Edublogs Tutorials

If your school posts its dates onto a Google calendar and you happen to keep your information on Google too, you might want to use the merge facility to add the school’s dates to your own.
It really seems to be very simple.

• Just open up the school calendar
• In the bottom RH corner, there is a Google Calendar logo with a + sign
• Click on the + sign
• This will load up your Google calendar and ask you if you would like to import the calendar
• Agree to this and you have successfully merged them

I hope this is useful

BTW – I haven’t managed to find and undo functionm for this – perhaps someone can help

This is a fairly straightforward procedure

1. make sure you have a google account – free
2. go to google docs and start a new document – like Word
3. write your information for your post
4. save the file – this ensures your post has a title
5. click on the ‘share‘ button on the rhs menus
6. click ‘publish as web page‘
7. There is then a choice of ‘publish document’ and ‘post to blog’
8. click ‘change your blog site settings’ under the ‘post to blog’ button
9. choose ‘my own server/custom‘
10. API is moveable type API
11. URL – put in your address where is says ‘Your site/Path‘
12. mine looks like this http://miketemple123.edublogs.org/TO/xmlrpc.php – ie set up for a Wordpress API so just add the extra /TO/xmlrpc.php to the endo of your blog address
13. Under existing blog settings, put in your edublogs username and password
14. Add in your blog title
15. Tick ‘include document title‘
16. click OK
17. Now when you’ve finished your post, click ‘share‘ and then ‘publish as a web page’ then publish to blog
18. let me know what you think of this – applications please

I’m using this as a test to see if I can use Google docs to prepare a post and the using the ’share’ button, getting it published to my blog.

Why would this be useful – perhaps getting the students to post via Google docs could work.

This could be a great way to get your students to do a writeup for your class blog. Just have a class login for Google docs and have them all log in and create then save their posts in Google docs. Then, I think it would be advisable for you to publish them using the ’share’ menu, without lettinng the students in on this function. This way, you can do multiple and collaborative writeups – any other ideas out there?

Unable to get pictures in at the right size at the moment via Google docs, otherwise this seems to work well – I think this is a Safari-specific issue

Advantages

• easier to make multiple posts
• spellchecking built in
• can add in tables
• headers and footers
• strikeout, superscript and subscript
• collaborative aspect to posts
• ability to indent
• highlighting – this doesn’t seem to show up in Edublogs

cell1	cell2
cell3	cell4

• editing is much much quicker
• you can probably upload a .doc file to Google docs and then edit it quickly before posting

Disadvantage

• at the moment, no way to categorise or tag posts

If anyone would like an invite to help look into this and set up some instructions, please let me know

Thanks to Wes Fryer for this – Great student-created tutorial guide for Google tools published with Issuu (Maine students of Kern Kelly)

Many thanks to Patricia Donaghy – once again, she;s helped me t unravel the intricacies of embedding the Picasa web albums – you are a genius

1.  go to your online picasa web albums
2. check the  settings in Google
3. change this to English (US)
4. to embed your slideshow
5. click on embed slideshow
6. copy the code in the box
7.  open up your post in Edublogs in edit mode
8. add any text you would like to add- eg a description
9. click on the code tab at the top of the post
10. select where you would like the show to begin
11. paste in the code
12. change the height to 355 and the width to 450
13. click publish
14. enjoy

I had not really grasped what this involved but I think delayed intelligence (or not) has finally kicked in.

I was working with a teacher today who used the upload function to host a picture on edublogs – click on browse under the edit box, then upload, after uploading, click “send to editor”

This pops the picture into the page and you can then resize it.

As previously mentioned in another post, I have been using Picasa web albums to host my pictures as I can upload them in bulk – whether I’m going to use them or not.

Adding a photo album slideshow using Picasa web albums (Google)

Anyway – to the point

If you go to your uploaded Google picasa web albums you can view your pictures – and use them easily

Just click your mouse just to the right of the top left hand corner of your picture and it will turn bluish, showing it has been selected.

Now simply copy and paste this into your blog post and resize to fit

This takes a few steps but in essence is quite straightforward

1. Go to Google and register an account – this is free,
2. remember the login and password, you’ll need them again
3. In Google, type Picasa and download the software
4. Run this software -
5. it will ask you if you want to scan all your hard drive or just My Documents
6. It is simplest to choose My Documents
7. let the software scan for pictures – may take some time
8. You can then view all your pictures in albums
9. to get them on your blog, first get them online
10. click on the ones you want to upload
11. Click on Web albums (at the bottom
12. You will need to log in to Google
13. Give the album a name
14. You can choose public or private -
15. they will need to be public if you wish to add to your blog
16. then go back to Google
17. search for Picasa Web albums
18. your photos should be there
19. click on the photo to open the album
20. on lhs menu, click on link to this album
    
21. copy code in the box
22. go back to your post
23. click the code button
24. paste the code in
25. save
26. phew!

School artwork

Here we go

RSS stand for Really Simple Syndication and it is – sometimes, honestly, however, without help it took me 6 months to GET IT!

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

The steps are fairly simple

1. get an RSS reader – just Google for that or use Google reader
2. you can choose an online one – if you travel around lots & use different pcs
3. or, like me, use a software based one
4. there are lots to choose from
5. I like my one because I can save all me feeds in case I lose them
6. I can also send these to someone else
7. haven’t found an online one that does this, as I would want to transfer mine all in one go, not one at a time
8. eg Google reader online
9. blog express software based – what I use – ok but sometimes crashes on my pc anyway
10. register or download – all free stuff, whichever you choose
11. now to subscribe
12. open your reader
13. look for the subscribe or add a feed button
14. I tend to right click on the one that says RSS or atom
15. copy link location
16. I then paste this into my new feed box or new subscription
17. the reader should check that it is working
18. you feed is now connected
19. every time you have new stuff to read, when you open your reader, it will inform you
20. to get RSS feed from this site, go to the very bottom of the page and get RSS for posts
21. Find the RSS button and follow the instructions
22. you’ll be connected for ever
23. enjoy

Just thought I’d try to add a calendar to the blog – great for H/W and exam time

The clever bit here is that you can have as many of these calendars as you wish in different places and all you need to do to update all of them at the same time, is to work on your own Google calendar. As people download their blogs and websites, all the information will be updated automatically.

1. make sure you have a Google account
2. get your account and click on calendars
3. when you have set up your calendar, on the left hand side, there’ll be a small box with an tick one side and a small downward pointing arrow on the right
4. click on this arrow
5. select calendar settings
6. scroll down to the box that says embed this calendar
   
7. can choose to customise your calendar – click on customise the colour, size and other options
8. having done that, copy the code in the box
9. go to the point on your post where you would like to place your calendar
10. click on code in the menu bar
11. paste the code in
12. I changed the height to 355 and the width to 450
13. click on update
14. then save the post

you will now have an embedded calendar, which is linked to your Google calendar and will update when you make any changes on your own calendar from anywhere in the world.

This is a lengthy, but simple, process which is much easier second time around

For some reason this method doesn’t embed a sildeshow into your post and for this reason, I would suggest using Bubbleshare at the moment

Adding a Bubbleshare slideshow to your post

1. set up a free Google account
2. remember your login and password, you’ll need it
3. search for Picasa in Google
4. download this software
5. run Picasa
6. It will ask you to choose from
7. scan the whole computer
8. scan my documents
9. most people would choose “my documents”, as that is where the “my pictures” folder is
10. Picasa will now scan all your pictures and put them into folders
11. Find the folder with the pictures you want to use
12. Select the pictures you want to use by clicking on them
13. ctrl and “A” will do them all
14. ctrl and mouse click will select individual ones
15. Click on web album
16. This will connect you to Picasa Web albums online
17. It might ask you to log in to Google
18. you will be asked for a name for your album
19. upload your pictures
20. wait until complete
21. click on”view online”
22. when in you Web albums online, click on the picture that matches your album
23. On the lhs click on “link to this album
24. Copy the code in the box
25. In your post menu, click on code tab at the top
26. paste in the code
27. click save
28. then save and publish your post

School artwork