UBC Blogs
UBC Blogs is a university-hosted weblogging platform designed to provide free individual or group webspace for the UBC community. UBC Blogs runs on a WordPress Multi-user installation which allows the UBC community to quickly sign up for and customize their own web publishing space. By extension, each member of the community can create as many distinct spaces, such as websites or blogs, as they like and begin experimenting with this space for teaching and learning.
See the UBC Blogs FAQ page for more information about using UBC Blogs.
UBC Blogs Mark II
In August 2010, social networking features were added to the UBC Blogs platform through a BuddyPress installation. In addition to blogs and websites, the new platform allows users to create public or private groups and forums, as well as share profiles and activities.
New Features
UBC Blogs now has the following features:
- Groups: Public, private or hidden groups allow users to break the discussion down into specific topics
- Forums: Discussion forums built directly into groups allow for more conventional in-depth conversations.
- Activity Streams: Global, personal and group activity streams with threaded commenting, direct posting, favoriting and profile mentions.
- Messaging: Internal messaging allows users to talk to each other directly, and in private. Not just limited to one on one discussions, users can send messages to multiple recipients.
- Friends: Friend connections let users track the activity of others, or filter on only those users they care about the most.
Introduction and Tour Screencast
This video gives a brief tour of the UBC Blogs platform:
How Blogs are Used at UBC
Blogging allows readers and authors of blogs to interact, it can help fuel discussion and build community, which is especially useful in the context of higher education.
Currently, the UBC Community is using blogs:
- as personal logs/journals to keep track of work/learning activities
- as digital photo albums
- as potential e-portfolio tools
- as course web pages, encouraging discussion and collaboration
- as private management and communication tools for large campus groups, administrative teams, and communities of practice
- to easily update online newsletters
- to keep a collection of useful, searchable links
See the UBC Blogs directory for a list of all public blogs.