Year: 2015

It’s hard to believe, but today we are celebrating the TENTH birthday of Edublogs!

Our entire team is humbled and honored to have provided blogs and websites for millions of teachers and students over the past decade.

We certainly would not have reached this milestone without the support of people like you, and to say thanks, we’d like to give back.

The Great Edublogs Giveaway

Every single day in August, we’ll be giving away FREE Edublogs Pro subscriptions to lucky winners.

And then, on August 31st, we’ll choose a grand prize winner that will receive a free CampusPress network for his or her entire school, district, or university.

We plan to give away well over $10,000 worth of our services!

Entering is easy, just fill out this quick form here!

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Important Notes

• Only one entry per person will be counted
• Winners can upgrade a new blog, extend their existing subscription, or give their prize to a friend or colleague
• We’ll send winners an email and announce them via our Twitter and Facebook accounts
• We’ll randomly draw 3-4 winners each day until at least 100 Edublogs Pro accounts have been given out
• No purchase necessary, and you don’t have to be present to win ;)

Celebrating The Entire Month of August

In addition to these giveaways, this will be our biggest month EVER in terms of announcing new features and tools that we know you will love.

Thanks again for helping Edublogs continue to grow as celebrate this milestone together.

And don’t forget to enter for your chance to win here!

Happy blogiversary to you all!

We’re happy to roll out two new tools that we think are huge for student and course blogging.

These features are available now on both free and Pro Edublogs and will be added to all CampusPress networks next week.

Let’s jump into it!

Private Comments and Feedback

Teachers can now leave private comments for students – perfect for detailed feedback.

When reading a post in our ‘Reader’ tool in your dashboard, you’ll see a new check-box in the comments section.

Private comments can only be created and read by those that can edit the post. This means blog admins, teachers, editors, and the author of the post. Private comments will show up in the feed of other comments in the ‘Reader’.

Unread private comments will appear under the “Pending” link in the reader too. There will be a notification number alerting you that a private comment needs to be read.

Group and Class Lists

This is ideal for those of you that teach more than one class and are looking for ways to organize all of your students’ blogs. You will be able to see a live feed of all posts from blogs in a list as they are published. Here is how the lists I made look:

Making your own lists is easy. Here’s how:

1. Click on the “Create new list” button in the bottom right corner of your dashboard.

2. Give your list a name. You can edit this name later.

3. Then add in the sites you want added. You can paste the full URL of the site, like theedublogger.edublogs.org.

4. Click ‘Create‘.

Make as many lists as you want.

Lists can be used for much more than just to organize student blogs. For example, groups, projects, or just keeping track of your favorite edubloggers all in one place!

Other Reader Features

There is a lot that the ‘reader’ tool can do that you may not be aware of. Here are just a few examples:

Easy Moderation

Do you approve student posts and comments? If so, make sure to use the “Pending” link to help you do so in a quick and easy way, without needing to click through to all of your students’ blogs.

Mobile Friendly

Login to your blog’s dashboard on a phone or tablet, right in any web browser, and you’ll be able to use the same features as on your desktop. This means you can keep track of student activity, reply to comments, moderate posts, and more from anywhere.

Search By Author, Title, Category, or Tag

Ask your students to add a common tag to their posts. Much like they would use a twitter hashtag.

Then, use the search in the reader to pull all posts using that tag. This is great for projects between classes, or when global events or activities take place like Poetry Month, sporting events, and more.

It is important to note that only posts from public blogs will show up in search results :)

RSS Feeds

Want to follow your students’ blogs in an RSS feed reader? Or perhaps create a flipboard magazine of posts in a list you have made?

Click the orange ‘RSS’ icon at the top of the reader and a private feed, just for you, will be created for whatever you are looking at. There’s lots of cool stuff that can be done with this, and be on the lookout for a more detailed follow up post!

What’s Next?

As always, we’ll continue to work hard to bring you new tools and features.

Let us know in the comments below if there is anything you’d like to see!