The Savvy Technologist

UThink at the U.

Besides my day job as a tech integration guy, I’m a Ph.D. student in Learning Technologies at the U. of Minnesota. Imagine my surprise when I received a notice via email of a lunchtime presentation about the U.’s UThink project, a free blogging site for faculty, staff, and students. I’d never even heard of it.

Apparently others have heard about it because, as of its 1st birthday on April 12, UThink has 1,231 indvidual blogs, 2,200 blog authors, 17,654 entries, and 12,486 comments. Shane Nackerud has more information in his post at the UThink site. I think this paragraph is especially interesting:

Overall I am thrilled with the success of the project so far, especially considering that we really haven’t advertised its existence. It has been fun just watching UThink become what it is supposed to become. I must admit that I am surprised that graduate students are the dominant bloggers on the system given the sheer number of undergraduates at the University. It seems that undergraduates are sticking with tools like Xanga or Livejournal for their personal blogging needs probably because of issues like the lack of anonymity on UThink, or because they simply don’t know about UThink. A side effect of graduate student dominance on the system though is that UThink is much more “academic” than I would have expected. Blogs on the system have more of an academic tone than I thought they would have. This, of course, is wonderful and it provides UThink a solid niche in the ever expanding blogging market.

I get a little green when I think about how much freedom the U. has because they’re not working with the under-18 crowd. Some quick browsing at the UThink Blog Directory turns up quite a few topics that would never be acceptable for high school students blogging on an official school server. That said, I would love the chance to give it a try with our students anyway. You never know until you try.

Tags: Blogging, university of minnesota, uthink