2 new blogging videos just in time for back-to-school!

It’s August!

And for many of you, that means new beginnings with a whole new school year.

We have two new videos we want to share that hopefully can help kick things off!

1. What is a blog?

We made this video for you to use with students, parents, or fellow educators to quickly explain all about blogs.

Feel free to share, use in presentations, and post on your own blogs or sites too!

[mediacore height=”315px” public_url=”http://edublogs.mediacore.tv/media/what-is-a-blog” thumb_url=”http://cdnassets.mediacore.tv/sites/8118/images/media/527214m-qAxcvZ0s.jpg” title=”What is a blog?” width=”560px”]

Watch and get the embed code on MediaCore or YouTube.

2. What is Edublogs?

The second video is brief overview of Edublogs!

This video is the best way to share with a fellow educator or school administrator what Edublogs is all about.

 [mediacore height=”315px” public_url=”http://edublogs.mediacore.tv/media/why-edublogs” thumb_url=”http://cdnassets.mediacore.tv/sites/8118/images/media/529917m-NNOSLy5o.jpg” title=”Why Edublogs” width=”560px”]

Watch and get the embed code on MediaCore or YouTube.

More to come!

We have more videos, activities, and exciting feature announcements planned soon.

Make sure you don’t miss anything in the new school year rush:

Happy blogging!

And let us know if our team can do anything to help!

Edublogs Campus WordPress Hosting for Schools – Now in Europe and Canada!

Yesterday we announced new integration with Google Apps and popular Learning Management Systems.

Today, we’re thrilled to share new hosting options for our Edublogs Campus schools in Canada and Europe!

Promo_DataCenter

Thanks to incredible growth and high demand, we now have the ability to bring the same safe, fast, and reliable Edublogs service to shiny new servers located in Portsmouth, UK and Toronto, Canada.

We’re most excited about the fact that this will allow us to better meet local policy needs of all data being housed closer to home.

Getting Started

Existing Edublogs Campus schools that would like to be moved over should contact us at support@edublogs.org and let us know.

All new schools in Canada and the EU will be automatically added to the new data centers.

So contact us now and we’ll get you setup with a free 30 day trial!

Edublogs Campus now integrates with Google Apps, Desire2Learn, Moodle, Canvas, Blackboard and more!

With Edublogs Campus, we make it super easy for every student, staff, and faculty member to have their own WordPress blog or website.

And as of today, we’re excited to share, we can now integrate with many popular student management and learning tools, including Google Apps for Education and Learning Management Systems like Desire2Learn, Canvas, Moodle, and Blackboard.

Promo_SSO_LTI

Google Apps for Education

If your school is already using Google Apps for Education, we can enable single sign on to manage user accounts, passwords, and blog creation.

This will mean that students and staff will have one less password to remember and it is even easier to allow users to create accounts and blogs without the need for request forms, CSV uploads, or other time consuming processes.

LTI and Learning Management Systems

For your LMS and other learning tools, we can now harness LTI to handle user account and blog creations.

Future plans include more detailed integration with many popular tools like links to class blogs within a course, auto-provisioning blogs for students in a course, and more.

We’ll work closely with our Edublogs Campus clients to determine these future plans, needs, and timelines!

Getting Started

If you already have a Campus network, or if you’d like to learn more about getting setup, get it touch with us at support@edublogs.org.

For new networks, we can usually have you up and running in as little as a day. We can even migrate existing WordPress networks over to Edublogs as well.

Don’t forget, we’re happy to setup free trials for Campus, so giving us a try is risk free, fast, and easy!

Better videos with the all new MediaCore plugin on Edublogs!

Available today, you’ll find an exciting new plugin for adding videos and audio to your blog – MediaCore!

Blog-post-graphic_03

MediaCore is a cloud-based video education platform that makes it safe and easy to use video in teaching and learning.

With the new plugin, you can easily upload videos directly from your blog’s dashboard and embed videos that are already in your MediaCore account.

Best of all, there’s a free MediaCore educator account for you to get started!

A big thanks!

We want to thank Edublogs Campus user Brian Lockwood at Nanjing International School for introducing us to MediaCore.

We love when we’re able to provide new features and tools for users based directly off of feedback and suggestions we receive!

Using the plugin

Using the plugin is a breeze.

Activate the plugin and enter your MediaCore site’s information.

Then you’ll find a new icon in your post editor that takes care of all the rest.

For detailed instructions, check out our help and support guide here.

Happy video blogging!

Migrating your Posterous site to Edublogs

We’ve been hearing from you that lots of educators need to move their blogs since Posterous announced they are shutting down their service on April 30. 2013

And, we’re happy to share, we’ve been working hard organizing a Posterous importer as quite a few of our Edublogs users have Posterous accounts.

When you migrate your Posterous account into Edublogs it will import:

  1. All image files
  2. All video files
  3. All audio files
  4. All posts
  5. All comments
  6. All media that has been embedded using embed code

You can easily import your posts into any Edublogs Campus and Edublogs Pro or upgraded blog.

Just go to Tools > Import and use one of the two import options:

  • Posterous – Use if you haven’t uploaded video and audio files to your Posterous account.
  • Posterous XML – use if you have uploaded video and audio files to your Posterous account.

Refer to this step by step instructions for importing your Posterous account into Edublogs.

There are numerous options for migrating Posterous to different blogging platforms but most are having the same challenge.

Here is what you need to know:

1. Complete Media Transfer

Most platforms are able to import Posterous posts with images but aren’t able to migrate a complete media transfer if you have audio and video files uploaded to your Posterous account.

This means if you currently import a Posterous account into another blogging platform, and have uploaded any audio or video files, the posts are imported but the audio or video files remain on the Posterous service.

These audio and video files need to be imported into your new blog otherwise when Posterous shuts down these media files will be lost.

Edublogs is one of the few platforms that can migrate a complete media transfer so all your audio and video files are imported into your Edublogs blog when you import from Posterous.

2.  Embed Code

The other aspect you need to consider is that Posterous allowed you to embed a wide range of media such as Prezzi, AudioBoo, Google Forms, Glogster using embed code.

Not all platforms allow you to use embed code as Edublogs does.  If you import your Posterous account into a platform that doesn’t allow embed code you’ll lose all your embeds.  You don’t lose any embeds when you import into an Edublogs blog.

3.  Comments

Some platforms also can’t import your comments, so be sure to check this first.

 We look forward to helping users move their existing work over and are happy to answer your questions!

 

Announcing 10 new mobile friendly themes!

If you’ve been thinking that your blog is due for a bit of a makeover, then you’ll love the ten new themes we are rolling out today!

Even better, all of these themes come with these fun features:

  • designed to look great on tablets, phones, and desktops!
  • change backgrounds and colors with ease
  • add custom header images
  • clean and easy to read

You can easily find all of these themes by going to Appearance > Themes in your dashboard.

They are all listed in the brand new “Featured Themes” section right at the top of the page!

Take a look through the new themes below and then give your blog an overdue new look!

Brand New Day

Fun theme with four backgrounds to choose from – one for each season!

 

Hum

Great for large images – and a simple layout.

 

Grisaille

With a “newspaper” feel, this theme is great for sites with a lot of content.

Publish

A perfect theme for an ePortfolio!

Quintus

Change colors and really customize this theme.

 

Reddle

Lots of white space – great for a class blog.

 

Responsive

Great for a traditional website – tons of menu and widget options.

Runo Lite

With fun backgrounds – including the look of paper!

 

Twenty Twelve

Versatile and powerful – great for websites, blogs, and more!

 

New School Theme

Designed specifically for our Edublogs Campus networks, this theme is a bit different than the others – Campus Default 2013.

We decided to make it available to everyone as it may be a perfect fit for schools, clubs, and others too.

Take a look!

Features includes:

  • special ‘static homepage’ design
  • easily brand with colors and logos
  • add a custom menu and a login box will appear
  • widgets for featured blogs, latest posts, and more

Try out one or more of the new themes and let us know what you think!

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