David Gregg :: Blog

As some of you will have noticed, we have given EduSpaces a new skin and added a couple of features, namely; Shouts, Push to Twitter, Incoming Twitter and FriendFeed on all profiles.

This combination of features allows users on EduSpaces to continue using the external tools of their choice while still updating their followers on EduSpaces.

A few may ask why we have revamped EduSpaces, the answer is simple, this site launched four years ago this month, before Facebook, MySpace, Twitter et al were household names. Yes, it has gone through a couple of rocky patches, however, people kept on using it, so we wanted to show our commitment and say thank you.

The service will continue to be free to use, however, we are considering putting a couple of links on the frontpage to a few worthwhile educational charities, I hope this is ok.

Anyway, thanks to those users who kept supporting the site, we appreciate it.

Has the ability to post by email been removed? I've used it in the past, but not for ages & was trying to test it - and had forgotten what random address I'd set up. I can't find where I entered the details, though, now.

Eduspaces seems to have a flaw.  You can only add to it.  How can I delete a community that I created?

Hello.

I'm currently the administrator of an e-learning community available at http://eduspaces.net/cnocml08g1

Once logged in and when I click over the community link, I keep getting the same error and so do the other community users:

Array
(
    [20452] => Array
        (
            [owner] => 20452
        )

)

Array
(
    [20452] => Array
        (
            [owner] => 20452"
        )"

We would like to use this community as means of suceeding to achieve oficial school certification for our students. As you can see it would be of vital importante to solve this issue, could you assist us?

Thanks in advance,

Helder Touças

Since about Friday no one can see my blog, including myself when logged in.

http://eduspaces.net/stevelee/weblog

In Firefox we get a strange 'redirect loop' error and IE just hangs.

My profile is OK http://eduspaces.net/stevelee but messages also so dead so I'm wondering if a rogue message has caused it though I have not got a notification email.

Can this be fixed for me? Or at least can I get a dump of  my blog as I can't get to that either.

I've got an installation of Elgg 0.9 (I think!); for two reasons:

1: I can't install 1.0 - no idea why, but I've tried assorted things.

2: I like the fact that 0.9 lets you import external blog postsing.

However, I've just been trying to change a password & have run into an interesting issue. The "News" account can have symbols (e.g. %) in the password, but when I tried to change a normal one to include them I have just seen in the pink box at the top when you've changed the account settings a note to the effect that you have to have just letters & numbers. (I'd not seen it before, but it would explain why I couldn't understand what was going on ... I'd change the password, re-log in & notthing!) 

I've had a look through the admin settings, but can't see any thing to restrict what can (or alternatively what has to be) in a password.

(Just as a matter of interest, how does it cope if you use the Elgg/WebCT etc., integration & people have used other characters in their password)  

ჩამოთვალეთ, რომელ ქართულენოვან რესურსებს იყენებენ მასწავლებლები სასწავლო პროცესში?

We would like to get some idea of what users of this community would like to see happen to EduSpaces? If you are using the service, please let us know. Thanks.

Hi,  

 

I work at the DIUS in the UK.  Part of what I do is to raise awareness online about a Higher Education (HE) ‘debate’ which we have ongoing here in the UK at the moment (http://www.dius.gov.uk/policy/he-debate.html). 

 

This HE debate was initiated by John Denham, the Secretary of State with responsibility for universities, when he invited a number of individuals and organisations to make contributions on a number of specific HE related themes.  The intention being that these contributions will inform thinking on this issue leading to a formal public consultation on a policy framework for HE in the autumn.  

 

He also said that he’d like to hear from a wider audience of those with an interest in HE  –  particularly those already discussing these issues online – so that these views can be fed into the policy review process in parallel.   

 

Since this is an education focused community focusing amongst other things on HE I thought I should let you know that this is happening and tell you how you can provide input if you wish to.   

 

On our behalf JISC Involve is hosting a blog on the broad HE debate (http://hedebate.jiscinvolve.org/).  As you can see the blog is divided into nine individual parts on which comment is possible.  The blog is only a few days old and will be live for about seven or eight weeks.  As you can see it is early days yet but already we’re starting to see some interesting points raised, and we’re keen to broaden the debate further. Some of the issues being discussed include:  

• What will demographic changes mean for the shape and nature of HE?
• How are higher education institutions currently responding to student expectations?
• How should HE respond to the fact that adults, often studying part-time will make up an ever-increasing proportion of the home student population?
• How can the interaction between academia and public policy makers be improved?
• How do we anticipate the international market for higher education will change over the next 10-15 years?
• How attractive are research careers to graduates, and what can be done to enhance this?

While this is obviously a UK focused exercise many of the issues are relevant across the globe.  Demographic changes, part-time study, the internationalisation in HE, etc.  Input from anyone on these issues regardless of location would be welcome.  Broader experiences help I think with a better understanding of the issues.  

 

Thanks for reading and I look forward to reading your comments.  

 

Vincent McGovern

We're pleased to announce that Elgg has been featured as the best open source social networking platform in InfoWorld's 2008 Best Of Open Source Awards. Elgg joins WordPress, which won for best blogging platform, Firefox, which won for best web browser, and MySQL, which was featured as the best database system.

From the article:

While Elgg lets corporations, governments, and schools quickly establish blogs, the system's collaborative features encourage building communities of users with shared interests. Other Elgg fine points include podcast support, file repositories, user profiles, an RSS aggregator, and branding features. Significantly, the software integrates with other IT systems and provides OpenID authentication.

Elgg is the software which powers this EduSpaces service.