PortablePD.ca

[Looks like Edublogs has changed things in this regard, hopefully for the better, in their latest updgrade.  Another tutorial, Part 3, will come soon!]

One of the most successful aspects of my class blog has been the ability for students to take ownership of a part of it.  Students are able to independently log in and write their own content.  Each student has their own category providing quick access to their work. Students can work on their writing in school and at home provided they have internet access. Whatever posts they wrote would have to be moderated by me before being published to the internet.

This is a follow up to a tutorial I did on this topic on how to make this happen.  Last year, Edublogs changed, rather, created, a business model and introduced a paid level of their blog service.  So, something that used to be done for free now requires you to be a paid subscriber.  However, I completely appreciate the need to try something out before committing to paying for something.

Thankfully, is still possible to set your students as contributors to your blog without being a subscriber.  It is, however, more tedious as it involves creating accounts, usernames and passwords for every students one by one.  This process is automated for subscribers.  In my opinion, it is worth the effort.

Fullscreen version.

This screencast will show you how to take pictures from web pages, and insert them into your blog posts and pages. I use Flickr as the source for the pictures that I use as it has copyright friendly material available on it. This method of inserting pictures should work from other websites as well, but be certain that you are not violating copyright with your picture choices. Due to the size of the screen that I used for this Jing, it might be easier for you to see this by clicking the larger version. This is a large file…it will take a while but it is worth it (if I don’t say so myself)

Click here to see a larger version

Hello Nathan!

I’m a Grade 7/8 Teacher from Thamesville, Ontario. I’ve recently started a class blog (http://www.jpepper.edublogs.org) (January 2009) and have stumbled across yours. You have an excellent blog and have some very creative students. After March Break, my class will be starting to work on podcasting. I’ve noticed your class has some podcasts as well.

I have a couple of questions, if you don’t mind answering:

1) Is portableradio.ca a place where I could eventually upload my students’ podcasts or is it your site?

2) I noticed on your blog [5nt.ca] that beside each student’s name in brackets is the number of posts they have. How do I get this application to work on my blog?

Thanks for your time.

Jason

************
Jason Pepper
Good Shepherd Catholic School
Thamesville, ON

Hi Jason,

I’ll do my best to answer your questions:

1) Is portableradio.ca a place where I could eventually upload my students’ podcasts or is it your site?

Portableradio.ca is the blog that my class (5nt.ca) and Jane Smith’s class of grade 5/6 students (56js.ca) share as our podcast site. The site is designed to showcase the podcasts made by the two classes.

The portableradio.ca site runs off of Edublogs.org.  I see that you are using Edublogs for your blog as well.  You can upload your sound to your blog but the free version limits you to 20MB which very roughly translates into about 25 minutes of mp3 audio.  I put together a video tutorial on how you do that.

If you get hooked on this stuff, you will want to find more storage space.  One options is to become an Edublogs supporter and receive 5GB of storage ($). Or, your school might have its own website for uploading audio.  Once you’ve done uploaded the audio, figure out its URL and link to it from your Edublogs blog.

2) I noticed on your blog [5nt.ca] that beside each student’s name in brackets is the number of posts they have. How do I get this application to work on my blog?

Here’s what Jason is referring to:

I see that your students each have their own blog and you have them listed under “Blogroll’ which, in effect, is a list of links to separate websites.  I don’t know of a way to make the number of posts they write on their individual blogs show up on yours.

In my case, I’ve elected for my students not to have their own blogs. My students contribute to the one blog. That way, I can moderate all posts and comments. I’ve set each student as “Contributor” and list their names as categories. Whenever they write a post, they check off their name a pull-down menu of categories.  Click here for more information about how we set this up. I have a suspicion that some of the things we talk about in this document may now require you becoming an Edublogs supporter ($)

Here’s how I made the number of posts written by each student appear. In your Edublogs dashboard go to “Design” and select “Widgets”.  If you haven’t already, drag over the “Categories” widget into your sidebar.  Click on “edit” and check “Show Post Counts”. Remember this only works with the “Category” widget and not “Blogroll”.

I hope that was useful.  Let us know when your podcast is “live” on the internet.  We’d love to add a link to it here on our PortablePD.ca site.

Frequent visitors to PortablePD.ca will be familiar with our screencasts.  Screencasts are movies of your desktop and come in handy when explaining how to deal with software and websites.  Jing offers free and very easy to use software for creating such movies.

Until recently, we weren’t able to embed these screencasts directly into our blog.  Instead we would have create a link to another website.  Being self-centred types, Jane and I much prefer to keep our readers on our site at all times!

Predictably enough, I’ve created this screencast explaining how to embed it into a post.

Click here to see a larger version (or right click to download it).

This post has been written on “Using tools like VoiceThread, Voki, mystudiyo, Animoto, SlideShows, Google Documents with students and embedding in blogs posts” as part of The Edublogger’s Birthday Celebration Competition.

This post won!

Something that out students really enjoy looking at on our class blogs (56js.ca and 5nt.ca) are the world maps with the little dots that show where visitors to our site are from. Nathan and I both use Feedjit to track our visitors. It is available as a free download and is easy to use. All I did was to copy the HTML code from the site and paste it into the design, widget area of the blog. It works well with edublogs. Feedjit has other formats that you can choose from. My class is still hoping to get a dot on Africa!

I’ve put together a tutorial on adding a linked image and embedding a Google Translator into your Edublogs blog using a text widget.

Here’s the code you need. It’s a Word file.

Click here for a larger version.

We recently received a question about how to create a student login on our edublogs blog.

Here’s a screencast on that very topic:

Click here for a larger version

I am writing this post in the hopes that other educational bloggers out there will add to a discussion in order to provide information for people who are thinking about getting into blogging with their classes about which provider to sign on with.

We (obviously) use Edublogs. Edublogs has just undergone a massive makeover. Last week was quite rocky. The service was up and down while they worked out the bugs. They are very good at communicating when they will do work but I think they were a bit blind sided by how much work the makeover would be. If you had asked me early last week about Edublogs I would have told you to avoid it like the plague but this week the sun is shining again.

I find it very easy to manage the blog and have actually abandoned my website and now just use the blog. Setting up student accounts is getting easier and I like how I can post from any computer anywhere – unlike my website. It means that I can post daily and my students are doing some of their writing from home.

I also like the fact that edublogs is a free service that is advertising free. I don’t like sending my families or students to sites that post commercials.

Another plus is that it is really easy to upload pictures and video to the site. Nathan has provided a video tutorial on how to upload a google calendar to the site. I am interested in coding and the background mumbo jumbo on how these things work so I appreciate how easy it is to manage and modify the blog.

I look forward to seeing comments about other blog providers. If you would like to see my classroom blog please visit 56j.ca

We recently received a question about how to embed Google calendars into your blog.  Here’s a screencast showing how to do just that, at least if you are using Edublogs.

Click here to see a larger version.

If you would prefer to learn how to embed by reading – check out this How To Embed a Google Calendar in a Blog Page! (Thanks Sue Waters for the link).

Jeff Siderius, a Grade 4 Teacher at Dunlop Public School had the following question about my class blog:

How did you set up your students as contributors on Edublogs?  Did you get email addresses for all of them?  Or, did you use the linked gmail addresses that I’ve been reading about, using one email address for your class?

Click here to open a PDF, complete with snazzy screenshots, to see an explaination of how things were set up.

NOTE:  You now have to be an Edublogs Supporter ($) in order for all of this to work.

Click here for a tutorial on how to do this if you are not an Edublogs Supporter.