Dan Mitchell at DeAnza College adds another nugget to this day of highly relevant posts in my aggregator:

A basic and easy web-based content-management system is a first priority. Most faculty members simply need to create a few web pages that can quickly and easily be updated, and possibly post some other file types for downloading. Frontier from Userland (and its Manila component) is the one I am most familiar with. Yes, it is a “blogging” tool, but it does a lot more than that, and I can vouch for the ease with which faculty can adopt this solution.

Me too. My teachers are sailing along with Manila right now.
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Now I ask you, how cool is this?

The mission of BlogAudio.org is to give you the resources you need to put audio files into your weblog and other web pages. It grew out of efforts to help Christopher Lydon put audio interviews into his blog and to build his BlogRadio.org website. Our ideal is to capture, edit (at least mark start and end points), and deploy audio through a browser interface, but you may need cooperating server middleware (implementing SoX and transcode, for example). We will also survey desktop tools and the hardware you need to capture the media.

And there’s a blogvideo.org too (although right now it bounces to a Chris Lydon site.) We’ve just been talking about a site that includes video and audio done by students.
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It may just have been a slight tremor, but I think some real gains were made in the educator Blogger cause earlier this month at BloggerCon. I wish I could find the audio of Pat‘s impassioned and articulate assessment of the needs and dreams of this community. I think quite a few in attendance took note. Witness the coming together of what once was a pretty much left-for-dead eBNvention that is getting ressurected next month in San Francisco. Dave Winer has pledged to attend, either Mena or Ben Trott are expected, Erin Clerico and Bryan Bell will be workshopping, social events are being planned and who knows what else. I’m really hoping we can have a mini edBloggerCon, since I found the Boston event so stimulating. But as Pat says, hopefully this will be the first of many such gatherings around the country. It’s November 21 and 22, around NCTE, so start making plans if you haven’t already.

I presented about our Website redesign to a small group of parents at our Family School Council meeting last night and the reception was, shall I say, very enthusiastic. I showed our principal’s Web log and some of the other sites we’re building, gave them the overview on the syndication aspect of it, and even got commitments from a couple of them to try out the subscription form that I have set up. One parent reported that her daughter “absolutely loves” the way the Web log is being used in her Sociology class, and the whole group was really positive about the distributed content creation model that we are moving toward. When I talked about the content/knowledge management aspect of this, even the principal and another supervisor in attendance seemed to more fully understand the potential. (The supervisor, in fact, wants me to come and present to her department next week.)

Slowly but surely, the buzz is growing around here about Web logs, and I think the pieces are starting to fall in place. We still need some design issues straightened out, and I need to map the current site more clearly so I can plan the conversion effectively. But the best part is that the more I talk it, the better I get at figuring out how to explain it all. And last night’s reaction did much to affirm the philosophy and the process.
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I think one of the best leads to Tuesday night’s debacle at Wrigley went something like “In the eighth inning the baseball gods awoke from their slumber, looked down upon the field, and realized the Cubs were winning!” That’s not allowed, I don’t think. Thankfully, those same baseball gods took pity on me last night by knocking my power out forcing me not to watch. But hey, hope springs eternal. Spring training is only five months away. The Cubs are young. And besides, if they really did make it to the series and win it all, I wouldn’t be the center of attention around here as much as I am now. To all those who have already sent their condolences, thanks. But if there is a baseball god, puhleeeeezze let the Yankees win tonight.
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