Edublogs Tutorials

Just a note:  Even though this works for the Voicethread, I haven’t managed to get this to work for other things - so we’ll still have to fiddle, I’m afraid

Ian Hancock asked a good question in the forums today about embedding Voicethreads into an edublogs post.

The problem being that when you copy and paste ‘embed’ or ‘object’ code into your blog it disappears (it’s a security thing).

But never fear, there’s a really simple workaround… all you have to do is grab the link to the actual thread out of the code, make a note of the height and width of the object (you can manually make it smaller too to fit narrower blogs) click on the F button in your ‘Write Post’ area and take it from there.

In fact, you can do this for any flash object

So, for Ian’s podcast we have the code:

From which we take: http://voicethread.com/book.swf?b=3088

We click on and paste the link in (only the link, mind). Here we’re also going to make it a little smaller so we insert 600 width and 400 height and…

Just a warning: I have tried to use this on two different sites and each time it has locked up the plugin section - ie you cannot change or add any plugins - hopefully, I will get an answer from James as to the resolution for this.

I will let you know

Until then, it’s up to you

I have had a number of requests to have a particular post as the first one on their blog. I didn’t have a solution to this until I noticed the “Adhesive” plugin.

Go to the manage section by logging in and activate this plugin. Now when you write a post, you have an option in the “posts status” menu on the right hand side to change to stick at the top of your blog.

When you make a comment on a blog, wouldn’t it be nice to know if anyone read it or had another comment to make?

Well, if you activate the “Subscribe to comments” plugin (found in the manage section), this will allow you  to receive emails when people reply to your comments. A really really useful plugin.

For those of you who want to jazz up your posts, well now you can

In the plugins section (in your manage area), you can activate “Advanced editor” and you will have added functionality

1. colours
2. fonts
3. special characters
4. subscript and superscript
5. background colour
6. etc etc

Many thanks to James and co for adding lots of new themes and doing the server update thingy.

I like to have a 3 column theme as it allows me to customise the side bars add lots of extra goodies in like Clustr maps

This theme is Newsportal 1.0 and is on of the new ones. I like the clarity and simplicity

Also available

Anubis

Bluebird

Blue Zinfandel Enhanced

Digg 3 Columns

Fjords04 - 4 columns!

GenkiTheme

Ocean

Reaching Darkness

SeaShore

Well it would look like delayed intelligence has raised its head again.

Have you ever read instructions and they have made no sense at all? Yet when you work out how to do it, they somehow translate themselves into a new, friendly language.

Well that’s just what has been happening with this podcast thing.

Now I’m sure there’s no-one else out there who wonders what to do with a podcast when you’ve put it onto your edublog site - well I’ve been trying to sort this out for perhaps a year or so now. I know it’s simple and I should have asked, but everywhere I went - forums, blogs, podcasts, the universe, it seemed that this was a bit tricky.

I knew you could host a podcast on a blog

You can then submit it to iTunes

You can then let others see it on iTunes

Step 2 had me beat.

Until I read this Podcaster Tech Specs article on the …. - I know it sounds silly - but it’s on the iTunes website - yes I had looked all over this but didn’t find this info - or maybe I just didn’t SEE it!

So here are the instructions in my words - hopefully others will understand because it still took me some time to decode the iTunes instructions

1. Make a podcast (contact me if you are stuck here)
2. Upload it to your edublogs blog
3. Adding an mp3 player to a post -ideal for podcasting
4. You are now ready to move to iTunes
5. download iTunes 7 if you haven’t got it already
6. Go get your RSS feed for your blog
7. to do this, right click on the RSS logo on your site
8. click on Copy shortcut or copy link location - whichever one turns up
9. this will copy the “feed” for iTunes to work with note steps
10. James has been great and has sent me some further instructions
11. The main thing is that the feed address you get from your RSS button on your edublog is not right for podcasting.
12. So it needs some change to the end of the address
13. Just replace the end bit which says /feed/ with /wp-rss2.php
14. Now when you do stage 9, it works.
15. I thought I’d hit a brick wall but found out that there’s a delay in iTunes picking up the feed
16. ALSO, you need to make sure that there is an mp3 in the last 10 posts on your blog or your feed won’t pick this up
17. To alter the number of posts it will “see”, go to the admin dashboard
18. Go into Options>Reading
19. Change the RSS bit to a bigger number - I set mine to 50
20. The feed will now pick up the last 50 posts
21. In the Advanced menu, select Subscribe to Podcast.
22. Enter your feed URL (paste it in) in the text box and click OK.
23. Next to the new podcast subscription, you should see an orange circle, which indicates that iTunes is downloading your most recent episode
24. Double-click on the episode to play it in iTunes.
25. If you can successfully play the episode, then your feed is working and you can submit your podcast to iTunes.
26. However, if the orange circle is replaced by an “i” in a black circle, iTunes encountered a problem with your feed or episode.
27. You should troubleshoot your episode and feed before submitting it.
28. Please do not submit your feed until you can successfully subscribe using the Advanced menu.
29. If you can successfully subscribe to your feed using the Advanced menu in iTunes, you’re ready to submit your feed:
30. The next bit needs you to sign up for an iTunes account
31. You will need to add your credit card details to identify you
32. Launch iTunes.
33. In the left navigation column, under iTunes Store, click on the Podcasts link to go to the Podcasts page.
34. In the left column of the Podcasts page, in the For Podcaster’s box at the bottom, click on the Submit a Podcast
35. That’s as far as I have got as I need to read a bit more to try and find out about adding tags and pictures to my feed
36. This involved using www.feedburner.com to change the RSS feed code to include your picture and description of the podcast - so far, I’ve had no luck with this
37. Back to step 16

So not so much

More

We’re getting there

James also offered to write a full tutorial for this, so maybe it’ll all become clearer than my efforts

If any of you out there are thinking of setting up library blogs, it would be great to hear from you and connect what you are doing.

I have just started helping a secondary school (11-18) librarian to set up a library blog and I think she (Bonnie Ellis) is making great progress - perhaps you have other ideas on what other things she could be doing or maybe send her your edublogs site

I’m sure she’d love to hear from you if you drop in and take a look at -and perhaps leave a comment or two

http://astorofheverlibrary.edublogs.org

Imagine your email system - lots of people send you an email ant they all arrive conveniently in one place - your inbox

All you then do is read the ones you want to. It even tells you which ones you have read.

Well, RSS does the same for you with blogs and websites - it sends new information from any source (which has RSS buttons) to you and you can view lots of feeds from the same place

Please note: currently this is not available, but James assures me it will be added to plugins soon

The steps are fairly simple

1. Log in to your admin section
2. click on plugins
3. choose ‘aggr’ and click on activate
4. now copy the little bit of example code it shows you
5. <!–rss url=”http://perassi.org/feed/“–>
6. Yes, you will need all of it!
7. I have bolded a bit of it you will need to replace later
8. Start up a new post - or more possibly, a new page
9. Give it a title and then click on the “code” tab
10. paste this into the code section
11. Now the clever bit
12. get the rss address of the site you want
13. to do this, right click on the RSS logo on the site you want to feed from - see above
14. click on Copy shortcut or copy link location - whichever one turns up
15. now replace the bit in bold with your feed address - it’s between the ” ” marks
16. then publish
17. now you will have the last 10 posts being pulled in directly to your site

This is now a much easier process as Edublogs is starting to integrate these add-ons into their software - if you want to show our photos simply, then this is the way forward.

Why do I think it’s so important? Quite simply because Bubbleshare is one of the nicest and simplest ways of producing digital stories. You simply take some photographs and upload them to Bubbleshare, where you can add speech bubbles and voice annotation - an excellent motivator for students, also allowing collaborative work between students with different literacy skills.

Here’s how you do it:

1. you can try it, if you wish, without registering
2. or register for Bubbleshare
3. this will allow you to keep more than one album online
4. upload your pictures
5. click on the tab which says my albums
6. click on one of your pictures to load the album
7. then select the bit of the web address (url) that is the reference for that album
8. eg http://www.bubbleshare.com/myalbum/134231.d7217dcfdc1/4817635
9. now simply select and copy the bold bit (yours will be different as this is for MY album)
10. and then put directly it into your post in this format:
11. bubbleshare 134231.d7217dcfdc1 and then add [ ] brackets round that (they are found just next to the letter “P”
12. Hit ’save’
13. and it’s all done - very simple
14. instant slideshow

[bubbleshare 134231.d7217dcfdc1]

I’ve been working on this post for about five days now with spectacularly unsuccessful results. I have read lots of forum posts to try and crack this problem

Why do I think it’s so important? Quite simply because Bubbleshare is one of the nicest and simplest ways of producing digital stories. You simply take some photographs and upload them to Bubbleshare, where you can add speech bubbles and voice annotation - an excellent motivator for students, also allowing collaborative work between students with different literacy skills.

Here’s how you do it:

1. you can try it, if you wish, without registering
2. or register for Bubbleshare
3. this will allow you to keep more than one album online
4. upload your pictures
5. click on the tab which says my albums
6. click on one of your pictures to load the album
7. then select the bit of the web address (url) that is the reference for that album
8. eg http://www.bubbleshare.com/myalbum/134231.d7217dcfdc1/4817635
9. now simply select and copy the bold bit
10. and then put directly it into your post in this format
11. bubbleshare 134231.d7217dcfdc1 and then add [ ] brackets round that (they are found just next to the letter “P”
12. and it’s all done - very simple
13. instant slideshow

[bubbleshare 134231.d7217dcfdc1]