Monthly Archives: September 2008

What Do You Most Want To Learn More About? [Poll Results]

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Over the past few weeks I’ve run a poll here at The Edublogger asking readers what they most want to learn more about. I’ve run this to help plan future posts while demonstrating how to use polls on blogs.

Two poll tools were used; so readers could compare the look of a PollDaddy poll with a Vizu poll. Both polls contained the same answers, except the PollDaddy poll had the extra answer — Process of Setting Up Blogs Within Your School.

The Results

A total of 663 people participated in the poll compared to 144 comments during this period (NB. Not excluding my comments). More readers (422) voted using the Vizu poll. Not surprising as it was embedded in both a blog post and the sidebar. Whereas 241 readers voted using the PollDaddy poll (only in a post).

Using blogs with students’ was the #1 response for both (41% votes – Vizu, 20 % – PollDaddy). While Blog design was second/third choice (Vizu/Polldady) ranking of the other answers varied considerably between the two polls.

The Graphs

Here’s how the Vizu graph looked:

Image od Vizu results

NOTE : Vizu doesn’t display ranked order of responses or vote number. Reorganized graph using SnagIT to show these.

Compared to the Polldaddy:

Results from PollDaddy

Tips to Remember When Using Polls

  1. Write a post to let readers know you are running a poll.  Embed poll in both a post and in your sidebar.
  2. Make it very obvious that you have embedded a poll in a post because polls are removed when read using RSS – check how I did it!
  3. At the conclusion of your poll write a summary post telling your readers the results!

Final Thoughts

Plenty of ‘food for thought’ for the statisticians in our community especially when we take into account the extra answer and Vizu set to randomize the answers while PollDaddy wasn’t.

How did your polls go?  Which poll tools did you use? What was the pros/cons of each poll tools you’ve tried?

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Share Your Tips On Writing ‘About Pages’ For Class Blogs!

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Image of class blogOh NO……forget class blogs :oops: ! Really need YOUR help to make amends to all class blogs!

What Happened!

My Have You Set Up Your About Page? post provided tips on About pages for student and adult bloggers but totally forgot about Class blogs.

Wouldn’t have realised the neglect without Angela Kulikowski‘s comment:

“One challenge I have had is writing an About page for my class blog. I don’t really feel that it should be about me since the blog is representative of my students and how they think. On the other hand, perhaps I should include some things about myself as a teacher and my teaching philosophy.”

The Help Required!

Please share your thoughts on what to write on an “About page” for a CLASS blogs as opposed to an individual blog in terms of:

  • What should/shouldn’t be included?
  • How much information should you provide about the teacher and their teaching philosophies?
  • Links to Class blogs ‘About Pages’ to check out?

Angela — asked also if you could check out her Class ‘About Page‘ and leave a comment with any recommended changes.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Take the time to check out the ‘about page’ on Grade 5/NT class blog — definitely worth it! Thanks Nathan Toft for sharing the link!

Image created using Add Letters.

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Have You Set Up Your About Page?

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Image of how to find the about pageHave you set up your About page? Or taken the time to review what you’ve written on this page?

NO! Well make this a priority because your About page is extremely important to new readers. It’s where readers find out more about you and your blog. Readers often use it to decide whether to bother subscribing to a blog.

Updating Your About Page

When you set up a new Edublogs blog it automatically comes set up with an about page. Readers access this page by clicking on About in the page links at the top of your theme or in the link in your sidebar.

The idea is you change the default text on this about page by inserting your own information.

Image of the default about page

You do this in your dashboard by clicking on Manage > Pages.  Now click on the link to your About page.

Image of Editing About page

Now it is just a case of replacing the default text on the about page with your own text, images etc.

Image of editing about page text

What To Write On An About Page

Your about page is all about letting people know who are you, what’s your interests and what you write about.

Writing a good ‘About Page’ is hard. Start with telling people more about yourself, people are more likely to engage with your site if they can relate to you as an individual. Then tell them about your blog. Not too long, not too short, include photos that help readers relate to you as a person.   Check out how Darren Rowse (Problogger) achieve this.

For class blogs – check out Tips On Writing ‘About Pages’ For Class Blogs!

PLEASE NOTE:

If you are a school student you need to think carefully about:

  1. What to say or not say -  read Miss Wyatt’s post and if in doubt check with your teacher or maybe ask Miss Wyatt!
  2. Any Photos you use – It’s still possible to include photos that help people relate to you as a person without using your own photo.  Check out Meghna’s About page to see how she does this!!!

FINAL THOUGHTS

This post was inspired by the Week 1 task for the Student Blogging Competition because new bloggers often overlook the importance of their About page.

Take the time to review what you’ve written on your about page.  Does it clearly highlight to readers:

  1. Who are you?
  2. What are your interests?
  3. What you’re about?
  4. What you write about?

Why not write a post to ask your readers what they think about your about page?  What they like? What changes they’d recommend?

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The Student Blogging Competition Is About To Begin: Have You JOINED?

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Student Blogging Competition logoThe Student Blogging Competition starts this week!!!

So far there’s over 100 school students and 8 class blogs from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Portugal and USA involved.  The competition is now also multilingual — with the weekly tasks written in both English and Portuguese.

You don’t need your own blog! You can do the activities using your class blog or by commenting on other students’ blogs.   This is a great opportunity for:

  1. Students to connect with other student bloggers while improving your blogging skills.
  2. Teacher to guide their students through the process of learning to blog and improving their reflective writing skills.

You can read more about what’s involved in this post.  There’s still time to join:

NOTE: If the competition starts while you’re on holidays — don’t stress just start at the end of your holidays.

I’ve set up a site to display the posts from the student blogs participating in the competition using Google Reader — you can keep an eye on the posts at this URL or you can subscribe to the feed.  Currently the posts are displaying based on when added to my Google Reader however new posts will display in date posted.  If you notice your posts aren’t appearing —  Please let me know so I can rectify!

FINAL THOUGHTS

Best of luck for those joining the student blogging competition.  Please drop past and let me know how you are going!!! Would love to hear.

Meanwhile if you’re interested in translating and being involved in the competition in your language please contact Miss Wyatt.

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What Do Your Readers Really SEE?

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Image of a blogging bookSimple facts from the stats — for my personal blog Mobile Technology in TAFE.

The Facts

  1. Approx. 50 people visit my blog site each day.
  2. Main web browsers used for viewing my blog are FireFox (52.93 % ), Internet Explorer (39.93 %) and Safari (4.87 %).
  3. Approx. 750 people subscribe to my blog and read my posts using a Feed Reader.
  4. Main feed readers used by my readers are Google Reader (68 %) and Bloglines (7 %).
  5. Approx. 35 people prefer to read my posts via email (Feedburner email subscription).

What The Facts Mean

Even with great content people are less likely to subscribe or continuing subscribing to your blog if your posts are hard to read. It’s important to ensure your posts look nice and are easy to read on your blog, when read in feed readers and by email.

You check this by:

  1. Regularly examining the appearance of your blog using a few web browsers! (Read more here)
  2. Subscribing to your blog in a Feed Reader!
  3. Subscribing to your email subscription!

Here’s how to set up:

  1. Google Analytics for obtaining statistics on visitors to your blog (here an intro on how to use use of Google Analytics).
  2. Feedburner for obtaining statistics on subscribers to your blog
  3. Email subscription using Feedburner
  4. Your feed so it redirects to Feedburner to get accurate subscriber statistics
  5. A Google Reader Account and subscribe to blogs

FINAL THOUGHTS

So how did you go:

  1. Notice any problems that you need to rectify when you viewed your blog in different web browsers?
  2. What are your posts like when read in a feed reader like Google Reader? Have any of the embeds you’ve added been removed?

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