Edublogs Live Events In November

It’s hard to believe that November is already here and before long we will be in the middle of the holiday season!

And this November, we wanted to let you know about several live events and webinars we have planned.

These real-time events are delivered using Elluminate, complete with audio, chat and desktop sharing – and are completely free and open to anyone that wants to join in.

What is Edublogs Campus?

This hour-long webinar will introduce all of the unique tools that make Edublogs Campus packages the perfect blogging solution for schools, districts and universities. Ideal for new Campus Site-Admins or for those interested in learning more about what Campus can do – we’ll make sure that all of your questions get answered.

When: Wednesday, November 10th @ 9:30am PST and Tuesday, November 23rd @ 1:00pm PST

What can I do with my blog?

For all new and experienced bloggers, we will provide an overview of all of the great blogging features available to Edublogs users. A 30-minute presentation period will be followed by a 30-minute question and answer time where participants can get advice from and ask questions directly to Edublogs staff.

When: Wednesday, November 17th @ 9:30am PST

Edublogs Weekly Serendipity & Fine Focus

In these weekly engaging webinars, we range across a variety of topics and include discussion (“Talk Time”), how to use various applications (“Techie How To”), and using technology in the classroom (“Tools and Strategies”). In fact anything “e-” that is of interest to educators. If you have something to share we would love you to guest present a session for us!

When: Every Thursday @ 4pm PST

To join a live event just click on the following link:

https://sas.elluminate.com/d.jnlp?sid=vclass&password=LPCBZLAT4D3Y921591JT

Elluminate is a Community Partner with Edublogs.

To learn more about Elluminate check out:Get a Free v-Room

  1. Introduction to using Elluminate
  2. The Elluminate Quick Reference guide
  3. Join the Configuration Room to test your connection and configure your audio

Get your FREE 3-user Elluminate vRoom HERE!

To stay up to date on the latest webinars and live Edublogs events, bookmark this page and visit it often.

No reservations are needed – simply click on the link above at the time the webinar is to begin. We hope to see you there soon!

Help us improve and win an iPad!

As you know, we’re pretty obsessed with making Edublogs better.

And this is your chance to help with that, by telling us what you think about Edublogs and how you’d like us to improve for you in 2011.

All you need to do is take this short survey (you can complete it in under 2 minutes, we promise).

ipad_front

And, even better, we’ll be giving away 2 iPads to 2 lucky users who complete the survey :)

So, just click here, answer a few simple questions and enter you email address at the end to go in the draw.

And thanks again for using Edublogs, and helping us make our service better for teachers and students around the world!

Add a Wibiya toolbar to connect with social media and more on your Edublog

Pro users can now add a Wibiya toolbar to the bottom of their blogs!

This new plugin is a direct result of popular requests from our users.

Wibiya Logo

If you are not sure what a Wibiya toolbar is, you can see it in action at the bottom of the Edublogs homepage. Wibiya automatically adds Facebook, Twitter, user stats, chatrooms, announcements, and more to the footer of blogs.

How do I add a Wibiya toolbar to my blog?

First, visit Wibiya.com and create a new free account.

Next, navigate to your Wibiya dashboard and click on the button on the left side of the page that says Get New Code.

Get New Code button

Here, click on the top left box with the WordPress “W” logo.

This will bring up a page that looks similar to the screenshot below.  Copy and paste the link that is circled under Step 2.

Wibiya Example

Login to your Edublogs dashboard and activate the Wibiya Toolbar plugin.  Then go to Appearance > Wibiya Toolbar Settings.

From here, paste in the URL from your Wibiya dashboard where it says Wibiya Toolbar Path.

Wibiya Settings

Make sure to place a check mark next to Enable or disable the Wibiya Toolbar, then click Update Toolbar and the Wibiya bar will automatically appear on your blog.

Use the Wibiya dashboard at Wibiya.com to add features, change the template, and control your toolbar.

We would love to see the Wibiya toolbar in use on Edublogs if you would like to leave a comment below with a link!

Edublogs Weekly Review: Social networking in schools, Facebook in trouble and email a thing of the past

Welcome to the first of what we hope is a useful post with a weekly overview of news in the edublogging world.

This week, one of the most discussed topics around the web has to do with the use of social media by educators and students in schools.

Many schools seem to be moving to strict policies that outright ban or limit their use, while others are encouraging the use of Twitter, Facebook and other tools in classrooms.

Edubloggers too are divided on the issue, though the majority seem to be more in favor of increasing the use and teaching students (and teachers) how to use them appropriately.

Dodie Ainslie has some great advice for teachers in her post, Being Professional in a Digital World.

Other great posts just this week on the topic of social media include:

  1. Video Rebuttal to Educational Leaders and Parents On The Social Media Ban Wagon
  2. Facebook and teachers: Still a potentially dangerous combination for your career
  3. Bittersweet News for Social Media in Education
  4. Social Networking and the Death of Email

Top edutweets from the week:

A look at the work of Sal Khan- http://bit.ly/ax82Il – very good online teaching. I’ve been viewing many of his lectures @ khanacademy.orgWed Aug 25 04:51:21 via web

New Blog Post: A PLN Connection…11 Years in the Making! http://bit.ly/c93RYH @teachingwthsoul & I didn’t know just how connected we were!Fri Aug 27 13:26:02 via web


My Dad Doesn’t Google http://bit.ly/b6N12ZFri Aug 27 10:14:59 via bitly

Featured Edublog of the Week

edu_featured_dir Teacher Reboot Camp
Germany
A true must read blog!

Find more great blogs like this one in our International Edublogs Directory!

Summing it up

Where do you stand on the use of Social Media in the classroom?

  1. Does it depend on the age of students?
  2. The subject taught?
  3. Should teachers and students be ‘friends’ on facebook?

We would definitely be interested in hearing more about your views and the policies in place at your school.


Students no longer need email addresses to start an Edublog

As much of the world is heading back to school this month, we have an exciting new feature at Edublogs that is sure to make it even easier to get students up and blogging this school year.

You will be happy to hear that Edublogs no longer requires users to have an email address!

We hope that removing this barrier will allow more teachers to add students as users to their blogs and makes creating student blogs even easier.

When signing up on Edublogs.org, just leave the email address boxes blank and we take care of the rest. Users can add their email address later should they like.

The New Sign-Up Form
The New Sign-Up Form

You will also notice that we now allow you to create your own password right from the start!

This will eliminate the need to receive a confirmation email before getting started and hopefully minimize forgotten passwords by students.

These improvements, along with our recent addition of an ‘Easy blogging’ dashboard interface, are a direct result of user feedback, and all part of our commitment to being the most student friendly blogging platform available.

From all of us at Edublogs, here’s to a fantastic school year!

New plugin! Make forms, quizzes, and polls with ease

formfeaturesJust in time for many of us to start back with a brand new school year, Edublogs has recently unveiled a new form creator plugin available to Pro and Campus users.

And you are not going to believe how easy it is to use!

With an intuitive drag and drop interface, you will be making detailed contact forms, assessments of all types, class polls, and more in no time.

Highlights & Features

  • Choose from 21 different form field types
  • Allow users or students to upload files – useful as a digital drop-box!
  • Automatically generate emails upon form submission
  • Export all submissions to Excel or Google Docs
  • Make forms available only to logged-in users

There is also a nifty graphical interface that lets you see and analyze results as they come in. In addition, results can be displayed directly in a page or post on your blog!

formreports
The International Blogs Directory

This form plugin is so powerful and customizable that our entire new blogs directory is built using it.

It would be impossible to list all of the features this new plugin brings to your blog – the best way might be for you to jump in and play around.

formmenu

Getting Started

Once you activate the Formidable Pro plugin, you will find a new menu item in your blog’s dashboard.

Click on “Create a Form”, or choose from one of the existing templates to get started.

Should you need any help, try our help document on working with Formidable Forms or contact us with any additional questions.

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

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