Edublogs Tutorials

I’ve been looking (not too hard) for a new theme and needed it to work with all my widgets, page tabs and plugins, as well as looking smooth and easy on the eye.

I like the idea of having a customised headers as this allows easy change of the look without losing functionality.

So here’s the latest

Called SeaShore 1.0 by Sadish Bala

Thanks for developing this for us to use - I think it’s great

let me know what it looks like from out there

James continues to ad functionality to the Edublogs platform and the new forums look to me to be a great addition

Quite simply, as a free user, you can add one forum to your site - probably best in a page as it will then be available on the front of your blog - check out mine in the header menus

Click on picture below to go to article

Well, as you can see, I’m very pleased with the Talkshoe outcomes for Edublogs users who want to podcast.

All the requirements are there which make the platform a very useable one. In addition to this, I finally managed to get round to checking if an uploaded Talkshoe podcast or recording could be put into InnerTOOB and annotated.

Well, it seems that works as well. So it’s an all singing-and-dancing podcast service with all the requirements I had asked for.

Check out the InnerTOOB annotated podcast here

Well, this talkcast is probably the last in the live series of broadcasts that I’ve been doing of late. I have made a number of points with respect to the use of Talkshoe which are of benefit and some which are a challenge.

Using Talkshoe as a broadcasting tool is fine most of the time. I have used Shoephone, which is their VOIP ( like Skype) and for most a time it performs very well. However, when it does fail, you have no way of knowing that this is happening unless somebody who is listening feeds back to you. Even if they did this, you are unable to alter anything as I am told this is due to bandwidth issues.

Dave Nelsen (founder) says

“ShoePhone, like any VoIP service, can be disrupted by internet bandwidth or packet delay variance problems (AKA latency). This is not under your control or ours — just one of the hazards of sending delay-sensitive voice packets across the internet. As such, we recommend to hosts that they use a regular (land-line) phone if possible. ShoePhone is more for callers who can be muted if they are having audio quality problems.”

In addition to this, uses are advised to shut down any other VOIP software they may have running as this can cause potential conflicts. The problem I have with this for education is that users in Europe would have to pay international rates in order to join in a conference - if they wish to guarantee call quality.

However, if you consider Talkshoe as a Podcasting service and forget the broadcast part for the moment, I think it is the package that Edublogs users have been looking for for sometime.

here are some of the advantages:

• allows uploading of MP3 files
• allows downloading of MP3 files
• has unlimited hosting
• allows a streamed listening via widget player
• this player can be embedded in an Edublogs sidebar
• on clicking the title within the player, a user can then subscribe to your podcast via iTunes
• can be imported to InnerTOOB to produce annotated podcasts

I think for most people, this is the complete suite of requirements for podcasting and I am recommending this to the people who require all of these tools.

I had reviewed a number of other sites, and these include:

GCast

InnerTOOB

Gabcast

Voicethread

Edublogs

and although all of them are brilliant and free, each one has at least one restriction that seems to have frustrated a number of Edublogs users in the past.

So, there are now no excuses - podcasting within Edublogs has now come of age

I hope this information helps some of you move forward and start podcasting for yourself and with your children