A Few Updates and 12 Days of Blogging

We have a couple of exciting updates to share as we wrap up 2012!

And, you should know, we have big plans to make 2013 the biggest edublogging year yet.

Before we get to the new toys to play with, check out this excellent video from Mr. Avery’s Classroom Blog as his students share their “12 Days of Blogging”.

Here is their list :

  1. friends around the world
  2. mystery skypes
  3. 3 Eddie Nominations
  4. 4KM and 4KJ
  5. math movies
  6. projects funded (from DonorsChoose.org)
  7. students blogging
  8. collaborative projects
  9. students commenting
  10. google maps
  11. new posts
  12. clustrmap hits

A huge thanks to Mr. Avery’s class for such excellent examples of student blogging and allowing us to share your work here!

Let It Snow Plugin

The popular ‘Let It Snow Plugin’ is now back and better than ever. On all blogs, just go to the Plugins menu, click Activate and watch the snow fall on your blog!

Email Subscription

One of the most useful features available is the ability to let parents, students, and visitors signup to get email notifications of all new posts on a blog.

All you have to do is go to Appearance > Widgets and add the Email Subscription widget to a sidebar to set it up.

And as of today, you can now see a list of all those that have subscribed, export a list of subscribers, and delete subscribers when needed.

This is just the beginning of better user and subscriber management tools we have in the works. :)

Happy Holidays!

From all of us here at Edublogs, we wish you, your students, and families a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and an excellent New Year!

Check out the new DOGO news, books, and movies widgets!

The good folks at DOGOnews have created a new plugin which is now available on all Edublogs!

The plugin makes three snazzy widgets available which you can use to display the latest kid-friendly news and current events, book reviews, and movie reviews right in your sidebar.

Many of our users are using content from Dogo as blog post topics and other assignments. Hopefully these new widgets will help spark ideas and foster even more discussions.

How do I get the plugin?

It’s easy :)

  1. Login to your blog’s dashboard
  2. Click on ‘Plugins‘ on the left side of your dashboard
  3. Find the ‘DOGO Content Widget’ plugin and click ‘Activate
  4. Go to ‘Appearance‘ > ‘Widgets‘ and move the new DOGO widgets over to your sidebar of choice
That’s it!
Pretty cool, huh?

 

PSA: Don’t Let Salami and Google Images Get You In Hot Water

This is a true story.

Three years ago, an eleven-year-old blogger here on Edublogs wrote a post about his favorite lunch food – salami.

As part of his post, he used Google Images to find a quick photo of salami that he then uploaded to his blog.

Fast forward to now.

Our Edublogs support team just received a lengthy cease and desist letter from a large law firm that represents the photographer of the salami photo. The formal letter describes all sorts of legal problems for Edublogs and the author of the blog should we not immediately remove the photo in question.

We get these letters daily, but what stood out about this one is that the photo was several years old and not particularly interesting or unique. Most of the complaints we get come from the use of things like maps and curriculum documents.

This tasty looking photo looked a lot like this one:

photo of salami

*For the record, we have permission to share this photo from a stock image site that we pay for.

What does this mean for teachers and students?

It is important to know that even the most innocent of actions can lead to bigger problems down the road.

Using Google Images or copying a photo from most websites is much like plagiarism. Hopefully, by educating each other, we can avoid mistakes like this one and promote fair use of photos and other media on the web.

If you are looking to learn more about copyright, creative commons, and where to find images you can actually use, check out this recent Teacher Challenge post here.

At any rate, we thought this might be a funny example to share.

P.S. When researching for this post, I discovered that when you search for ‘Edublogs Salami’ on Google, you get over 42,000 results. What are our users writing about!? :)

Happy blogging!

Happy 7th Birthday Edublogs! Nearly 2 Million Blogs and Counting!

It is officially July 31st, 2012 in Melbourne, Australia – where exactly 7 years ago today our fearless founder, James Farmer, flipped the switch and Edublogs was born!

We thought you might enjoy a screenshot from The Wayback Machine of what our first site looked like just a few weeks after launch:

And two years later, with 100,000 blogs in 2007, our main site looked like this:

The best part of all is that to us, we feel like we are just getting started.

With over 1.3 million blogs here on Edublogs.org, and over half-a-million more on our Edublogs Campus networks, we will breaking the 2 million blog barrier very soon!

From all of us here on the Edublogs team, we truly appreciate all of the support we’ve received over the years from all of our users.

And we look forward to bringing blogging into more and more classrooms in the years to come!

Happy blogging!

Announcing NEW Unlimited Student Blogs, Better Class Management, and More!

 

We are thrilled to announce some big changes and improvements to Edublogs!

Our focus this summer is to raise the bar in what we offer so that we continue to be the best blogging, ePortolio, and class website service for teachers and students around the world.

To help us reach this goal, we start by bringing you…

Unlimited Student Blogs!

Previously, each Pro account could only enable extra features on up to 50 student blogs. But we know many teachers can have well over 100 students at any given time.

Student blogs will be able to access premium themes, use our new iOS mobile app, embed videos and other code, and the full range of privacy options.

In addition, students will be able to fully manage the look and feel of their blogs, but won’t be able to change the privacy and moderation settings you set for them.

The NEW ‘My Class’ Feature

This is the big one. Now that you can have unlimited students on Edublogs, you need a good way to manage them all!

You will find a new ‘My Class’ menu item near the top of your blog’s dashboard.

From here you can manage the privacy and moderation settings on all student blogs, get a list of pending comments and posts, and more.

As soon as a student blog is added to a class, it will automatically have the extra features enabled as discussed above.

This is just the first launch – so expect improvements and additions in the coming months!

Better Help & Support

You’ll find a brand new ‘Help & Support‘ menu item in your dashboard with quick links to our user guides and support posts.

There’s also an easier to find link for our Pro users to email questions directly to our support staff.

New Theme Customizer

Go to Appearance > Themes and check out the new ‘Customize‘ link.

From here you can quickly edit the look and feel of your blog’s title, background, and custom images and see how it looks live in real time. This addition is just plain fun to play with :)

And Tons More…

There are lots of other new features and changes you may notice. For example:

  • An improved and simplified image and media uploader
  • A fresh new look to the dashboard and top admin bar
  • Flyout menus that keep the menu items nice and neat
  • Better usability on tablets and mobile devices (no app needed!)
  • An improved ‘Inactive Widgets‘ area to save widgets and so widgets don’t get lost when changing themes
  • Embed tweets into any post by just pasting in the link
  • Behind the scenes changes to improve speed

All of this is available now on Edublogs.org and will be coming soon to our Edublogs Campus networks.

Leave a comment below or contact us with any feedback or questions you may have.

Happy blogging!

Introducing the Official Edublogs iPad and iPhone Apps!

It’s here!

Kicking off what is shaping up to be the biggest summer in Edublogs’ history, we’re proud to unveil our brand new official iOS app.

Get it now in the App Store!

From the iPhone and iPad, Edublogs Pro, upgraded, and Campus bloggers can sign in, write posts, upload photos, manage comments, and more with ease!

We’ll whet your appetite with a few screenshots below.

And don’t worry Android users – we certainly haven’t forgot about you ;)

Happy mobile blogging!

iPhone Login Screen

 

iPhone Post Editor

 

Editing comments on the iPad
Provide some details for your blog
No stress, you can always change this later on.
Use only lowercase letters (a-z) and numbers.
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