Dale Jones, Twitter's @spookingdorf provides free, ad-free hosting for UK education blogs at ethink.org.uk using WPMU

Wordpress Multiuser (WPMU) is an open source blogging environment.  It enables an admin to set up an initial blog and to then allow visitors to the site to create their own blog, using the  parent architecture of the original.  Alternatively, they can sign up to be a user of the system, without setting up a blog. Once a blog is created, the individual admins  can add users to it.

Creating your own WPMU environment

Setting up a WPMU environment is fairly simple.   With a simple shared hosting account costing only a few quid (a quid is a British Pound, for all our non-UK readers), you have the facility to install your own WPMU environment.  A shared hosting account isn't going to give much flexibility in the way of oomph (you share server resources with all the other domains on the server, although you ought to get a guaranteed level of service).  For better server resources (space, memory, CPU cycles ie oomph) you could go for a reseller account which would allow you to host other domains as well as your own but again you are sharing resources on the server.  You could rent a Virtual Private Server for your new enterprise if you are feeling really ambitious, or go the whole hog and buy your own dedicated server...all more cost and requiring a higher level of admin skill. 

On a CPANEL hosting account there's a cute little auto-installer called Fantastico that will install your own Wordpress for you for a single-user blog. For WPMU you need a bit more skill, to be able to create a database and then install the WPMU files downloaded from mu.wordpress.org.  It's way easier than it sounds.  Especially the second time you do it.

Things to do

Once your WPMU system is set up, you'll want to add some plugins and themes so that members of your communities can protect and personalise their blogs. Plugins are available from various places including Wordpress.  As they say "most Wordpress plugins work with WPMU".  There are a few that are useful to Mu users specifically, like MuTags that offers sitewide tags and New Blog Defaults so your users get options set for them to make their blogs less prone to inappropriate use like comment spam.  Essential plugins in my opinion would be some to add protection to blogs - Akismet (ask for a key), Bad Behavior and Captcha key are examples of things that will keep the spam at bay.  Another useful plugin, depending on what you want to use your WPMU system for, might be the one that makes sure blogs are authorised before they go active.  Take that, sploggers.
The Plugin commander allows the SuperAdmin to assign plugins to existing blogs, new blogs, or both and to make them unavailable.  This is a really useful recent feature that gives the admin better control over who's doing what and where.

For the end-user

And so there you have it.  Your stall's set up ready for those users to come along and claim their free blogs.  They will need some guidance in what to expect, and how to respond to comments.  For many, communicating on this level will be a new experience and they are likely to need introducing to the pitfalls of a worldwide web presence and the responsibilities that go with it.  It has to be said that most find blogging a fulfilling and worthwhile experience, whatever they use the blog for.

That's the tech bit over...

So why create a blog?  What might a teacher or a pupil use it for? What value does the blog give to education and, more importantly, to learning?  I made this the study of my master's dissertation and set up ethink.org.uk (now hosted on a server

I wanted to explore what directions blogging in a school might take, and learn about the technology in the process.  The first forays into creating blogs were tentative but worthwhile; the art department who created podcasts to 'talk about art', where students created podcasts to discuss the masters, and to showcase their own work for worldwide critique; the ICT (and other) departments who created blogs to have conversations with their learners; the podcasted revision notes of the local geographer to his students.  There are now a number of schools and education-linked organisations who use their blog as a public face, with the facility for their clientele to feed back by way of comments.

I set up the WPMU environment at eThink.org.uk in 2005 for two reasons; firstly I wanted to see how schools would use blogging and what benefits to learning there would be (it led to my Master’s dissertation although eThink was set up before I realised how interesting a study it made); secondly, my own personal paranoia demanded as many safety features as I could enforce, and that meant I had to own the server the domain sits on.

The most frequent use of blogs over at eThink is for a school to have a quick and easy web presence.  Schools use their blog to communicate with parents, pupils and the outside world.  Sometimes they introduce new topics for pupils, at others informing the outside world of things that are going on at the school.  The blog is used for communication, both outwards and inwards and some great school-parent communities have evolved.  Schools use their blogs to let others know what they are doing, and to build their own community of practice, sharing ideas and inspirations.  Some have used Gabcast to podcast from mobile phones while on school trips; many use a Flickr plugin to display their school galleries.  There has to be a BIG reminder here, though, to keep children safe and keep them anonymous.  

Headteacher John Rowe, an early adopter at eThink, suggests

Sometimes ‘less is sometimes more’ in terms of adding work to the blog. Whilst teachers might not want to feel like leaving anyone out, sometimes one example of a piece of children’s work [rather than a classfull] is better, thus ensuring a variety on the blog, and will ensure a regular audience.
I felt that a ‘magazine format’ was highly effective. Indeed, there is scope with such an approach to include children in the editorial process by letting them select pieces of work for the blog.

You might not get the format right first time, but a blog gives you easy tools to change, edit and find out what works best for you.
And on to the next use of a blog.  Some teachers use a blog as a Class Blog, giving students privileges to edit and make posts.  It's always a good idea to moderate comments and, in this whole-class use, to moderate posts too so that the pupils’ work goes out as you intend. Running a community means having to be responsible for the things they say in your name, sometimes, depending on your policy. Moderating comments isn’t too onerous a task since a notification email is sent to the blog admin when a comment is made.

Adventurous, enlightened  (and trusting, it has to be said) teachers might encourage their students to start and administer their own blogs.  This has some inherent dangers as it exposes them to the Outside World, and means that any comment spam that gets past the security will end up in their email inbox (there are ways round this - one way is to give them a bogus email address that gets delivered to the teacher's address so the teacher knows about the spam before the pupil does.  The teacher needs to be an admin on the pupil’s blog so they can deal with the spam), but it offers a great starting point for developing a sense of e-safety.  If the teacher is the WPMU admin, so much the better as they can keep an eye on their charges; if not, they might like to make create RSS feeds into the teacher's blog.  Just in case - best to keep an eye on things, eh?

An English department I worked with started individual students' blogs in 2005, initially as a means to develop their creative writing skills.  They were given the first paragraph to a story and they would draft and refine new paragraphs each lesson, and do appraisals on each others work.  Trackbacks were really useful here and it highlighted the use of a blog as a personal journal, and the benefits of connectedness as pupils improved their stories based on the comments of their peers.  Importantly, the teacher commented on how their writing was improving from their own peer review.  When this exercise ran its course the students used their blogs to review the books they were reading, making comments on each others' posts to affirm or deny opinions on their fave books.  This was a great little community and although the blogs don't exist any more, the children valued having their own web presence and being connected to each other online.

So blogging - love it, hate it, be indifferent but it's out there and signing up for a blog at a free blogging service is certainly a quick way for you, your class or school to get an online presence and make connections.  Setting up your own WPMU domain means you stay in control of who has a blog and what is said in your name.  For staff and pupils alike, greater exposure in the online medium there is a responsibility to learn to stay safe, for teachers and their pupils.  Sooner or later your pupils are going to need to know more about their digital footprint.  Setting up your own non-intrusive ad-free WPMU blogging medium might be one way to enlighten them in a way that is controlled by someone who you are sure is concerned for their safety.