Edublogs Tutorials

If you like the idea of a Clustrmap but would like to take it one step further, you could have a whos.amung.us live map. The visitors actually on the site show up as flashing points and this is a great motivator for students who want to see who is looking and from where. Click on the ‘Map widget’ tab to choose your map

This is a test post for using Google docs to publish to Edublogs

See post Setting up Google docs to edit and publish your posts

An application for this is multiple posts to a class blog from different students and locations.  The Google account has an age limit of 14 I think so some limitations here

Hi fellow Edubloggers – did you notice that there’s new functions in your toolbar.  Just click the kitchen sink icon on the far right of your write toolbar

Great stuff James – we can now choose different font sizes, embed media, undo, add custom characters etc

Have fun

Thanks to Glassbeed via twitter

This PhotoFunia looks great for adding effects to your pics – I think the kids will love it

This took me a few minutes to work out but is basically quite simple

1 Get a free Flickr account
2 You need a phone (or pc) with email facility
3 Sign into your Flickr account
4 Go to http://www.flickr.com/tools/mobile/
5 Under ‘Tips & Tricks for Uploading’ click on ‘upload by email’
6 Your account will now be given an email address to send your photos
7 Under this is a place to add a tag to a specific set – this tag can then be used to select all those photos you send and embed them in a slideshow. Save this setting
8 Save this as a contact on your phone under ‘Flickr’
9 Take a photo
10 Choose to send it by email
11 Add a comment in the body of the text message – this will be a descriptor for the photo when uploaded
12 Send
13 In Flickr, search the tag you added
14 this will now select all those uploaded pics
15 If you want to embed them in a blog etc, just choose share and copy the code
16 Paste this into your blog/website as html
17 Voila

Searchme stacks is a great tool for sharing and showing resources, including web pages and video

Take a look at the video

If you want to sign up your students for a web 2.0 application and this requires an email account, simply use your free gmail account

You can register different unique account names numerous times using your own e-mail address by doing this:

emailaddress+1@gmail.com
emailaddress+2@gmail.com
emailaddress+3@gmail.com
emailaddress+4@gmail.com
emailaddress+5@gmail.com

Carey Pohanka suggested that you could use the student’s name instead of a number, and then you won’t have any problems identifying them

emailaddress+student name@gmail.com

I didn’t know that trick, many thanks

All activity the websites under these accounts will be sent to your original, derivative e-mail (i.e. emailaddress@gmail.com). This way, you’ll be able to give each student a unique application account, while also being able to monitor their account’s activity.

Thanks to Jane Knight for collating and producing this list. You might want to to check out if there are new ones you’ve perhaps missed

Google has many tools which are not readily seen by all of us, perhaps they pop up when least expected. This one came up in the K-12 online conference and although I’d heard about them, I’d not really made the connection – are you like that too?

So, if you want to get some opinions easily, then just use Google Forms – you can get the analytics when the form returns start coming in.

1. sign up for a free Google account
2. go to “My account”
3. choose “docs”
4. click on “new” menu then “form”
5. start filling in your requirements

you can have a whole variety of answer formats, from multiple choice to checkboxes

Check out the K-12 feedback form for a good example

What a great video this is – I highly recommend it to those trying to engage others in a discussion on why to use web2.0 tools in the classroom or for CPD

How many times have you wanted to show part of a YouTube video starting in the middle.

Well, now you can specify when the video will start from – it’s called Deep Linking

Here’s an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bibCui3lFM#t=1m45s

the bit at the end determines where the video will start – in this case,

1m 45s in – simple eh

read more at TechCrunch

TWA = time wasting activity

Well I think friv has it all – around 200 arcade games to keep you occupied for those dark winter months

thanks to A really different place

I thought it was about time I had a go with this, so here’s a great flower display I took in a park in Normandy, France in September 2007

BTW, CleVR is really VERY simple to use and is helped if your camera has the panorama shot setting as mine does. If not, just remember to keep the photos at the same level and overlap at least 1/4

Scribd is a great free application that allows you to add a document directly into your post

It is straight forward to do

1. sign up for a free Scribd account
2. upload a document
3. find the ‘embed’ box
4. copy the code
5. open up a post in edit mode
6. add any text that you wish – descriptions etc
7. click the code tab at the top
8. place your cursor where you want your document to show up
9. click paste
10. click publish
11. enjoy
    

Gail Desler has recently produced a new and up-to-date guide in pdf format for those who want to print out a user guide

It’s detailed and has all that you will need to get up and running with Edublogging – thanks Gail

The index looks like this, so anything here you want to find out about – check it out

Getting Started ……………………………………………………………………3
Viewing Your Blog………………………………………………………………..5
Changing Your Password……………………………………………………..6
Changing Other Information in the Users Panel ………………….6
Creating a Post or Page ……………………………………………………….7
Editing a Post ………………………………………………………………………7
Creating Pages……………………………………………………………………..8
Adding Hyperlinks to a Post (or Page) …………………………………9
Adding Anchor Links……………………………………………………………9
Creating Categories………………………………………………………………10
Assigning Categories ……………………………………………………………10
Adding Tags to a Post …………………………………………………………..11
Adding Links to Your Blog Roll……………………………………………..12
Adding Your Blog Roll to the Sidebar…………………………………….12
Changing the Presentation (Theme)………………………………………12
Adding Images or Documents to Your Blog …………………………..14
Formatting Images ……………………………………………………………….15
Changing Your Blog’s Tagline ………………………………………………..15
Monitoring Your Blog …………………………………………………………….16
Moderating Comments…………………………………………………………..17
Approving Comments …………………………………………………………..17
Editing Comments………………………………………………………………….17
Adding Edublog Community Users ………………………………………..18
Limiting Comments to Edublog Community Members ………….19
Ready for Advanced Edublogs Tutorials? ……………………………..19

Well done again James – multibloggability is here!.

This is a new function which allows you as an Edublogs user to create new blogs for others to use.

Key point is that you can add yourself as an administrator to assist them with some of the fiddly setting up and theme selection. All this can be managed from your own dashboard.

You can also choose to have them set up as author or contributor, so their posts are moderated first, before going live.

These are available free of charge in batches of 15, but you can have more if you require – if you need more, just fill in the first 15 on the blog form, process it and repeat

Dead easy

Edublogs Tutorials was 1 year old at the end of February

Many thanks to all of the 10,000 of you who have dropped in and taken a look

Well done all those of you who have used this and other sites to get your Edublogs up and running, as well as those who have helped me with tech tips and checking my sometimes faulty or ambiguously written advice

Keep on blogging

Just in case you hadn’t noticed these in the support area – Edublogs has its own video tutorials to help you get started

BTW – I added the Podcast 3b and 3c to the post Podcast #3

and also the link to Wes Fryer’s blog, where the original podcast was located

Many thanks to Michigan State University for these video tutorials – they are great and mean I don’t have to do them – you can always find them in the page tabs at the top of this post under Edublogs V-Tutorials

Video 1: Creating an blog account

Video 2: Looking at the dashboard

Video 3: How to write a post and a page

Video 4: How to moderate comments

Video 5: Changing the theme