Our guest this week is Dan Flies, co-founder (along with visionary and educator Matt Hardy) of Kidblog.org. Kidblog.org is built by teachers, for teachers, so students can get the most out of the blogging process. Kidblog meets the need for a safe and simple blogging platform suitable for elementary and middle school students. Most importantly, Kidblog allows teachers to monitor and control all publishing activity within the classroom blogging community and they’re not kidding around…they have over 20,000 classroom blogs running right now!
Built upon the open source WordPress platform, Kidblog is a highly streamlined, focused and easy to use platform that has been optimized for classroom use and easy management by both students and teachers. To get a glimpse of what Dan and Matt have built in the “back end” that faces teachers, check out the screenshots here and if you have any experience with WordPress’ administrative backend, you’ll certainly be as impressed as the Gang was when we viewed them.
Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: Bob Kirkpatrick & the song “Been Around Too Long” via the podsafe Music Alley.
Discussed During the Show:
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Great podcast as always gang! I like the format of about 50% you guys discussing news or tech topics, and then the other 50% conducting an interview. (And, as always, I am about a week behind on my podcast consumption)
I have two questions.
1) With all the discussion of different juggernauts creating app stores for Android, do you view this as a positive or negative trend? I’m not real sure at this point. I think dozens of app stores (Market from Google, Amazon, carrier-specific ones, perhaps even Best Buy) could cause even more fragmentation, and make it even tougher for app developers to get their apps discovered.
2) What does KidBlog.org need to grow faster? More capital? More traffic? Etc. I caught up with an executive at Common Sense Media at CTIA in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. They are a non-profit with huge buy in from schools. I could make an intro if it would be helpful.
Rob, thanks for your great comments! We took a shot at answering the first one on today’s podcast — though I’m sure lots more can be said on that topic. Apps are where it’s at! (which you know well) New Web 3.0 kinds of “social recommendation” services, like Inveni’s, would seem to offer a lot of promise for helping consumers discover the best apps for them… no?
I emailed you my thoughts re: the second comment. The cofounders of KidBlog are buried right now — a good thing mostly, I think (I hope). Call me if you want to chat more about that offline.
cheers,
Graeme