I still rely on online newspapers to keep me up-to-date, and just today I read an interesting article in the New York Times, which included some demographics about tweeters and other micro-bloggers. This article, along with a recent Beatblogging.org post, had new information that was released in a report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. This latest Pew report studied the use of Twitter and social media services with micro-blogging features.

According to the latest Pew report, 11 percent of U.S. adults update their status online. Although there are various social networking sites with micro-blogging features, Twitter is the most popular and best known of the dedicated sites.  As for me, I  am more likely to update my status, or to micro-blog, on Facebook, which seems to have become my personal social network of choice. There my online circle of friends grows more organically and expands more rapidly than on Twitter. Facebook seems to have more connectivity features and applications than LinkedIn, where I am networked primarily with folks from my professional world.

As social networking continues to grow, I expect to follow more online news and information services and programs on Twitter.  I’m sure I will discover more social networking sites related to my personal and professional interests. These days I just can’t seem to get offline.

In June  we hosted an Institute on Teaching Strategies where faculty discussed their most challenging courses and to how to develop strategies to effectively teach today’s students. Our guest facilitators presented some philosophical underpinnings of various technologies that can be effectively used in learning environments to encourage student participation. These technologies included blogs, wikis and visual technologies, and several faculty are eager to begin using blogs in their courses.

At Cortland, eLearning initiatives are managed by a team of librarians, instructional designers, and electronic imaging and Web specialists in the library. They receive lots of behind-the-scenes support from Administrative and Academic computing technologists. I’m usually included in the planning since I administer budgets and am usually a good “canary” to fly into any e-mine. The planning has begun and there are many decisions to be made.

Here are some of the questions we’re dealing with early on:

What about faculty who want their blogs to be limited to enrolled students? We’ve decided that those blogs should be embedded in our course management system, Blackboard’s WebCT but we will encourage faculty to have open blogs.

Should the blogs be hosted on or off site? Until it becomes unwieldy we will host blogs on campus using Wordpress. Read an interesting discussion on the topic.

Should there be a disclaimer about the content of blogs? We’re relying on our network use policy.

Should all campus blogs have a standard template? We’re currently undecided.

What about student blogs? We currently allow students to create their own web pages, so why not blogs?

Who will support the blog service? Currently two librarians, our Coordinator of Instruction and our Web Services Librarian provide front line service with technical support from our University Database Administrator. 

We expect to deal with many more issues as the service is used and expands.