The folks over at Schoolblogs
The folks over at Schoolblogs generally write interesting stuff about using weblogs in education (although they are focused on K12, and my primary focus tends to be higher ed).
Today, Schoolblogs linked to a piece by Adam Curry (yeah, the ex-MTV VJ guy, who’s actually a big geek who runs a co-hosting facility in the Netherlands) discussing the business model for Schoolblogs. Currently, the business model is pretty much non-existent. I.e., Curry’s soaking up the costs via Databarn (which I refuse to link to because it’s one of those annoying Flash-only interfaces). His idea is to “offer singlar SchoolBlogs for free as they are now” and sell “the tools to turn any number of these schoolblogs into a true meetingpoint” or a “Top Level Hosting Blog.”
Not sure I see the revenue stream in that, since I think probably wouldn’t be too difficult for anyone with a bit of skill to pull together their own top-level page, especially since Manila has RSS feed capabilities. Maybe I’m missing the point of his “top-level hosting blog” concept.
In any event, I’d like to see someone take the Blackboard APIs, known as Blackboard Building Blocks, and see how they might tie in with the Blogger APIs or with the XML-RPC capabilities of Userland’s Manila and Radio products.
Blackboard doesn’t have a blogging type capability, and it would be interesting to see the work that Schoolblogs is doing integrated with a widely-used e-learning platform like Blackboard. It might be of special interest to Curry and Schoolblogs (both of which are Holland-based) since Blackboard has a strong following in the Netherlands.
Unfortunately, I’m not a developer so I’ve got no ability to do that kind of integration myself. Hint hint.