Edublogs Tutorials

If you would like to add a tag cloud to your site read on.

A tag cloud takes a look at the whole of your site and then prioritises the most used words  by size.  This is fully customisable to suit your design ideas but is a good way to show students what’s of top interest on your site at the moment

It’s all free and provided by ZoomClouds 

Just sign up and follow the very simple instructions.  My tag cloud is the default one so I didn’t need to change anything

I’ve been having a little discussion with Leslie on my forum and it seems that using Blip.tv might be another good host for your videos.

I have uploaded one to test this out - Bip.tv automatically converts them all to flash and then they can be embedded using their player, straight into your post, just brilliant - with unlimited upload space. It just gets better and better

You can also add this to iTunes so folks can easily subscribe to your channel by clicking on the iTunes Dashboard Pane videos will need to be in the QuickTime format to work with iTunes, so the site says

So once again, a complete set of ticks in the box for Blip.tv

BTW, I have changed the player size to 450 x 355 and this seems to work great - do this by just editing the numbers after you have pasted in the code

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

Flickr is again a free service. To embed a badge - horizontal, vertical or tiled

1. sign up for a Flickr account
2. upload some photos
3. go to the badge page - not sure where the link is at this moment
4. choose the badge shape
5. select the other options offered
6. copy the code in the box
7. open up an Edublogs post in edit mode
8. Write in any text you wish to have,
9. click on the code tab at the top
10. put the cursor where you want the badge to appear
11. paste in the code
12. Publish
13. enjoy

Note:  this was not as simple as it looks - I ended up with lots of unwanted code in the post and had to delete it manually - anyone any ideas what I’m doing wrong?

Also, I’m unable to find the link on the Flickr page which leads to me finding the embed code - dohh - I’m not feeling very bright with this embed stuff - I’m hoping Patricia is reading this and can give me the right way to do it - again!

Once again any help will be welcome

You can also embed a book list for your studentsYou might also want to look at Shelfari which is great for your sidebar as it’s a vertical presentation

Looking at the string of responses to the “How are you using your widgets now?”

I thought it might be fun to add a collaborative mindmap so I can update this post really easily.  I have invited Patricia to collaborate on this, so I see she’s already added some new bits

From the Edublogs blog - great update and no more fiddling to get widgets to work - hurrahh

After lengthy discussions and weighing up of the pros and cons we’ve decided to allow javascript, iframes and object code onto Edublogs.

This means that you can now just copy and paste pretty much most ‘embedding’ code you can pick up around the web directly into your Edublog.

For posts and pages just click on the ‘Code’ tab and paste the code in there. For sidebar widgets just create as many Text Boxes as you need (under Presentation > Widgets) and copy and paste the code into them.

For example, say you wanted to play a widget game on your blog… simply go there, click on ‘Get Widget’, copy the code and paste it in your ‘Code tab and you’ll get theembedded widget right there in your blog’s sidebar or post

You can also use iframes to embed things like Calendars, put CoComment and Ligit in your sidebar or add live chat and extra Twitter options.

eg Google calendar

Also the GCast player now also works - brilliant news for podcasters - see it in my sidebar

However - Side note: As a result the Widgetbox, Box.net and Video Widgets will be replaced by this approach - so please recreate any widgets you currently have in Text Box form before we remove these widgets (next week).

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…

If you want to start Customising your side bar I thought I would add some pictures to show you the details.

• you will need to go to the presentation section and select sidebar widgets.

• I am using Seashore which has sidebars on the left and right.
• I prefer this because it allows me to share out the menus evenly so people don’t have to scroll down too far.
• You are able to then undertaken some customisation

• Just drag a Text box to the sidebar, click on the 3 lines on the rhs then add the code you have
• You should see both the left and right toolbars along with the available widgets (at the bottom). You simply drag these from the bottom box into which ever sidebar you wish to use and in whatever order you choose
• If you run out of boxes, you can add more text widgets which accept the HTML code that lots of third-party widgets will give you e.g. bobble share, slide share, clustrwebs etc
• The default setting for this is 1 and as you can see I am now up to five additional widgets

Have fun playing with these, because you can add lots of functionality like the voice mails, for example

Alice Mercer adds “More themes with highly customizable sidebars are: Almost Spring, Deep Blue, Regulus, Round Flow.”

Alice Mercer says

“Here is how I added the ShoutBox to my sidebar.

1. First, you need a WordPress theme that lets you add a text box.
2. You and I both use Andreas09, Freshy would work too.
3. Set up an account on shoutmix.com.
4. You can have it filter for obscenities.
5. You will be walked through the set up, and sizing of the ShoutBox.
6. I did mine at 160 x 400.
7. It will generate some code
8. Paste the code into your text box on edublogs,
9. and add a title in the title line at the top.
10. *Add it to your sidebar column, save, and voila!

*note - you will need to have managed to use the sidebar widget tools first - check out

Customising your side bar

Adding ClustrMap to your blog - visitor log

If you have already used your Text 1 box to add Clustrmaps, for example, there is an option to have more than one text box - just click on the arrow and make the number more than 1

Alica also add the following for those of you who want to to use a shoutbox on your class blog

1. “Make sure you give students clear guidelines about what they are to put in the shout box.
2. I use a metaphor to something we do in class meetings which is to start those meetings with compliments.
3. The same rules apply to the Compliment Box.
4. They have to use school English (I had to remove some “this is to my homies” posts recently because of that).
5. It has to say specifically what you are complimenting them for, and you can’t compliment them for looks, or clothing.

Now, there is no way with the ShoutBox to keep out strangers. I haven’t gotten strangers posting there because I don’t list my blog. I haven’t gotten to the point of “sharing” the blog with the entire Internet. I also monitor the blog daily or more often, and I can pull any compliments that appear there. This may not be enough “security” for others out there in their class blogs

Brilliant tips - thanks Alice

PLEASE NOTE:  this post has been revised and is now out of date.  All the complicated instructions below have been replaced with a few simple clicks - thanks James

Please check out ClustrMaps update
Clustrmaps is a great little widget that adds a map to your sidebar with a map of the world. On that map are red dots of varying sizes that indicate the location and number of visitors. When writing for audience, there is nothing more exciting then seeing that people outside your country are looking at your blog and reading your posts.

Just a warning before you start this little map will replace all the things you currently have in your sidebar.

However, you can add them back in quite simply. I shall add a post on customising sidebars later on, so no problems

PHASE I: Copy your ClustrMaps HTML code1.

1. Go to clustrmaps registration to set up your map for your blog
2. Clustrmaps will send you a password - numbers an letters
3. Log in to your ClustrMaps ‘Admin’ page by clicking on the Admin link at the top of any ClustrMaps page, or going directly to: http://www.clustrmaps.com/admin/action.php (use your URL (blog’s website address ie www.—) as your username, and the password you have been sent, or the password you changed it to)
4. On your admin page, you will then see a box containing the relevant HTML code.
5. Click in the box with your mouse and select ALL of that text (you can use the two keyboard keys CTRL+A to select all of it)
6. Now copy that HTML (you can use the two keyboard keys CTRL+C to perform this, or right-click with the mouse and select ‘Copy’); you will then paste it into your web page later on below.

PHASE II: Edublog alterations

1. Now you must log into your edublogs account,using the sequence you would normally use, say, if you were about to change your blog settings or preferences or user profile information.
2. Do this in a separate browser window if possible, or in the same window you are currently using if that is simpler for you.
3. You now need to add in the ‘code’ on your page where the map is going to appear.
4. To do this, follow this specific sequence for this edublogs as specified immediately below:

a) Bring up the ‘dashboard’ (all those Edublogs menu items - you can also click on site admin), and at the top go through the following sequence:

b) click on the following sequence of menus and tabs:

Manage…

Presentation…

Sidebar widgets…

c) drag a box called ‘text 1′ (or ‘text 2′ or ‘text 3′ or ‘text 4′, etc)
from ‘Available widgets’ into the ‘Sidebar’ area… (if you need more text boxes , just scroll down the page a bit and alter the number from 1 to what you need

d) click on the right-hand side (looks like a box with 3 horizontal stripes), which is the ‘configure’ button

e) give it a title such as: Visitors to this site

f) click in the main box, and use the CTRL+V keys to paste what you earlier copied at step 3, or right-click with the mouse and select ‘Paste’

g) close it (click on the [X] in the upper right)

h) click on ‘Save changes’ (right hand side of the screen)

I would also check the titles of the things in my sidebar like

RSS feed

Archives etc

and manually add these back using the drag and drop facility - otherwie they will not show up when you save

It would appear that the best themes for adding widgets are the following:

• Almost Spring,
  Andreas 09,
  Daydream,
  Freshy,
  Ocadia

note: please read the update at the end of this post see the current update
to change your theme, you will need to get into the editing area of your blog. According to your theme, you will either need to click on edit part of your posts, all use the site admin button in your sidebar. Once there, click on the presentation menu at the top. From here, you will be able to see all of the different types of themes available to you.

All the posts below, with video, pictures and calendars have used widgets but not all of the widgets have worked so I shall be investigating further with these other themes.

My hope is to come up with a theme that will support widgets in posts, and in the sidebar as well as RSS feeds for categories as I feel these are the most important aspects for using edublogs in the classroom.

update:

I have tried all of these themes with absolutely no success. Even though the administrators have suggested that these themes will support widgets, the remaining ones I need to use do not seem to be available.

I will let you know, if I make any progress with adding polls from

www.quimble.com

www.slideshare.com - this one embeds PowerPoint slides into your post and for me is a vital addition to any educational blog.