homoLudens

I tried to post this over at Charlie Lowe’s cyberdash in response to his post ‘Will Blogs Grow Class Management Wings?’
but the comment interface defeated me. Better to include it
here anyway, because the issue of Manila’s invisibility is actually
starting to annoy me, and it’s a great excuse to use the ‘Vent’
department again after such long neglect of its therapeutic benefits:

“Charlie: Great piece, as always. I completely agree about the
value of ‘design[ing] a unique site, one which can be used for a
combination of
knowledge management, web publishing and community interaction
purposes.’ And, needless to say, open source is the obvious choice - if
you have the tech support to implement it. I don’t, at least for the
moment. Drupal, esp. when given the deanSpace development that we all
hope for, may just fit the bill. (Happily, I have a few server admin types
glancing in Drupal’s direction).

My comment here, though, is about
Manila / Frontier
being left out of your blog tool listing. It’s not open source (neither are some
of the ones mentioned) but $299 per year for an educational license is
reasonable enough for even my
strapped California urban school to afford. Lord knows, it is quirky, but so is most open source blogging software. And if local
installation is impossible, there’s cheap
enough hosting available from Manila ISPs, including eBN. It’s been around
long enough to make many of the other blogging platforms look like
infants. And, most importantly, it IS a cms, not just a blogging tool.
Throw in Radio’s OPML outliner and the directory editing functionality, and voila - starts to make Blackboard
look like one of those aircraft carriers that can’t turn around in San
Francisco Bay. It’s not just a cool and flexible sloop - it’s a whole
damn boatyard! IMHO, it makes MT and Bloxsom and Live Journal and a
bunch of other tools look like rowboats. They float, you can tie them
together in a storm and even pull some supply dinghies, but I wouldn’t
want to take a whole bunch of non-sailors along for
the ride. I’m puzzled about Manila’s invisibility in edu blogging
circles.  It’s used all over the place, but no one names it. When Erin Clerico releases his
ISP Tools suite, maybe that will change. Meanwhile, Userland’s Manila
deserves mention along with all of its offspring.”

From Just (SLAC-er) Bloggin’: “How can we make this site
interesting? ???So as long as we put in enough effort and time, almost
nothing is impossible. I believe this site can become the best/popular
site ever created in Galileo High School.” [galileoSLAC-er News]
That’s School Library Advisory Committee member (SLAC-er) Wen getting
warmed up for the blog-olution we’re starting at Galileo. Two
satisfactions: 1.) This is starting in the library. The library! (As
SLAC-er Michelle might say, “The G-house library is up the hook!”) 2.) I picked up Wen’s post on my aggregator.

While we work away on our galileoWeb domain’s sites, I’ll note that the school has some pretty good sights as well. The pic above is what I see when I get out of my car in the (stickered!) parking area.

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