Just a quickie, but one we know a lot of you will like… take a trip to your Plugins and you will find Google Maps goodness at your fingertips.
Just turn it on, configure it (this involves getting a maps API – takes about 2 seconds), write something like ‘Edublogs HQ’ and then link those words to the ‘link to this page’ http link that Google Maps provide.
For example:
Let us know how you go…
Couple of things this week… first up if you take a soujourn over to your ‘Plugins’ area you’ll find a brand new toy.
Just turn on the ‘Contact Form’ plugin, configure it and drop %%wpcontactform%% into a post or page and hey presto… your readers, students, gran and family pets can send you an email straight from your blog!
There’s even a spam stopping maths question, so you won’t get harassed by bots.
Second up you might be interested in the ’31 days to a better blog’ chocolate challenge , to which edublogs is contributing a small pile of chocolate.
Notable edubloggers involved in the challenge include Mobile Technology in TAFE, My Technology Addictions, and Al Upton and the minilegends. Go show them support, and if you know of any other edubloggers taking the challenge… then let us know in the comments.
Today is a very special widget day on Edublogs, because today we launch the Widgetbox Widget!
Oh yes, go to Presentation>Widgets, scroll right down to the bottom and choose how many you want… then drag and drop them to your sidebars and start adding radio stations, polls, Tetris, news feeds and much much more to your sidebars.
Heck, we even made a little video to help you see how to use it:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-7847916051934215439" width="400" height="326" wmode="transparent" /]
Enjoy!
With our new design there are some new ways you can promote, share, biggup and generally pimp your edublog.
First up there are ‘blogs of the hour’ – this is determined by which blogs across the community had the most readers in the last hour and is updated every 20 minutes. We prefer this to ‘of the day’ as it reflects different edubloggers in different timezones, and therefore profiles more great blogs.
BUT in order to really get the most out of it, you’re gonna want to upload an avatar (Options > Avatar) so get uploading!
Then there’s the ‘edublogs universe’ lower down on the frontpage… a brilliant way to find interesting edublogs and individual posts. It’s simple to get involved in this, just use categories when you;re posting (here’s a how to).
Here’s a great article too about how one edublogger is using tags.
If you know any other great ways to get your edublog noticed, let us know about them!
Pretty special edublogging day today as not only is it our second birthday, but it’s also the release of edublogs 2.0!
That’s right, 2.0 in the social, logo, look ‘n feel and general evolutionary sense.
Not only do we have a new look, but you can also catch the hottest blogs of the last hour, a massive tag cloud of all things edubloggy (here’s how you get your posts in it), featured edublogs, search and a whole lot more.
And we’ve even made a video… to help you persuade all your colleagues that joining edublogs is most definitely the right thing for them to be doing in the 2007 – 2008 school year!
So, we hope you enjoy the new look and feel, there’s going to be a *heck* of a lot more cool stuff coming this year and as ever… happy edublogging :)
We love out widgets here at edublogs, we surely do, and there’s nothing so much that brings a smile to our faces than some swinging sidebar shenanigans!
And, given that, I’m delighted to officially unveil out Twitter and VodPod widgets:
As ever, just click through to ‘Presentation’ > ‘Widgets’ and you’ll be able to select these two which allow you add your latest, ahem, ‘tweets’ to your sidebar and all your fave VodPod videos.
