On Anil's recommendation, I just installed Sebastian Delmont's MT3 plugin TypeMover.
Oh. My. God.
Sebastian, you rock!
This is exactly what I've been wishing for...a way to selectively clone an existing MT blog. The biggest problem with my courseware has been the need to recreate all the customization for each new class (or section of a class).
TypeMover makes it easy to create a new blog including just the components you need. So I can create a new instance of a class and include all the configuration, template, category, and entry data...but leave out the comments and trackbacks! w00t!!
I can also distribute the courseware as an archived backup without entries or comments of any kind, greatly reducing the installation burden for new users. All they'll have to do is import the single file that I distribute, then make minor editing changes to reflect their content.
The only downside of TypeMover is that it requires an FTP server to be running on the server where your weblog resides. But I can live with that. It's only an issue for my localhost installation.
So, between TypeMover for cloning blogs, and MultiBlog for coordinating content (announcements and calendars for multiple sections, for example), the courseware should see some nice improvements by the end of the month. I'm glad I stuck with MT through the upgrade storm...these are the kind of improvements that I really hoped we'd see with a new version, and that weren't immediately apparent when the pricing was first announced.
Sounds great! Can it deal with SFTP? Our university's switched over and I can no longer use plain, non-secure FTP thingies... creates a few problems with things like this...