We’ve got a huge amount of new blogging toys coming your way here in 2012!

To help lay the ground work for the even better stuff yet to come, you will now notice two snazzy new boxes greeting you when you first login to your blog’s dashboard.

There is more!

Go to Dashboard > My Blogs and you will see a list of all blogs you belong to, improved management tools, and a filter to only show blogs that need your attention to moderate comments or posts!

And one more thing!

We’ve done a ton of work on many of the more behind-the-scenes type of things that will help ensure a happy and fun blogging experience for all.

Part of that work includes a better payment and account management system for Edublogs Pro – which many of you may notice, we now can accept credit cards without the need for PayPal accounts! We’re also happy to work with your school to accept Purchase Orders or checks too!

This is something we’ve heard from many of our users needed improvement, so we’re happy to make the checkout and Edublogs Pro subscription management process even better.

Stay tuned!

Just a sneak-peek at what our team is working hard to bring you in the coming weeks and months:

• better student moderation and management tools
• more beautiful and customizable themes
• an improved mobile blogging experience
• and much, much more!

What do you think?!

Feel free to contact us or leave a comment below with your thoughts on the above or if you have ideas of your own on how we could be better.

Happy blogging!

 
A couple of weeks ago, we introduced you to Yoko – our most mobile and iPad friendly theme yet.

As of today, we’re adding Liquorice to the mix, which is also “responsive” to whatever screen size your blog’s visitors are using.

We think many of you will like the more whimsical fonts and easy to read layout of this new theme.

Make sure to go to Appearance > Premium Themes and check it out!

For those of you that don’t want to change themes and still offer your mobile readers something good to look at, not to worry, we’ve got even bigger news coming soon on that front!

We are thrilled to unveil a brand new theme today!

Yoko – as it is called – is our first “responsive” and HTML5 theme.

This means that it will look great on all types of devices – including tablets and phones.

Exciting, huh?

This works because the theme is designed to move the sidebars and change image and text sizes automatically  - all depending on the screen size.

You can see the theme in action on Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day blog.

Features

• Responsive and mobile friendly design
• Custom header image with several pre-set images to choose from
• Select the link and background colors to personalize the look
• A social widget that makes it easy to share links to your facebook, twitter, google+, and linkedn profiles
• Modern feel using the latest in web design

Yoko is already available as a ‘premium’ theme on edublogs.org blogs – for Pro and upgraded student blogs. It will soon be available on all Edublogs Campus sites as well.

Quick help with themes:

1. Changing your blog’s theme
2. Uploading your own custom header image
3. Creating your own custom navigation menu

We’ve got more themes like this in the works to release over the coming months. If you haven’t updated your blog’s look in a while – now might be a great time to do so!

Happy blogging!

One of the best parts about working at Edublogs is seeing daily all of the amazing learning experiences of students through blogging.

We regularly try to share these examples on our Facebook and Twitter pages, but this one in particular seemed worthy of a bit more.

Six teachers, from six different corners of the world, have collaborated together and co-created the Our World, Our Stories project blog.

The seven week long project has a different class, each from a different country, leading the students through learning experiences each week. For example, this week the students are discussing about the similarities and differences between their typical school days in each country.

You can learn more about all of the details on the about page here.

We absolutely love this idea and encourage everyone to check-in on the blog over the coming weeks to see how it plays out.

Or if you are interested in doing something similar with your students, feel free to leave your name, location, age group, and a link to your blog or contact info in the comments below. 

Perhaps you can find willing classes to start a global blogging project on your own.

What amazing work by these teachers, and what an exciting experience for these students!