Blogs@Baruch batting over a 1000

I just read that Blogs@Baruch has recently pushed passed 1,000 users. What?! It seems like only yesterday that this young upstart was clamoring about it’s big debut in September 2008, then wham!, only six months later 1,152 users. Looks like they’re officially exploding! This article in the Baruch newspaper The Ticker does an excellent job framing the explosion through the story of Miya Owen, who was the 1000th student (she is also an alum of Clara Barton High School where I taught high shcool English for a year and a half—the lattice of coincidence casts a wide net 🙂 ).

More importantly, I just want to take a moment to say how unbelievable it is for me to see CUNY breaking out of the BlackBoard stranglehold, and embracing new and vastly improved publishing platforms for New York City’s finest. It almost brings a tear to my eye to think that CUNY, the largest public city university in the US (which has a rich history of open education and hardcore leftist thought), might once again rise from the neoliberal ashes of NYC and become a leader in open education through an elegant, affordable, and kick ass system like WPMu. This stuff is real, and it impacts people in real ways, and watching Luke Waltzer and Mikhail Gershovich brings Blogs@Baruch, a full blown, open source publishing platform, into the largest college in this 22 college system is fucking awesome. It marks for me some great triumph of a community of lost and goofy graduate students helping to make good on commitment to openness that public institutions all over the country have all but forgotten. I’m proud of Luke and Mikhail, and I’m proud of what we are all doing, and i’m not gonna stop talking about it ’til somebody pulls my cold, dead hands from this keyboard.

The revolution is now!!!

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2 Responses to Blogs@Baruch batting over a 1000

  1. Mikhail says:

    Thanks so much, Jim. I am completely serious that we could not have done it without your inspiration, support and sagacious advice all along the way. Thanks for the bavalove as always.

  2. Reverend says:

    Mikhail,

    you done some amazing things over the last two years, and I think both you and Luke over estimate my influence support. I’m a cheerleader (and proud of that fact) but the work within and institution like that takes a lot more than that, and hats off to you for doing it, but even better, making it successful and real.
    Kudos.

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