaps a little too hasty in saying that no one else is complaining about Blogger’s […]
[…] I’ve written before about my frustrations with Blogger. And while I think it was a good solution the last time I taught RTF 319, I’ve given up on Blogger mid-way through the semester, which doesn’t make me feel very good about myself. Regardless, it has become a complete hassle, and I don’t think there’s anyway to salvage it. Beyond the reliability problems with Blogger, it introduces a few major problems with my teaching. The downtime provides students with an convenient excuse for not getting their work into me, and it fills up my already bulging inbox with nuisance email from students. Moreover, it gives the (not unwarranted) impression to students that I’m not on top of the class. […]