Comments on: Dependence on Web Apps

By: Edublogs.org Plagued by Outage « Tech Ticker

Edublogs.org Plagued by Outage « Tech Ticker — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 01:01:58 +0000

[...] “Dependence on Web Apps” Reflection 2.0, February 28, 2008 [...]

By: mbogle

mbogle — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 00:27:16 +0000

I think this highlights a crucial need for schools and institutions to start offering locally-hosted instances of equivalent applications. In the case of blogs or wikis, with Wordpress and MediaWiki being open source software it is well within the capacity of school systems to start offering blog or wiki hosting services on servers run by the schools or districts.

Using externally hosted services is certainly easier from a support standpoint, but realistically the preservation of student data and privacy are fundamental mandates of the school system. When this information is jeopardised via outages or security breaches it presents a real threat to the responsibilities of the school.

So if instructors are starting to find new and innovative ways to engage their students, and they’re resulting in real learning benefits, it should provide a real motivator to senior advisory committees within the system to provide comparable systems.

Then people can be a bit more assured that the systems are being looked after properly and by people who share the same priorities.

By: Sue Waters

Sue Waters — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 22:19:30 +0000

Unfortunately you do need to have a back up plan when using these technologies. What happened with Twitter was incredibly unfortunate but they were onto it immediately - if you check the timeline of the twitters.

Definitely I had a major stress attack when I returned after 2 hours to see what had happened. And while people commented on twitter, unlike other people, I received no DMs. But I did gain new people choosing to follow my account - educators.

I feel comfortable with it all now knowing that all my online accounts aren’t in danger of being hacked.

By: Pat

Pat — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 21:51:26 +0000

I agree. I did a presentation last night and was so paranoid that I couldn’t get a connection or for some reason that the links wouldn’t work or the connection would be so slow that I would lose people. I printed out a hard copy in case none of it worked. Then I also had a powerpoint in case the wiki didn’t work. I tend to overdo when it comes to this but I like to be prepared…just in case.