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Learn and share in our growing Twitter community

2 Comments on Learn and share in our growing Twitter community

In case you missed it, yesterday our own Sue Waters published A Twitteraholic’s Guide to tweets, hashtags, and all things Twitter. If you haven’t jumped into the whole Twitter experience yet, you might be surprised at how many educators are using Twitter to collaborate and learn from each other.

Each day, on Edublogs and beyond, thousands of excellent posts are published and new exciting student projects are begun. This is exactly why we have recently created the Twitter hashtag #ebshare.

What is #ebshare for?

Hashtags are used so that anyone can easily follow a topic that interests them. We regularly tweet thought-provoking posts, new tech tools that can be used in the classroom, or anything else we think the educational community might find interesting.

The best part about #ebshare is that you can use it to share anything you would like, too! This is great for asking others to visit a blog for comments or showing off cool student work.

While the Twitteraholics guide mentioned above goes into much greater detail on how to use Twitter and hashtags, all you have to do is put #ebshare somewhere in your post, and that is it!

See #ebshare in action

What about Facebook?

We haven’t forgotten about our Facebook fans either! Feel free to use the Edublogs Facebook page to post anything you would like to share with others. We might even re-tweet it for you on Twitter. :)

We hope that you find this new tool a useful way to connect with educators from across the globe. Don’t be shy, share something with the community today!

Using forums for learning

1 Comment on Using forums for learning

Message boards, or forums, are commonplace on many websites around the web. Many people turn them when planning a vacation, for advice, or to get help (like on our Edublogs support forums).

Forums are increasingly popular in the classroom as well as a way to organize and foster collaboration among students.

Edublogs Pro and Campus users can create forums right inside of their blogs. For information on how to set them up, visit our help document here.

Using Forums For Learning

Here is a quick list of ideas on how forums can be used in the classroom:

Class discussion – Try asking an open ended question on a regular basis. Have students make an initial reply and then follow up replies to two or more of their classmates
A virtual parking lot – Student can ask questions whenever they may need and get help from teachers and students alike
Group management – During a project, groups can use forums to organize thoughts and share updates periodically
Turning in assignments – Students can write responses to essay and short answer questions as a thread in a forum giving all students in the class the opportunity to review and learn from each other

How else have you used or do you envision using forums to improve student learning? We would love to hear your comments below.

Feel free to also leave a link to your blog if you’ve tried out forums before so we can all benefit from your experiences!

New Plugin #3 – Add a Facebook “like” button

3 Comments on New Plugin #3 – Add a Facebook “like” button

Our third new plugin released this week is an easy way to integrate Facebook with your blog.

The Facebook Like plugin gives you the ability to quickly add a ‘like’ button at the beginning or end of posts or pages.

To give it a try, don’t be afraid to click on “like” at the bottom of this post! :)

Plugin Features

Easy to setup – all you need to do is activate, and the plugin automatically does the rest!
Change location – you can choose to have the “like” button at the beginning or end of each post, and rather or not to display it on your front page or not.
Customization – other settings include changing the colors to match your blog and making the button bar bigger or smaller.

How to Customize

After activating the plugin, you can click on Facebook-Like under the Settings tab of your blog’s dashboard. From here, you will find all of the options with explanations provided.

More New Stuff!

This makes THREE new plugins made live this week – including the new PayPal and Calendar plugins.

The next few months are going to bring even more new plugins and features to Edublogs!

Be sure to follow us at twitter.com/edublogs and facebook.com/edublogs so that you can be the first to know as we roll out the coming changes!

New Plugin #2 – A Calendar For Your Blog

9 Comments on New Plugin #2 – A Calendar For Your Blog

As promised, we are releasing THREE new plugins this week!

The first is an easy way of accepting payments or donations right inside your blog.

The second, which has been a highly requested feature, gives you the ability to place a calendar on any post or page in your blog.

This plugin can be used as an event calendar, lesson plan book, or maybe a class birthday calendar. We would love to hear about other ways that this feature might be used. Feel free to leave a comment below with your ideas!

So how do you use the plugin?

It’s easy. Pro and Campus users can activate the plugin from their dashboard. This will create a new Calendar tab near the bottom of the left column in the dashboard where you can configure the calendar.

The most common way to use the calendar is to create a new page and copy and paste {CALENDAR} into the page where you want the calendar to appear. Make sure to include the brackets and use all upper case letters. This can be used on any page or post in a blog.

To add events, click on Manage Calendar on the calendar tab. Events can be recurring, scheduled for all day, or given specific times. You can assign events to different categories and give each category a different color so it can be easily identified on the calendar. You might find ColorPicker.com useful when assigning colors.

And what about widgets?

Once the plugin is activated, you will find two new widgets to put in your blog’s sidebars. There is one for “Today’s Events” and one for “Upcoming Events”.

A calendar may just be the perfect addition to a class blog to keep students and parents informed. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s release of plugin number three!

New Plugin #1 – Accept Payments and Donations!

This week we are unveiling THREE new plugins available to Pro and Campus users! These will seriously increase the functionality and versatility of Edublogs.

To start off with, we have …

… a PayPal plugin which makes it easy for teachers and educators to accept payments and donations!

Imagine being able to allow parents or students the ability to pay for field trips, club dues, or course materials right in your blog. Or maybe you would like to offer a secure means of accepting donations.

Once activated, you will be able to place a new PayPal widget in any sidebar in your blog. Here are a couple of examples:

All that is needed is a PayPal account to begin accepting donations or payments!

WPPayPalSettings

After activating the the plugin, you will find the options under Settings > WP PayPal Payments in your blog’s dashboard.

Enter your currency (from seven different currencies!), payment information, and choice of donation or payment.

Next, click on Appearance > Widgets and make sure to drag and drop the WP PayPal Payment widget into the sidebar of your choice.

PayPal will notify you by email of any payments or donations received.

For help on activating new plugins, you can view our help post here.

We hope that you enjoy the ease of accepting payments with this great plugin and maybe even that it will help you bring in a bit more donations too.

Happy blogging!

Make your blog look like Twitter or Facebook

3 Comments on Make your blog look like Twitter or Facebook

Did you know that two of our newest premium themes can make your blog look like it is right out of Twitter or Facebook? We bet students are going to love these!

The Retweet Theme

The Retweet theme is highly customizable, complete with multiple background images and the ability to choose from any color scheme imaginable.

Other features include a list of latest posts right at the top, integration with Twitter, customizable logo image, and quick social bookmarking capabilities.

Visit Amelia’s Awesome Blog for an example of a student blog using this new theme.

Smells Like Facebook

This new theme looks so much like Facebook that it is easy to get confused as to what site you are on while using it!

You can add a logo image, use one or two sidebars for widgets, and fake out friends with a real looking facebook blog. :)

Want to give these themes a try?

In your Dashboard, you’ll find Premium Themes under Appearance. Find the theme you like and click on Activate – that’s it!

And don’t forget as a Pro user you can simply upgrade up to 50 student (or other) blogs!

Once upgraded, these blogs will have:

Features on upgraded student blogs

Upgrading is as simple as 1, 2, 3:

How to upgrade a student blog