Here’s some pretty big news… Edublogs.org is now open only for teachers but also for students of all descriptions.
Previously we’ve hosted three other sites - uniblogs.org, learnerblogs.org and eslblogs.org for students but we decided a few weeks ago that this is both overly complex and limits what teachers can do with their students through their blog on Edublogs.org.
Uniblogs.org, Learnerblogs.org and Eslblogs.org will remain in operation indefinitely but we won’t be allowing new signups to them, from now on *everyone* can sign up here and simply select if they are a ‘Teacher’, ‘Student’ or ‘Other’ (librarian, researcher, administrator etc.)
You can change this ‘blog type’ at any time through your options and we’ll be adding more ‘types’ as we go along (best to start simple).
And here’s one of the immediate benefits of the new system… our brand spanking new, completely groovy, forum system!
All you have to do is visit Options > Forums and you can create a forum and add it anywhere on your blog by simply pasting in the ‘Page Code’ that you are provided with - for example (forum:4) - but with square brackets.
Then you can use it for class discussions, Q&A on anything you want and as a central hub for hosting conversations on whatever you like. You know, all the things that forums are good for :)
And of course, now all you students need to have is a username and/or blog on edublogs.org and their avatars will appear next to their contributions and link back to their blogs if the have them. Neat huh!
Here’s a handy 3 minute video that goes through the whole process of setting up a forum:
So we hope the new system makes life easier for everyone and we hope you enjoy the new forums functionality (please feel free to suggest any improvements too!)
NB: You can export blogs from uniblogs.org, learnerblogs.org and eslblogs.org to Edublogs.org if you want by creating new blogs at Edublogs.org and using the Manage > Import / Export features.
Invalid Forum Code
66 responses so far ↓
Great idea but since I am not that experienced one will be great if you have a short tutorial of how to tweak it a bit and doesn’t look so simple as ours. Thanks.
Consider it done… video tutorial now included!
Boy! It really works that Edublogs.org ‘is incredibly responsive to its users’ Thanks for so quick solve our problem. - Mr.R
James,
This is great. I’m a little unclear, though, on if comments in forums can be moderated before they are posted. I see they can be edited and deleted, but what about moderation?
Larry
Good question Larry - we haven’t included moderation as in order to participate a user has to be a registered and logged in user of Edublogs… which means they have to have provided us with a legitimate email address and gone through the whole process.
This should:
a. Completely eliminate spam
b. Be a major disincentive for anyone to leave nasty comments (they’ll just get banned by us if they do and are reported)
We’ll think about how this could be implemented in teh future though - although we’ll also be introducing complete privacy options for Supporters soon too which will allow even more security without moderation.
Hooray! I think. Does that mean that learnerblogs and edublogs are now one in the same? I go to learnerblogs.org to sign kids in but it won’t let me (which you had already alerted me to). So I sign them up through edublog but my learnerblog won’t accept them as users! Do I now have to use edublogs?
Yep, sorry there may be a little inconvenience first up but everyone needs to sign up at edublogs.org/wp-signup.php (although you can keep existing learnerblogs for as long as you like)
Yep, sorry there may be a little inconvenience first up but everyone needs to sign up at http://edublogs.org/wp-signup.php (although you can keep existing learnerblogs for as long as you like)
Great feature !
Will explore this soon !
I like the idea of a forum, James, but I will have to think about the moderation factor for classroom use.
Thanks for continuing to push Edublogs forward.
Kevin
This looks like a great add on to the blog, but I would love to hear examples from other teachers of how they are going to use this.
That’s super! I’ve got most of my students signed up with your site. I’ll look into the forums very soon. You guys are doing a great job, and churning out new features all the time.
I’ve experienced massive slowdown connecting to your server in the past few days. Is it just me?
Thanks for providing a quality service!
patrick
Adding forums is great- it’s one of the biggest complaints I get from teachers, blogs can’t do this discussion as well without them. BUT- as someone pointed out earliers, many school districts won’t encourage their use if they are unmoderated. Period. Anyway that might happen in the future?
Ok, I currently have a Learnerblogs account but it won’t let me in with my password, and yes my cookies are enabled. So… I thought my password might be incorrect, but when I selected “lost my password” to see what it would reset to, I just received an email link back to the login, which wouldn’t let me sign in. A bit of a loop I’m afraid. To make a loong story, short, I guess all I need is the Edublogs site and the other can be eliminated, yes? Can somebody do that for me?
My newbie bloggers are using the comments to hold conversations. They are learning, but the forums will provide a great place for those discussions they desperately want with their fellow bloggers from other countries.
Looking forward to trying out the forum, I’m not sure how I’ll use it yet. I’ll be checking back here for ideas. Just watched the video and it was very helpful - thanks!
Blogs with a FORUM? Well, that is just scandalous, unheard of, unconventional, and SUPER. Everyone knows that only social networks have forums, haha! I already added a forum to my blog.
Thanks a bunch. Now visitors/readers can introduce some discussion or make some unrelated points that don’t tie to just my blog posts.
I’ll have a link on my front page shortly
:) Frank
James,
Thanks for edublogs! I had used nicenet for several years, but had that proverbial one or two in my fourth grade class that would not leave responsible comments. I do appreciate the filter that you set up in edublogs. ( I work regularly with Gail D. in Area 3 Writing Project)
Pat
http://mrd90.edublogs.org/
So while excited about the developments, I have an odd concern about the students on the edublogs servers. Does this mean learnerblogs is on the way out? What is likely to happen with my students’ blogs on learnerblogs?
And similarly, is there any longer a general spot for students to log in to learnerblogs? Many of my students do not have the Meta widget installed on their blogs for one reason or another, so they go to the learnerblogs.org url and log in from there. Now, however, that takes them to the edublogs.org url, and they don’t have a simple spot to log in. Will there be a way in for them?
This is sn interesting form. This would be my first time using edublogs, so I expect to find all I need to make my classroom an enjoyable experience for both my students and myself.
I use uniblogs each semester for my students to create a blog space to host their eportfolio and resources pages. I’ve done screen captures and a big handout with directions on how to do this. Will the directions change (and screenshots) dramatically with this new implementation of using edublogs instead of uniblogs?
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I read this - I have set up 28 blogs for my class and another for me in Learnerblogs, but missed some of the features that last year’s class Edublog had (I want my tag cloud back!)
At this stage I think I’ll leave well enough alone and keep the Learnerblogs going. If I swap our class blogs back to Edublog, will I still have all my kids blogs on my list as “mine”?
There’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to log into learnerblogs and uniblogs and aren’t going anywhere so please feel free top use it with existing blogs.
In terms of logging in just ask users to add /wp-admin/ after their blog name (i.e. myblog.uniblogs.org/wp-admin/).
The blogging process is almost entirely the same but the signup procedure is a little bit different… sorry to handout creators :(
Moderation access will be key before I can start using this awesome feature for English lit discussions. When can we expect this option, James?
For anyone: Is it possible to have more than one class set going on your blog? I teach 4 different classes, at least, that I could use edublogs for.
Guys but you can moderate - post-moderate!
Here’s what you do, you make clear the riules of the forum at the top of the page, then if anyone breaks them you provide a link where they can be reported to you.
If you insist on checking every single contribution from your students before they appear on the site you are going to:
a. Make participating an extremely unpleasant and unmotivating experience
b. Give yourself an enormous amount of work that you don’t need
Believe me, if users have to sign up first and you give them clear ground rules you will have few if any issues. And if you can do you’ll easily be able to fix them.
These kids are already posting in unmoderated spaces all across the web - they’re gonna hate your class if they are suddently shut down and you are doing them no favours in terms of guiding (dare I say ‘teaching’ them) in the uses of online communication technologies.
You almost owe it to them not to moderate - but if you really must be safe and secure our upcoming privacy features will mean that even if something does go wrong nobody outside of your class wiull ever be able to see it.
@ MrsC Nothings going anywhere so feel free to carry on as before - we’re just adding stuff!
The forum sounds great. I’d love to hear how other teachers are using it.
This is a great idea, although my only concern is that it will get bogged down much like the blog portion does when multiple students are trying to post at once. I have a blog post each day and as the school day progresses, each period finds it harder and harder to leave posts, and even some days can not access the blog at all towards the end of the day. I don’t know if this is an issue that I am using the free service and I need to pony up the money to get the upgraded service.
I’ll give the forum a try and see how things go. Thank you for the constant improvement and upgrades, it is greatly appreciated!!!
Hi Bruce - one of the reasons we’re doing this is to make sure we can continue to scale up teh service effectively withouyt having to focus on 4 different sites - so please be assured that we’ll have stuff flying along before you know it.
But yes, http://edublogs.org/campus accounts are separately maintained and so run a lot quicker too.
James,
I think this is really cool but how can i get involved?
Thank you for the info James, I am looking at the upgrade options right now! Appreciate the rapid feedback.
I created a class blog on leanerblogs.org just 3 days ago but had not finished signing up all my students on learnerblogs.org’s sign up page. Today, if I continue the sign up procedure, and create usernames and paswords for students using the edublogs sign up page, can I still add the new users on the older learnerblogs page I had created?
Or will I have to shift the blog to an edublog site and myself have a new edublog id..?
Sorry, that means no more users on learnerblogs.org so you’ll have to shift over to Edublogs to a new blog and to add more users - an unfortunate byproduct :(
I love the functionality and last semester we had a great experience with edublogs/learnerblogs, but this term with new kids, we’ve had nothing but problems. It had almost settled down (aside from the massive slowdowns) when this switch came about and now almost a third of my kids, all with existing learnerblogs, can’t log in anymore (or at least can’t figure out how to). I’m going crazy. I have kids (AP juniors in high school) saying they hate blogs and can’t we please stop using this because of all the bugs and outages. Please could we make it faster and more dependable with scheduled outages for updates? I love using this. It helps my kids a lot — when it works. I’m at a frustration point where I’d go to Wordpress or Blogger for the simple fact they are dependable, but my school district blocks everything except edublogs. Help!
Hi Giddings. Not sure what massive slowdown you’re referring to and as we said above all learnerblogs users can log in at their own blogs by adding /wp-admin/ at the end.
Giddings,
Total agreement with you! I’ve never had it properly explained why there was separate blogs (learner and edu) so we chose to use learerblogs. Now with the change over some of us are on learnerblogs, some have yet to set up, and others are half way through (which is a pain if you are trying to sign kids up with a view to use learnerblogs.)
The solution is to create edublogs for all classes, but after the complete hassle of creating gmail accounts (we started creating them individually first, then using the batch method in Google Apps, before we just discovered the dummy gmail method) non computer savvy teachers have had enough without even using the blog.
Sorry guys - if you’re after a service level agreement you should really get a http://edublogs.org/campus/ account for your school - as it is with a free, ad free service sometimes we have to do things which are for the best of the service even though they may inconvenience some people.
We’ve given it a lot of thought and think we’ve come up with the best solution - all learner/uni and esl blogs accounts are active and will remain so indefinitely and it’s much simpler from now on and we’re providing you with more tools that take advantage of this.
If that isn’t good enough for you then we apologize, we’re not aiming to upset anyone (in fact quite the opposite) and it’s a shame that you aren’t happy but we are genuinely doing our best here.
If you have any further requests or complaints can I encourage you to take them up on the Forums: http://edublogs.org/forums
Thanks James, I can’t be upset when I see that owl.
Sorry to take up any more time here, but are there plans to allow a merge of the learnerblog users with the edublog users? I can see that would be a massive headache with username clashes, but I don’t want to rush into making an edublog and new users if a merge could work.
In any change there will be people upset! No stress!
Heh, actually it’s a Night Jar - hangs outside my bedroom window.
No merge I’m afraid, as you say there would be way too many conflicts :(
I’m a bit infuriated here: UNIBLOGS.ORG IS REDIRECTING TO EDUBLOGS.
It’s all well and good to say that we can continue using Uniblogs and the other old sites indefinitely, but how are the students supposed to login to their old accounts when they’re pushed back to Edublogs. Is there another URL to use for the old sites.
Another Instructional Technologist and I just helped a French instructor get his class set up to blog this semester. Are his students going to have to create new accounts just to be able to log in? If students are late in their assignment to sign up, is he going to have 2 bases of students, most on Uniblogs but scragglers on Edublogs?
I am a Media Specialist in a Title I elementary school. Most of my students do not have email addresses, let alone Internet access at home. Since our district does not support email addresses for elementary students, it is difficult to try to bring students into 21st century literacy. It would be great if my students could get a user name without having to have an email address.
Wiki it has it’s pro and cons. It can be great for student or people who would like to voice ther opinion and view on certain topics. For students they can get other student views on class research and assignments. The other side of Wiki is a creation of links, and user make up things as they go. I will use this tool for the dicussion of three class coming together wiht ideas.
RSS feeds affect the classroom
Rss feeds would be very helpful to the senior class and basically every classroom. I said the senior class because the have tones of research to do and stay in contact with outside mentors for their senior project. I can collect my students work in my aggregator by using the student Rss Feed.
Yolanda Bradley, Videographic Journalism
This is seriously the last time I’m going to say this ;)
If you want your students to be able to log in to their uniblogs, learnrblogs or eslblogs all they have to do is add /wp-admin/ to the end of their blog name…
i.e. blogname.uniblogs.org/wp-admin/
They will also have received this link in the email they got when they signed up, many themes contain this link on their sidebars and any user can drag and drop the ‘Meta’ widget to a sidebar to show this link.
And please don’t shout eh… let’s show a bit of decorum around here.
I dont see where I as the teacher can sign up my students, am I missing it/
Studenst can sign up here http://edublogs.org/wp-signup.php
We’ll be adding a feature soon(ish) that will allow you to signup students directly.
James,
Thanks for your response. I am aware that students can login by going to /wp-admin. What I am trying to point out, and I apologize if my temporary rage made it unclear, is that in the real world students forget things like their username and URL. While the instructor may or may not be wise enough to keep a list of his or her students’ names and addresses, support staff almost certainly don’t have the time to do this.
It just seems a better UI choice to me to have the old front pages remain open for the old users to login there, with “I forgot my ____” options. This would gives instructors, staff and other students who offer help a simple answer to give to the students having problems regardless of what they do or don’t remember. New student users could be given a link to go to the main Edublogs page and register.
Just my 2¢.
James,
Thanks for your response. I am aware that students can login by going to /wp-admin. What I am trying to point out, and I apologize if my temporary rage made it unclear, is that in the real world students forget things like their username and URL. While the instructor may or may not be wise enough to keep a list of his or her students’ names and addresses, support staff almost certainly don’t have the time to do this.
If I may submit again, more clearly and humbly, it just seems a better UI choice to me to have the old front pages remain open for the old users to login there, with “I forgot my ____” options. This would give instructors, staff and other students who offer help a simple answer to give regardless of what troubled students do or don’t remember. New student users could be given a link to go to the main Edublogs page and register.
Just my 2¢.
cool
Hi,
In a future version of the forum, would it be possible to embed the edublogs login fields? This would save the user from having to open a new window for edublogs.org and return to my blog. Everything on one page would be a benefit, I think.
Thanks and I appreciate all the hard work behind this,
Nathan
Quick question. I’m new at this, but I was looking at some information posted about three weeks ago. I found a video illustrating and basically selling the use of technology in the classroom. It gave numerous statistics as to student use of technology in today’s society. I wish to use this video as a presentation to my department in an attempt to get them to buy in to blogging in their classrooms. I can no longer locate this video. Any idea as to where I may locate it. It’s probably right under my nose and I just can’t see it. Please inform or assisat me in getting to the correct questioning location.
Here you go khillier-
http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=40c570a322f1b0b65909
James, I think the forum feature is a great idea and will increase the benefits of using Edublogs in the classroom. It’s up to the teacher to use this new functionality if so desired. I know some of our Teachers are keen to use this feature.
You are doing a great job here. Thank you for the improvements that you are making. Keep moving Edublogs forward.
Cheers,
TFT
I have a question that may be dumb, but I would like to use Edublog with my students, but most do not have e-mail addresses. I work in a very low income area. How can I use this with my class if they don’t have e-mail? The district blocks all outside e-mail accounts. We are supposed to be getting Gaggle accounts, but somethings has happened to that. If someone can help me out, I’d really appreciate it.
Not so dumb, really.
I tried to write about using Gmail and its subaccounts: http://teacheng.us/?p=69
It might help.
Kevin
I have encountered two problems.
1) When my students sign up for an edublogs id, if they attept to register an id that is already in use, I have found that the password gets registered and is therefore not usable on the next error page. While they can wait a few days, this seems overly sensitive to me. Any way to alter that?
2) Once they log on, there is no link sign-in boxes on the forum page. The process of moving to Edublogs.org, loggin in, then getting back to the forum seems a bit bulky. Any way to add a sign in box?
Hi James,
Since early February I have had a class blog on learnerblogs at http://tasteach.learnerblogs.org If I want to import this into a new blog at edublogs, can this be done very easily? Would like the new blog to be wyatt67.edublogs.org if it has not already been taken with me as the admin.
how about u guys set one up for us kids to talk in…
@Seth - good idea.
@Sue Manage > Import / Exports shoudl do you
@chrisk8er - Go for it, you can set one up yourself :)
Thamks James, have just exported and imported everything from learnerblogs. My new edublogs site looks exactly the same … lol Will start with some student blogs in second term. BTW, when you have type of blog and choices are teacher, student or other, what is included under other? For example mine is a class blog but I am only administrator so I have said it is teacher.
hey you guys i just started blogging it rocks. i never did it before
how do i start a conversation
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