Monthly Archives: May 2010

Missing emails! Have you checked your spam folder?

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When did you last check your spam folder?

I’ve been getting numerous emails recently such as ‘why aren’t I receiving my comment notification emails’,  ‘I haven’t received the emails for my student’s login details’ and ‘why haven’t you responded to my email.’

Unfortunately, gmail users are being caught out by legitimate emails being sent to spam and since by default gmail now hides the spam folder they aren’t realising.

Here’s my advice:

  1. Change your gmail spam folder to show
  2. Regularly check your spam folder for legitimate emails and unspam any legitimate emails

How to change your gmail spam folder setting

By default the spam folder is now located underneath the More drop down menu.

Locating the spam folder

To always have your spam folder display you can either:

1. Drag your spam label out of the More area and into your main menu

Drag and dropping your spam folder

2.  Or go to Settings > Labels and click on Show next to Spam

Changing your spam folder to show

Presto!

Now you’ll easily be able to see how many emails have been spammed and can easily check it for those missing emails :)

Final Thoughts

Looking for more tips on using email?

Check out:

  1. What You Really Ought To Know About Emails!
  2. Creating Student Accounts Using One Gmail Account
  3. How To Moderate All Comments and Posts On Student Blogs

And remember filters, especially strict ones for education email addresses,  often block legitimate emails.

Make sure when emailing from an education email account you include an alternative email address such as gmail or hotmail.

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Grr Spam Comments..Here’s how to deal with them!

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Spam commenters driving you currently crazy?

You’re not alone — and lots of people have been asking me for advice lately.

So let’s first talk a little on the WHAT and then on ‘the how to deal with them’.

What Are Spam Commenters?

The main reason why people write spam comments is to provide links to promote their web site(s).

Common spamming techniques include:

1.  Creating pingbacks to blog post

Example of spammer's pingback email

2.  Adding links to their web site in the comment and/or the URL

Easiest option is to use Comment Blacklist or Comment Moderation

It’s as simple as:

1.  Go to Settings > Discussion

Image of Settings menu

2.  Add the spammer’s URL, email address, IP address or word(s) commonly used to the Comment Blacklist field or Comment Moderation field

  • If you are concerned genuine comments might be blocked you use the Comment Moderation Field

For example, IP address 69.174.246.208, their website and/or car details such as Acura or radiator would work for this comment spam

Example of a spam pingback

And it might look like this:

Setting up a comment blacklist

3.  Click Save Changes at bottom of page

Now any pingback that contain any of these words in its content, name, URL, e-mail, or IP is automatically:

  1. Held in your moderation queue (if you used comment moderation) – where you can decide if to approve or delete them.
  2. Marked as spam and you won’t receive an email notification (if you used comment blacklist)

Alternatively you could also use Akismet – here’s instructions for setting up and configuring Akismet!

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Has Facebook stopped importing your blog post feed?

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Importing into FacebookRecent changes to Facebook may have stopped the import of your blog post feeds.

Which is frustrating as  some readers are more comfortable, and prefer to read posts, and comment on them, in Facebook rather than on blogs.

Facebook normally checks your feed every few hours and automatically adds any new blog posts to your Facebook notes.

If your blog feed is no longer being imported into Facebook the solution is to cancel your current blog import and then reimport it.

Not currently feeding your posts into Facebook?

Here’s our instructions on How To Import Your Blog Posts Into Facebook

How to import your blog posts into Facebook

Here’s how to restart your blog import:

1.  Log into your Facebook Account

2.  Click on Profile

Facebook > Profile

3.  Click on Notes tab

Click on Notes

4.   Click on the title of one of your posts or notes

Click on post title

5.  Now click on My Notes

Click on My Notes

6.  Click on ‘Edit import settings’

Editing your import settings

7.  Click on Stop Importing

Stop importing your blog feed

8.  Now add back in your Feed URL, agree to their conditions to import feed and then click Start Importing

Adding your Feed to Facebook

9.  On the preview of your imported blog page click Confirm Import if you are happy with the Preview.

Confirming your import

Final Thoughts

Not currently feeding your posts into Facebook?

Here’s our instructions on How To Import Your Blog Posts Into Facebook

How to import your blog posts into Facebook

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The 137 Edublogs Themes Separated Into Categories To Make Choosing Your Next Theme Easier

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We now have a whopping 137 Edublogs themes to choose from ranging from:

  1. Those that can’t be altered to themes that are “extremely customizable”
  2. Standard blog themes to very unique themes including photoblog, magazine, newspaper, twitter and Facebook themes.

Which is excellent!

Important Theme Changes

And we’ve made some important changes to the themes:

  1. Threaded comments – All themes now support threaded comments and any user can activate this feature.
  2. Custom Image Headers - almost all themes now allow you to upload your own custom image header.
  3. Comments on Pages – most themes now support comments on pages
  4. Full posts on Category page - most themes now display full posts on category pages for those users who are using their blogs as photoblogs

You activate the threaded comments feature as follows:

1.  Go to Settings > Discussion.

Settings > Discussion

2.  Select Enable threaded (nested) comments

Enabling threaded comments

3.  Scroll to bottom of page and click Save Changes

Please disable threaded comment plugin before enabling threaded comments via Settings > Discussion.

Categorizing the themes

Since you can spend considerable trying to find the “perfect theme” we’ve helped make your task easier we’ve categorizing the 137 themes based on:

  1. Layout – number of columns
  2. Color Scheme and how customizable the theme is
  3. Ability to upload custom image header – those that allow are shown as recommended header image dimensions, in pixels, to upload (written as width by height)
  4. Presence or absence of links to pages as navigation tabs at the top of the theme – as shown in page link column as Yes/No
  5. Presence or absence of tagline in blog header – as shown in display tagline column as Yes/No
  6. Uniqueness

What to look for with a theme

ONE COLUMN THEMES

One Column theme layoutSingle Column themes have a central post area with no sidebar.

These theme appeal to people who like to keep their theme simple by preventing the clutter often created by sidebar widgets.

All widgets are located at the bottom of the blog on one column themes.

One Column Themes

Two column theme with left sidebar layoutTWO COLUMN THEMES WITH LEFT SIDEBAR

Two Column themes normally a wide column for content with a narrower sidebar.

These are the most common theme layout and location of the sidebar (left or right) is personal preference.

Two column themes with left sidebars

Two column theme with right sidebar layoutTWO COLUMN THEMES WITH RIGHT SIDEBAR

Two Column themes with right sidebar are the most common theme layout so we’ve separated these themes based on color scheme.

White themes

Two Column Right sidebar white themes

Grey themes

Two Column right sidebar grey themes

Brown Themes

Two column right sidebar brown themes

Pink themes

Two Column Right sidebar Pink themes

Green Themes

Two column Right sidebar green themes

Blue Themes

Two column right sidebar blue themes

Dark themes

Two column right sidebar dark themes

Themes with easily changed color scheme

Two column theme with right sidebar

Three column with left right sidebar layoutTHREE COLUMN THEMES WITH LEFT AND RIGHT SIDEBAR

Three column themes have either:

  1. Sidebars side-by-side on one side of the blog
  2. Sidebars on either side of the wider content column

Three column themes with left right sidebars

Three column theme with right sidebar layoutTHREE COLUMN THEMES WITH RIGHT SIDEBARS

The most appealing aspect of three column themes is the ability to place more widgets in the sidebar.

Sidebars side-by-side three column themes on one side of the blog allows you to use this aspect well.

Three column themes with right sidebars

FOUR COLUMN THEMES

Four column themes have one content column and three sidebars.

The content column is often the same width as the other columns. This type of layout tends to be cluttered looking and less suited to reading lengthy content.

Four column themes

VARIABLE COLUMN AND/OR SIDEBAR LOCATION THEMES

Some themes are extremely customisable providing the ability to change the number of columns and/or the location of their sidebars.

Highly Customisable themes

UNIQUE THEMES

These are the specialist themes designed to suit features such as photoblogging, magazine blogs, newspaper blogs, research blogs, group discussions and custom homepages.

Themes like WPMU Dixi, WPMU Nelo and WPMU are the most customisable of all themes and well suited for a wide range of purposes.

Unique themes

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Inspiring Example of embedding lessons as videos on a Class Blog

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SBEC Chemistry and Physics blog Meet Tammy – a high school science teacher with an outstanding class blog which you can visit here.

Tammy serves as an inspiration to all of us that are interested in creating an online environment that is a natural extension of our classrooms.

She is amazing when it comes to recording her daily classroom notes and embedding them in her class blog as a video.

We thought that you might like to get to know her a bit better and how she does what she does, so we asked her a few questions and she was kind enough to reply.

What were the main reason(s) why you started recording videos for your students?

For years I taught my chemistry and physics students by using dry erase markers on an overhead projector.

When interactive boards came along, I was excited, but I needed to be able to see my students while they worked with me.  When I went behind my demonstration station to work problems on the board, it was like my students thought I’d left the building!

Another challenge was the missing student – students gone on mission trips, students out with the flu, students in tournaments, or students who missed the concepts in class that day and just needed to hear the lesson again.

Everything came together when, from all different directions and just about all at one time, I discovered Edublogs, eBeam Interact (an interactive projection device and software), and the Wacom Cintique Tablet.

Tools used with the videos

How do you create your videos?

I’m able to write on the tablet while facing my students and record both my voice and pen strokes with eBeam and a cordless mic.

At the end of the day, I upload the videos to blip.tv, and then embed them on our class blog.  In addition to blip.tv, other online resources that have been really helpful for me as I post the lessons to the website are compfight.com and Flickr.com

Screenshot of one of Tammy's videos

How are you using your class blog?

I use our class blog for posting videos of daily lectures, reviews, and help sessions, but also as an online filing cabinet of sorts for just tons of resources for my students – the weekly syllabus, project information, assignments, interactive websites, tutorials, etc.

So many wonderful teachers and organizations have put such incredible resources for learning chemistry and physics online,  and now my students can access them though our blog.

Another very important way I use our class blog is to keep in touch with my students, and for them to keep in touch with each other, outside of class.

I’m working on helping them learn how scientists across the world communicate by having them share lab results, collaborate on projects, etc., through comments.

They also use the comments to ask me (or their classmates) questions they forgot or might have been hesitant to ask in class.

My chemistry students recently finished the huge end of the year research project, and, oh, my word, I thought someone from Edublogs was going to call and tell us we were overloading the system.

How class blog is used

What has been the benefits of your class blog to your students?

Our class blog has proven to be a tremendous resource for my students who for one reason or another have to be absent from class.

From their homes or hotel room, while waiting between races on their lap top, or on iTunes, my students can watch the day’s lecture, watch videos that I might have shown in class through the VodPod, get copies of assignments, learn about upcoming projects, and then ask me or their classmates questions by posting comments.

My students love to see themselves in action, but I could never seem to keep up with getting all the pictures I took printed for everyone to see.  With our class blog, I’m able to use Flickr and post picture and videos on our blog so the students can see all of them, any time, and not just the ones I can afford to print. I also send pics and video to Facebook and Twitter, and I’ve had former students comment on, “I remember when… .”

My kids would never have this kind of interaction with me, with each other, and even with the world without our class blog.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Thank you, Tammy, for all of your kind and informational words!

We would love to hear from others of you out there that are using your blogs in exciting ways to improve the learning experience of students.

Feel free to leave a comment if you would like to share and possibly be part of a future post such as this one!

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