Playing with a new toy

I recently had the chance to pick up a used iPod Touch (thanks, Mark!) and so far it proven a welcome addition to my technology arsenal. I got it at first to replace my mp3 player (so I could give my old one to Carole), but it has quickly become more than that – a game system for our son, an offline email client for me, and a rival for my laptop when it comes to working with some portions of the Internet.

For now, though, I don’t feel the need to upgrade to a full blown iPhone. I’m happy with intermittent connectivity where I find an open wifi spot, and frankly don’t have the budget to pay a monthly fee to AT&T. Maybe in a year or two.

The real reason why I’m writing this post, though, is to experiment with the WordPress app, which I hope will prove useful for a project or two at work. We’ll see how much I end up using this app versus a web browser.

Online Studios in Architecture

There are a few trends I’ve noticed within architectural education on which I’d like to ruminate – having to do with blogging in school.

One of the websites which I follow somewhat regularly is Archinect – specifically their School Blog Project. This is an initiative where they identify one or more students at each school of architecture in the country to blog about what they are doing in their school. It offers a good way to get a glimpse of what is going on at various schools around the country.

One drawback to that approach, however, is that if you get the “wrong” student from a school, you don’t get an accurate picture of what the school is like. Or, if the student doesn’t post frequently, you get no picture at all.

Another example of this sort of blogging, which gets around what is essentially a sampling error, is to have an entire studio blog about their work. I’ve seen this done at Cranbrook, Clemson, and currently at UNC Greensboro; I’m sure it has been done elsewhere as well. This seems to offer a much better impression of what a student’s experience is likely to be, simply because you get a sense of the entire studio participating.

Extrapolating from these starting points, I’ve been working over the last few months to develop a blogging platform for our school. The goal is to provide a digital commons for everyone in the school to blog about their work. We’re getting ready for the formal unveiling at the beginning of next quarter, and in the meantime I’m frantically trying to work out as many kinks as I can.

Stay tuned…

(I’ll have to edit this post tomorrow with relevant links to the various sites I’ve referenced here)