We support Weblogs as well as online forums for our teachers here at Hopkins. I’ve had several teachers ask me lately about the difference between the two so I thought I would describe them here and ask readers for their input too. For the record, we use Movable Type for Weblogs and phpBB for the online forums.

Movable Type (MT) is certainly one of the most popular Weblog platforms. The MT FAQ explains the terms of use, but the bottom line is that MT is free (but not open source) for K-12 schools. To install MT you need access to a Web server that can run CGI scripts and an SQL database of some kind.

There are many examples of electronic forum software, but I see phpBB frequently. It’s open source (licensed under the GNU GPL), featureful, and written in PHP. Like MT you need a Web server and SQL database.

So how do you decide what tool to use with students? If you want your students to publish to a large audience and have a space on the Web that they can call their own, then a blog would be ideal. If your purpose is more focused on intense interaction among the students in your class and you would like to ensure that only your students are involved in the discussion, then forum software like phpBB is just the ticket.

Security and privacy concerns seem to be pushing teachers toward forums lately. Most schools aren’t willing to give students freedom to publish as they wish on the Web. Maybe that day will come eventually. In the meantime the wide-open nature of blogs puts them far out in front of most schools’ acceptable use policies.