I wrote this in an email to a friend who’s teaching with me who asked me about setting up a course website:

I’m gonna give you some background about this, as I’ve considered this myself, and to make it clear that it isn’t as easy as it first might appear (and I’m happy to write it as I’ll make it into a blog entry later). I’m already doing this for my elective course, but don’t know how successful it will be. An Insight Into Britain and weekly blog.

The easiest thing would be a blog, which is really easy to publish stuff, and let the students write comments for feedback and discussion. The problem is finding an English version of a site that isn’t going to get blocked in China. Most of the English, free, blogging platforms are blocked, or have been recently blocked and unblocked (WordPress, Google Blogspot, LiveJournal, Microsoft LiveSpaces). There are a few Chinese blogging sites, but maybe a bit difficult for you to use, and I haven’t had any experience with those directly.

I host my blog www.alastairclark.com using free opensource software (WordPress – the software that the one above uses) on my own server in America. I’m paying for the server every month, so it won’t get blocked in China, and I get more experience with administering websites. Unless the uni’s prepared to pay some money, paid self hosting isn’t really possible.

There’s potential for me to set something up for you on a free host (0fees, Awardspace, and co.cc for a free domain) for you to host a blog at, but the functions would be reduced, and if there isn’t much activity on the site, it might get deleted. Maybe not the best solution, and there’s nothing stopping the government from blocking these either.

Moving away from blogs another alternative is something like a wiki (as in wikipedia) such as Google Sites, Microsoft OfficeLive, or Weebly. These are website design and hosting tools for beginners, and have a similar feel to editing word documents at home. It’s harder to get a community feel from this sort of website as they have little or no facility for comments in the traditional sense. I’ll send you an invite to try out a blank Google Sites, and you can see if thats for you or not.

However, after all that, I personally feel that the best way to communicate and discuss things with my students is over the Chinese version of Facebook (wikipedia article on facebook): XiaoNei or RenRen as it’s now called. If I was doing this myself, I’d set up a Google Sites page and write the important stuff on there. In class I’d tell them my Chinese Name on XiaoNei and then to “add me as a friend”. When I’d updated the website I’d then post a comment on my Xiaonei account with a link to the updated content. If there were any problems or feedback from the students they could write little notes on the posted link, and everyone else could see that too. I’ve already used this to great effect with last semesters first year classes, giving them advice and information about the final exam. I’ll probably do it this way again with my elective course.

Is that enough to mull over for now? I’ll think anon, but there won’t be much more to say.