With the addition of nearly 1,500 blogging accounts, Penn State is about to get a little noisier online.

Information Technology Services (ITS) will launch a blogging pilot project on Sept. 24 that will allow access account members to publish personal thoughts, pictures and videos while commenting on the media of others.

"It's a layer above the personal Web space," said Kevin Morooney, vice provost for information technology. "It allows dialogue about a topic, and that isn't necessarily true with a static Web page."

Started after faculty and student demand, 1,350 of the blogging slots have already been put on reserve by professors who are requiring classes to use the online tool. Morooney said he imagines the sites will be used to expand discussions from class.

"It will be used in many different ways, I'm sure," he said. "You put up a service, and it's always different. When WebMail started a very long time ago, it's hard to believe that we developed it only for faculty traveling abroad. Within two semesters it went from 1,000 users to 17,000."

Cole Camplese, information technology manager, said the system, which utilizes Moveable Type, can be used by anyone, regardless of computer knowledge.

"The standard Web publishing model requires you to have skills like Dreamweaver and other Web-based tools," he said. "Penn State blogs have you log in, create a blog and hit publish. Everything is done for you."

He added that he hopes students use the sites for appropriate educational purposes.

"You can take class notes or post pictures to share with your family. Expressing yourself online is a critical piece to professional and personal development," Camplese said.

"The policy governing the use of Penn State Web space is well-articulated."

Personal opinions and thoughts are encouraged as long as the privilege isn't taken to extremes, Camplese said.

"It's a case-by-case basis. We have had to deal with many of those issues on personal Web sites in the past," Morooney said. "There is some individuality here. That's part of being a university. There's a really great quote about the First Amendment -- part of having it is knowing what it means to use it."

He encouraged students to keep in mind that the Penn State blogging community is not quite the anonymous forum of many other networking sites.

"It's not like the identities that you can create at places like wordpress.com or blogger.com," he said. "It's not hard to figure out who people are. It uses my access account, so I can't pick some crazy user ID and pretend to be someone else."

The blogging pilot project is part of an ITS initiative that kicked off at the beginning of the semester with the release of the Digital Commons, which are places on campus that allow students to create video content with the purpose of sharing with others.

Also new this year was the upgraded version of ANGEL and the update of WebMail, which will feature spell checker, auto completion and customized location of signatures, to name a few.

"That's what we are here for. To make things easier," said Robin Anderson, ITS spokeswoman.
"Our goal is to make everything a one-stop shop for students."