Playing with Technology

Many things on my plate for this summer and as usual not enough time to do them. I’ll be getting the new WPMU server’s home site finalized and probably try to develop/adapt a couple themes for use as faculty website templates. Along those lines, if anyone knows how M. Jackson Wilkinson is doing the cool stuff he is on his site please let me know. I’d like to try and adapt his site for use as a faculty website template. In addition to this I’ll be trying to get iTunes you off the ground (still waiting for the keys to get it setup). I need to be lead on the Moodle project team and make sure Moodle gets upgraded, and that we draft some formal policies course creation, backup, and deletion. There is also the woodle usage report to finish.

In addition to this I’ll be going to the Moodle users meeting at Smith College next week and to the NMC conference in Monterey a week or two later. I’m looking forward to these opportunities to network and learn. The sad part is that the two events cut out about 8 days from the already limited time I have (really starting to hate silly ten month contract) to get all of this stuff done. I’ll just have to muddle through as best as I can.

Soon? We will have a new WPMU install up and my dilemma is whether to make it a BuddyPress installation. For those that may not know, BuddyPress turns your WPMU install into a community blogging site with group blogs, profiles, friending, etc. BuddyPress does this via plugins and some special themes.

The reason I am considering BuddyPress is to distinguish the WPMU install administered by Instructional Technology from the one administered by Web Services. Yes, we will have two installations. It was decided that blogs that were more official in nature needed to have branding similar to the new website and more restictions on content. So the Instructional Technology WPMU will be open. Users will be able to have any of a 100 themes, content will be posted under CC license, plugins will be abundant, and it will hopefully be an organic community. BuddyPress might help to further the latter. My main concern is the ability to revert to a normal WPMU. If we decide BuddyPress is not what we want can we easily revert to plain WPMU by turning off the plugins? Guess it is time to load it up onto my Dreamhost account and do some testing.