stefan

A post in weblogg-ed has pointed to an article in the Wall Street Journal on the use of blogs in classrooms. One of the major issues about this seems to be the lack of control over the content. 

In an earlier statement the SQA Computing Blog said that exactly this could be a big advantage of 21Publish as it provides full control for teachers over student's blogs. And of course this has been one of the cases we had in mind when we launched the service. Not only would a class have blogs for each student but also through the portal pages would have a customized homepage of their own. Also as each student's blog comes with at least 5MB webspace it should be of great value for the student compared to personal blogs on other services.

Of course student who are in to blogging  will have separate private blogs in addition to that where content cannot (and in my opinion also should not) be controlled. But teachers can guide on the use of blogs and how to make the most out of blogs.

After the first six weeks of 21Publish I think it is time to write an update on how we are doing:

Reviews: There have been quite a few (to admit I expected more given the degree of innovation we are having here) overall positive reviews. We had some positive statements like this or this. Some critical like this and some press coverage like here.

More importantly we have a few BlogPortals out and running like Druid's Foot or bloghof both of which are blog communities that demonstrate what you can do with the service. We are also getting a couple of requests in every day - more so in the US than in Germany.

It seems that quite a bit of people have problems in understanding what differentiates 21Publish from "normal" blogging services. 21Publish is a place where you can instantly create and customize your network of inter-connected blogs. It is not a place to set up an individual blog. We will have to work on that to get our message clearer.

Things to change: Based on the feedback we got regarding the product here are some of the main requests for change:

Member directories: Provide a directory that makes it easier to find the blogs of other members of the community
Documentation: Improve the documentation on how to create own templates
Webspace: Increase the webspace per user in your 1MB/user accounts
Database synchronization: Provide an interface that allows for a single login for the users of my community

We are working on all of these issues and will be able to improve the service soon.

Outlook: So far this has been a great start for the company and for me personally. We as a team discover new usecases for 21Publish almost every day. And it is great to do business in the U.S. People are very openminded and supportive and it feels great to be here.