WordPress MU

I am a teacher and want to get my students blogging on a platform that is not blocked by our district firewall (wordpress, blogger, etc ALL are) My domain is not firewalled and I would like to install a blog platform on it that allows each student to create an archive of their work etc. but I retain censorship and overall control...these are 6th & 7th graders we are talking about

Needs:
* Platform must provide long term application of knowledge. I don't want the students to learn niche ideas and skills that cannot be applied anywhere else -- hence Wordpress is my choice for lifelong skill acquisition
* I must be able to turn on, turn off, set to read only, etc each users blog.
* I must control the creation of the blog - students can approve user requests etc but they cannot create their own whole blog except by my permission
* Students can enable new themes and plugins that I place in the theme or plugin folders

Is this possible with MU ? I have searched the forums etc and cannot find the answers. I have also experimented with Lyceum but cannot get it working to my needs or getting it playing with wildcards correctly.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

The simple answer is yes, WPMu can meet all those needs. How easy and difficult is another question.

1. WordPress is a growing force and I don't think is going anywhere and what your students learn from WordPress they will be able to take on with them.
2. As the Site Admin, you can turn on, off, read only any and all blogs. There is a very nice Site Admin panel in the Admin Panel that lets you administer the other blogs
3. There is some degree of control of who can create blogs. Because WPMu was intended to be a community based project, there is no built in feature. But there are a number of plugins that restrict blog creations to Site Admin or Premium users
4. Students can use what themes you grant them to use. The control is so fine that you can grant specific blogs to have specific themes that no other blogs can activate.

Probably could but you do realize that you're asking us for advise on getting around your district's policies, right?

- Well it is wordpress so I guess that's covered.

- We just covered resiricting signups here and you as siteadmin can create users and blogs as well. Not sure about the 'read only' although I guess you can do that by limited the admin of the blog.

- See above.

- The site admin install and enable the themes. The end users get to choose which ones to use.

Hope this helps,
-drmike

Thanks for the prompt and concise replies! I love the WordPress community!

I do realize that I am going against the district firewall. This is a calculated and conscious decision on my part with the advice of my principal that I move forward. The current affairs of education in my particular state are so convoluted that our students are being left behind.

I personally grew up a geek and chose the field of education to "make a difference". I wish to foster the use of new media to enhance the kids education and future outlooks in careers that are more and more dependent on tech abilities.

I don't think that the students learning html, php, and flash on myspace.com is the best place for them to learn skills that they can use in the future. Yes they are learning skills, but are not gaining best practice models nor are they applying pertinent learning scenarios and application of learning opportunities that they will need in the future.

Students in my state do not write or interact with the knowledge they are being exposed to in the slightest. All they need to do is answer A,B,C, or D. That is the extent of the ENTIRE state testing under No Child Left Behind. The multiple guess model is not how the "real world" works. Critical thinking, application of skills in useful avenues, and whole mind abilities are what breeds success in life and career.

I teach Science and Writing - why not integrate the two in an educational/digital blog scenario? From a school-home perspective the question of "what did you do in school today" with the response of "nothing" is a moot point. Parents can observe the educational experience in action, subscribe to their students blogs, get daily email updates, post responses and questions, and ask probing and extending questions of their students etc. It is also reciprocal. The students in turn will be able to teach their parents skills that many of them are fearful and apprehensive about.

I know these are lofty and idyllic goals. But if it fails to meet all of my goals the students will still be more prepared for the future then if they just selected A,B,C or D.

Respectully,

Todd Reinholtz

i teach technology and comp resources at a public high school school. you should be able to request that your site - whatever you choose - remain unblocked. the smart filter i use employs many different ways to track and block sites. the minute your site gets a decent traffic rank, it'll be blocked depending on the software your district uses. if your school blocks myspace or facebook - your site will get banned pretty quickly unless you get someone to ease the restriction. i didnt realize that the software i was running in my lab was so sensitive. my mu site doesnt see 1200 hits a week, but one day i walked into my comp lab and the smartfilter had blocked it. i think i managed to visit Edublogs for an hour before the filter chewed it up. because i admin for my school, i just unblocked my sites.

trust me on this one. go thru the correct channels on this one. Mu can be used in an educational fashion, its free, and relatively easy for wordpress noobs (like me) to get under their belt. having had moderate success with this first Mu site, i'm building something similar for my school district.

talk to your network admin. i cant think of why they should refuse to unblock it.

A quick note to mention that they're not going to be learning PHP on WPMu as end users don't have access to the files as it's a shared environment and a security risk.

Unless you get them involved in writing themes and plugins and the like and give them ftp or other file access.

Just wanted to mention that.

Correct DrMike. From time to time there are some students that express interest in doing some php work for plugin integration and theme development. I want to be sure I have enough scalability to support this. Thanks for the the attention to detail!

Respectfully,

Todd Reinholtz

I am doing basically everything you are planning to do, and its a real blast.

200+ blogs grade 7-12.

I have made/adopted a few mods/plugins to help deal with privacy.

With grade 7, I recall the girls typically annoy each other by locking each other out of each others blogs. Ah, the teachable moments in junior high never go away, or the tears.

The "Your Blog Has Been Suspended" screen has only been seen by two students in 18 months. Developing a sound code of ethics for our blogs verses myspace or piczo etc can be a challenge at first, but they soon learn to keep the silliness away. My contact form is in the footer of every page and it has never been used.

I use a "premium services" type approach: advanced features enabled on a per blog basis. Custom themes, video embedding, flash embedding, mp3 uploading, stylesheet tinkering, podcasting. I have a checklist for new bloggers, then a midterm checklist with new tasks, and a spring checklist with pure bells and whistles.

I spend the most valuable time teaching significant use of the comment/trackback system. Avoiding "glad-handing and flaming and human spam." Unmoderated nonsense flourished at first until I reigned it in with a comment tracking system.

Sitewide comment feeds appearing on the home page and dashboard has helped. If they know anyone in the school will see it, they tend to censor themselves.

Welcome.

Wow dsader! I am impressed with the quality and depth of your site!

I took a look at your site and this is eventually what I hope to get to. Could you give me any insight into some of the plugins, themes, and management tools that you have implemented? I am particularly concerned with privacy etc. but I still want the students to be able to share their thoughts with others freely. Its the catch-22 scenario that I am grappling with.

I am looking into how to disable students from auto creating their own blogs. Initially I would like to curtail that so I can roll it out slowly. Or I would like to have MU prompt me and require my approval - just as if you were granting a comment to a post. Have you explored any of this functionality?

Also, do you have any of the materials that you use to educate the students on the use of the blogs and etiquette etc available on your site or elsewhere?

I feel indebted to you already! Thanks for your encouragement and support!

Todd

reinhota,
I limit blog creation to our school domain. You stop all new users by putting a foney-baloney domain instead. Abuse isn't an issue, but if it was I'd simply hide the wp-signup.php file and add blogs through the Site Admin. This is a popular topic. Currently my wp-signup.php has an "only if user is logged in" at the top. New users are added by me manually.(1/2 hour to enter all students, done.)

99% of the help comes from our own support forums. I insist that the kids post their questions and then their answers there. It spits out the division Acceptable Use Policy on login. BBpress integrates nicely, but I use Punbb ... more kid's stuff(Arcade). I may have to put the forum into moodle, hiding threads from guests is something I forget.

Google the Blogger's Code of Ethics, sprinkle with your school's TLC, done.(Make that your first assignment for new bloggers, have them each put a personal code as their first post)

I put the Bloggers Code and the Division AUP in the Dashboard (wp-admin/index.php) and replace the Mr. Wordpress feeds with mine.

A peeve is that new blogs default to accept any comment, search for the line to edit in the core, so all comments go to the admin moderation queue instead. Do this before creating a bunch of blogs. It's the same file, I think, to edit the Welcome to Word Press posts, and the default links in every blogroll.

Hide options-permalink.php, kids will break their site links by fiddling there.
Hide the "Delete My Blog plugin" ... they will.

Kids will put "bad words" into the categories and giggle when they show up. This was a tough nut to crack, a Site Admin for categories isn't up and running in the code, phpmyadmin was needed, still a peeve. They will put bad words in their tagline, especially if the theme hides the tagline. Wordpress does NOT have an idle session timeout. Kids forget this, always. Make sure every workstation quits the browser, yada yada, Lower the file upload limit. I use 1MB and 85kb. Limit file types to jpg and png. I hate animated gif.

There, how many PD days worth is that?

http://wpmudevorg.wordpress.com -->downloads will keep you busy for days and days and days.

Does your Principal ever have one of those days were all they do is clean up puke and unplug toilets?

Kids can break RSS feeds, their pages generate the most cryptic of errors at times, all for an apostrophe pasted from Word. I fix a plugin here and something breaks over there. Hotlinked images turn into dancing bannanas. embedded Youtube feeds of skateboard tricks start feeding porno of "bored Trixie."

Know how to turn the whole site off in an instant.

Sorry, http://edublogs.org/services ahem.

It's not that I'm pitching, just that it does pretty much all of the above (plus a bit more :) - so it's a kinda fair answer, no?

Believe it or not but even edublogs is firewalled. I live in TN where the internet service afforded to schools is purchased at a state level and managed at a state level. Southern good-ol-boy politics at its finest (I'm a former PA teacher).

I love the amount of collegial support the education domain has in exploring this topic. From a wordpress advocate standpoint...if WP could tailor to meet the needs of some of the more "techie" teachers etc and roll out a product that meets the basic needs of an educator you can create a built in user base that will come up through the ranks of k-12.

Imagine teaching or exploring a PHP course as it pertains to the student's actual blogs. It takes on a whole new meaning and importance to the students/widget developers. No more "hello world" in a class of 20. Instead "HELLO WORLD!!!" to the world.

Furthermore, educate them on GNU/GPL and F/OSS and we better the cause with an expanded user base, awareness, and potentially new developer base. The best innovations in tech have come from a need basis. Look at del.ico.us. I am tired of having to email my bookmarks, lose my bookmarks, I want to see others who have similar tastes....

The cliche of "Necessity is the mother of invention" is apt.

I know WordPress MU is not meant exclusively for an educational setting. I realize its limitations. I just lust over its strong base, and potential limitless possibilities.

Respectfully,

Todd Reinholtz

Heh... The Good Ol' Boys Network is great. When you're in it. :D

Yeah - when it comes to teaching "my kids" I want to teach them in meaningful ways that they can relate to and get them excited about science. My 6th graders learn differently w/ technology then I did just a few years ago when I was in their shoes (I'm only 27).

This past year I setup a local LAN server on an old dual p4 and the kids nearly blew it up wanting to collaborate online. Other teachers got ticked cause all the kids could talk about was "how cool science class was" and "how they wish their other classes were more interactive".

The best thing I ever heard was when a kid told me that he never wanted to participate in science class b/c he didn't want people to think he was a nerd. However, as a moderator on that simple LAN phpBB install the kids were going to him for help online, and subsequently in the classroom he gained respect, friends, and an entirely new self perception. I was sold.

Other teachers complained that this whole technology thing was just a ruse to get the children to accept me as their favorite teacher, etc, etc. Then tech dept found out, via the gossip network, that I put "an unathorized server" on the wide open DHCP network (even though we are allowed to bring in our own laptops w/ no issue -- and the wifi password is literally 12345) So I had to take that all down.

My principal told me to go with my gut and give the students what I, as an educator, would deem beneficial to them. However he was not willing to die on this hill with the tech dept. Hence the WordPress MU scenario I am embarking on.

I don't fit the good ol boy network so well. I fit more into the whatever-it-takes-to-allow-them-to-be-successful camp. I'm not there at the school to make sure other teachers like me. I had anticipated them to respect me as an individual, as an educator (My students have gotten the highest standardized test scores in my grade level) and a person. Instead I was mistaken. I however, am not mistaken as to why I am at the school: To make a positive impact on the students.

Sorry for the rant. My wife has commenced putting her fingers in her ears and rocking slowly each time I start on this topic.....

;-)

Thanks for all of your help. I honestly do appreciate it.

~ Todd Reinholtz

Out of curiosity, are they blocking domains or IPs (or both)?

Both :-(

Give me their contact details or get them to contact me: support (at) edublogs /dot/ org and I'll see if I can persuade them to unblock :)

I've got a feeling it's the same Good Ol Boys politics we have in AL. I worked in the IT department of a large highschool for a bit and it never ceased to amaze at how stupid the people that control the networks are.

To this day you can walk up to one of the terminals and search for "how to m a k e b o m b" on google and get thousands of results. However, if you try to access MySpace, Facebook, or pretty much any web 2.0 site, you get redirected to google (where you can search for "how to m a k e b o m b").

Makes a lot of since doesn't it...