Category Archives: Micro

Posts that go to to micro.blogs/johnjohnston

Posted on
by
Replied to Paying for the Privilege: The Collective Move to Patreon by Aaron Davis (Read Write Respond)
With the move to platforms like Patreon, it leaves me wondering about the impact on the wider community. I opened my feed today to find Doug Belshaw has made the move from Gumroad to Patreon. After the recent glitch involving fees, it seems that there is a growing move to the platform within the g...

🔗. I’ve kept coming back to this post so it must have touched a nerve. I am not exactly sure why. It is an interesting read.

I love the idea that folk, and folk I ‘know’, can make part of there living publishing on the web. I guess once someone adds Patreon, or the like, to their blog I fell a wee bit of guilt when I read without paying. I also maybe feel a bit more separated from these writers than before1.

This is strange as I like paying for some software or services. If I use a service I like, inoreader or micro.blog for example, I pay. I don’t need inoreader’s paid features but I hope the service keeps running. I could use IFTTT or the like instead of micro.blog‘s publish to twitter but I hope that my $2 a month will help keep the service going.

 

1. I am very aware that the bloggers I know who are doing this are in a very different class than myself.↩
Posted on
by

#pressedconf18 run by @nlafferty & @patlockley was inspiring, 12 hours of organised #WordPress in EDU tweets. Starting holidays head a buzz, best fun I’ve had on Twitter for a while. Much better use of twitter than news feed. Blog posts popping up archiving presentations too.

Posted on
by

This is a summary of my presentation for PressED – A WordPress and Education, Pedagogy and Research Conference on Twitter. I’ve pasted the text from the tweets, without the conference hash tags below.

I am @johnjohnston a primary school teacher in Scotland. I acted as ‘Product Owner’ for Glow Blogs from 2014 to 2016 & continue the role on a part time basis.

Glow is a service for to all schools & education establishments across Scotland.

Glow gives access to a number of different web services.

One of these services is Glow Blogs which runs on WordPress.

  • Glow Blogs consist of 33 multisites
  • Total number of blogs 219,834
  • Total number of views in February 2018 1,600,074
  • Number of blog users logging on in Feb 2018 243,199

All teachers and pupils in Scotland can have access to #GlowBlogs via a Single signon via RMUNIFY (shibboleth)

 

Development

#GlowBlogs developed & maintained by Scottish Government considerable amount of work going into dev, testing, security and data protection. This differs from many edu #WordPress set ups as changes developed relatively slowly.

Major customisations include shibboleth signon, user roles & privacy. Teachers/Pupils have slightly different permissions.
Blogs can be public, private or “Glow Only”
There is also an e-Portfolio facility added via a plugin.

 

How the Blogs are used

Glow Blogs are currently used for School Websites, Class Blogs, Project Blogs, Trips, Libraries, eportfolios. Blogs By Learners, Blogs for Learners (Resources, revision ect), collaborations, aggregations.

 

e-Portfolios

ePortfolios supported by plugin, custom taxonomy. ‘Profiles’ print or export to PDF. Pupil portfolio blogs can have sparkly unicorns or black vampire styles but the profiles that come out look clean and neat.

Pupils

Pupils can learn to be on the web but with <13 we have duty of care.
Pupils can create blogs. Cannot make blogs public.

A member of staff can make pupil’s blogs public. Pupils can be members of public blog and post publicly.

 

Examples

Possibilities

Only scratched the surface of the potential of #WordPress the tools are in place, Scottish teachers and learners are exploring the possibilities but it is early days. We are tooled up for the future.