Hi Prit,
I just wanted to let you know what has been going on in using Pritlog in education. It looks like the students and teachers will use Pritlog and like that it is simple, efficient and practical to use.
The students so far like the text messaging feature and I took it a bit farther and added a blog to text message script that compliments what you did. I also put in a form based form to change the defaults color scheme to allow school color adaptation. Next week, hopefully, we are going to start adding each student's photo gallery to showcase their lab activity mastery. We all have decided it is a good way to build a blog resume that shows what they have mastered. I'm also going to ask them them to make posts on what they have learned and to collaborate with each other on the applications of that learning today and tomorrow. It's a way to get them to think forward and to take responsibility for what they are learning.
The teachers were not as excited as the students initially, but that is not a surprise to me being a teacher myself. But, when they realized how easy it is to use Pritlog, they began to be less resistant and it looks like it will not be hard to get them to use it. Its just a matter of getting some teachers to use it regularly and the rest will follow. This will not be a problem, because I have some teachers who have agreed to us Pritlog. It's all about the time factor right now. Teachers are so pressed for time that they are automatically resistant to anything that they believe adds time to what they are already doing, but when it comes to things that are FREE, they all the sudden have a change of heart :)
As a result of the testing so far, some of the things that came out that they thought would be good is a plugin that can make an admin's blog private and an author's blog private. This has to do with a federal law called FERPA, which has to do with privacy issues regarding students. Another plugin they thought would be nice is for each user to have a favicon (sp) image to represent them.
As for me, my request is very simple. I have a script that automatically creates a subdomain for the user, but I need it to be like chill.schoolname.myedublog.com as opposed to Pritlog requiring username.myedublog.com. The reason I ask this is because I would like to personalize the url for the school, so I can maximize the number of schools using Pritlog.
Your feedback is greatly appreciated!
Sincerely,
Charles
