Blogging has emerged in recent years as an important venue for academic writing, and blogs have sprung up around the country as an alternative space for online course management and other educational and academic purposes. Unlike many institutionally-maintained repositories and Learning Management Systems, blogs offer a higher level of flexibility and autonomy, allow for a variety of customizations, and provide users with a better overall experience in terms of both presentation and opportunities for participation.

Inspired by similar projects at small to medium sized institutions, we have established our own DIY blog network, Cleveland History Blogs, which is built on the WordPress Multi-User (WPMU) platform. The network allows faculty, staff, students, teachers in our TAH workshops, as well as our numerous community partners, to join our blog network and create their own simple websites.

Members of the network have created sites for courses, clubs, organizations, workshops, conferences, and projects both large and small. Additionally, using the BuddyPress add-on for WPMU, we have incorporated a number of social networking features into the site to help connect our community.

To join up (you need an @csuohio.edu email account), read the latest community blog posts, or learn more about the project, please visit clevelandhistory.org.

This announcement comes a bit late considering that we have been running Cleveland History Blogs for a while now, and are well into our second semester of operation.  But better late than never.