{"id":28,"date":"2012-10-03T15:31:37","date_gmt":"2012-10-03T15:31:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/help\/?p=28"},"modified":"2012-10-03T15:31:37","modified_gmt":"2012-10-03T15:31:37","slug":"whats-the-difference-between-a-wordpress-blog-and-a-blackboard-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/help\/2012\/10\/03\/whats-the-difference-between-a-wordpress-blog-and-a-blackboard-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s the difference between a WordPress Blog and a Blackboard Blog?"},"content":{"rendered":"

WordPress has a couple of key features that may make it attractive as a blogging tool for your students. However, it also lacks several features that the Blackboard Blog tool has.<\/p>\n

Advantages of WordPress over Blackboard<\/h2>\n

1. Customisation<\/h3>\n

WordPress has many options for customising backgrounds, header images, menus and overall look and feel. There are number of different themes students could apply to customise their site and make it feel more personal to them.<\/p>\n

2. Visability<\/h3>\n

You have the option to make your wordpress blog visible to everyone. This is useful if your students are creating a portfolio and wish to promote and publicise their work. An example of an external facing student blog can be found here<\/a><\/p>\n

3. Export Options<\/h3>\n

A common complaint about blackboard is that anything created by students within a \u00a0blackboard course is lost to them when they graduate. WordPress allows you to easily\u00a0export\u00a0your entire blog, along with any documents\/image etc which you can then import into a several other applications, including an external ‘free’ wordpress blog on wordpress.org<\/p>\n

4. Transferable skills<\/h3>\n

Because wordpress is used so\u00a0ubiquitously throughout the web, a working knowledge has been proven to be\u00a0beneficial\u00a0and looks good on any CV.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Advantages of Blackboard over WordPress<\/h2>\n

1. Support<\/h3>\n

Currently wordpress has little or no support from iSolutions, and although CITE<\/a>\u00a0can help you with your blog, support is still limited compared to Blackboard<\/p>\n

2. Tutor\u00a0Administration\u00a0Options<\/h3>\n

The Blackboard Blog is managed by the academics and therefore they have full control over viewing the blogs. Its easy to create a blog for each student which can be private to the student, but still allows tutors access to it.<\/p>\n

A student wordpress blog is ‘owned’ by the student, and therefore if staff want to be able to view the content, the student needs to enrol them. This could obviously lead to problems with those students who are not\u00a0particularly\u00a0IT literate.<\/p>\n

3. Simplicity<\/h3>\n

Although wordpress has many more options for\u00a0customising\u00a0the look and feel and layout of a site, it is also far more complex. For those students simply wanting a simple blog, wordpress may be confusing for first time users.<\/p>\n

In Conclusion<\/h2>\n

Both wordpress and blackboard has advantages and\u00a0disadvantages. For a simple blog or weekly journal entry where the academic staff can view all students entries blackbaord is probably the best solution.<\/p>\n

For those students who wish to be more\u00a0adventurous\u00a0and add some customisation and try something more\u00a0adventurous\u00a0wordpress may be the way to go.<\/p>\n

For an informal chat about how you can use wordpress in your teaching please contact cite@soton.ac.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WordPress has a couple of key features that may make it attractive as a blogging tool for your students. However, it also lacks several features that the Blackboard Blog tool has. Advantages of WordPress over Blackboard 1. Customisation WordPress has many options for customising backgrounds, header images, menus and overall look and feel. There are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}