We are starting to offer some new content on the web site in the form of blogs written by current students. The idea is to offer alumnae a view into the current lives of students at Mount Holyoke College at different stages in their college careers. Alumnae can see how some things have changed, how some things have remained the same and be reminded of their time on campus. We currently have 5 students:

I wish I could say that this was an original idea,...but it is not. It was inspired by some other college programs that were recognized by CASE (Council for Advancement and Support of Education). A big difference in our student blogs is that the Alumnae Association is hosting the blogs on its own web server and the blogs are integrated. Meaning you can access and search all of the blogs via a single summary or entry page that lists the latest postings from all of the blogs. The other schools used Blogger.com. We are using an open source project called LifeType which has a wide variety of features including support for photo albums, podcasting and posting from a mobile phone. At the same time it is very easy to use.

students will be posting to their blogs at least weekly throughout the year. Olga is my student worker, so she got a head start and has posted about her job hunting experience. Along with the student blogs there is this blog about technology and our first book blog on the 2006 common reading program. In the future, we will be offering blogs as an option to clubs and classes. If there is interest we may offer blogs to individual alums, but my guess is that those alums who are are interested in blogging are probably already doing so at one of the many blogging web sites, such as, Blogger, TypePad, LiveJournal, MySpace and so on.