James Farmer of Edublogs has just announced some great upgrades to Edublogs.
Before these changes, I couldn’t understand why a teacher who was blogging on his/her own, or was having his/her students blog, would use a platform other than Edublogs.
Now I really can’t understand it….
Larry, I think it is great that you are a huge fan and promoter of edublogs and James’ efforts. Most of us are in Edublogs for many of the same reasons that you are.
But, let’s take a balanced look at reality. You have mentioined before in some of your posts reflecting on the limited resources that rural areas and disadvantaged countries suffer with implementing technology. Every world currency has devalued with the problems coming out of the US. And even though Americans are suffering, underdeveloped countries are suffering even more during these times due to government and business corruption (legal, so not corruption really).
Each time services are reduced, eliminated, etc. from the open-source freebie side of things with the same services shifting over to the for-pay side of the house … it impacts education where it is needed most, perhaps.
I am sure that James was faced with some tough decisions, and I am glad that I did not have to do the “cutting” and program reductions. Outside of the USA, many of us do not even have training and development or tech budgets. My blog exists not for me, but for teachers that I work with. So, it is much more than simply a hobby.
I really feel that these changes should have been grandfathered in to new accounts to minimize the impact. As it stands now .. my blog WAS a showcase of other teachers to serve as role models and mentors of sorts for teachers that I lead to that site. Now 100% of all my content on teachers was deleted due to this change, as were all of my feeds for my delicious network. For me these changed that you are trumpeting as wondrous are disastrous .
I haven’t blogged for some months because of an unrelated incident with loss of content due to a quirky post editing tool. I have been sitting back watching things before investing more effort, now I am glad that I waited. What should I do? Proceed, and possible lose more content on the next round of changes? Sorry, I don’t agree with this being positive at all. BTW, your teacher profile was zapped out of my blog too .. and people would bounce from my blog to yours … but no longer, I’am afraid.
Godspeed to James .. it is his business plan and vision .. I just don’t fit in it any longer.