Author Archives: Sue Waters

About Sue Waters

I work as an aquaculture lecturer at the WA Maritime Training Centre, Challenger TAFE in Western Australia. I have been working with a range of mobile technologies with students since late 2005. The purpose of my blog, podcast and wiki site is to document my learning journey with mobile and Web 2.0 technology so that I can share my experiences with other lecturers. My main focus is how these technologies can be used practically to benefit lecturers and students.

Experience The Power of Twitter While Sharing Your Gr8Tweets!

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Image of logoLately it feels like every time I turn on the TV news, pick up a newspaper or listen to the radio someone is talking about twitter or has written an article.  So why is twitter increasing in popularity?

Off course I could try to explain why but it’s better to experience the power of Twitter yourself.  So I invite you to join me and others for Gr8tweets for the month of March to:

  • Commit to trying out twitter for a month
  • Find interesting people to follow on Twitter
  • Share what you value about twitter
  • See what others value about twitter
  • Help build your Personal Learning Network

What’s Involved

How it will work is for each day in March you will choose your favorite “Tweet of the day” and then you will retweet it with the hashtag #gr8t.  Hashtags are often used on twitter because they make it easy to follow tweets by all twitter users with public timelines on specific topics.

It’s entirely up to you which tweet you choose; it could be the most interesting, or insightful, or humorous, or best link of the day.  It might be your own tweet or your favorite tweet by a follower.

Below is an example of a “Tweet of the Day” – see how the hashtag #gr8t has been added to the end of the tweet.

Image of examplem of \

Using the hashtag #gr8t enables us to bring all the “Tweets of the Day” together for everyone to view them on the gr8tweets wiki.

Hopefully these tweets will provide great tips, links and resources while also helping you find new people to connect with.  Meanwhile drop past the gr8tweets wiki and add your details to the Who’s Playing list so you can start connecting easier with others!

If you have any questions about “Tweet of the Day” you can send us a tweet @datruss, @deacs84, @lizbdavis, @hhg, @suewaters, @budtheteacher or @dkuropatwa

How To Set Up A Twitter Account

If you don’t currently use twitter:

  1. Read this information on twitter
  2. Go to Twitter.com and click “Get Started NOW”

Feel free to add me to your twitter account – my twitter username is suewaters.  If you would like my help to get started using twitter just send me a tweet.  For example you might say:

@suewaters Hi Sue I am new to using twitter can you give me some advice or help me connect with others?

FINAL THOUGHTS

For latest news and updates from Edublogs follow the Edublogs twitter account.

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Have You Re-inserted Your Google Analytics Tracking Code?

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Image of Google Analytics dataWhile analysing my Google Analytics data this weekend I noticed The Edublogger is currently showing zero visits.

Interesting?  Yes Edublogs has upgraded its Google Analytics plugin and we even have an admin alert in our blog dashboards.  I even read it! Went a bit like

Edublogs Supporters and use Google Analytics blah blah blah!

With zero visits being recorded that admin alert must have been really important.

Here’s what it really says!

Image of admin alert

Duh.  All Edublogs supporters need to re-insert their ‘UA-’ string if they are using the Google Analytics plugin!

How much chocolate do I have to bride you NOT to tell James I misread the message? I’m probably not the only one?

Re-inserting Google Analytics Tracking Code

Here is what you need to do:

  1. Log into your Google Analytics account and grab your tracking code from your settings pageImage of Tracking code
  2. In your blog dashboard go to Settings and click on your Google Analytics tab.
  3. Add the tracking code and click on Save Changes.Image of adding tracking code

Stats tab In Your Blog Dashboard

In case you missed the other important news this week – there is now a new stats tab in your dashboard.

Image of stats tab

If you’re an Edublogs Supporter it’s collecting information on number of visitors to your blog, where they are coming from, the most popular content and search engine terms people are using.

So if you are interested in simpler statistics for your blog than Google Analytics make sure you check out your new Stats Tab.

FINAL THOUGHTS

To learn more about using Google Analytics check out:

  1. Setting Up Google Analytics on Your Blog
  2. The Basics of Using Google Analytics

Reminder: To celebrate The Edublogger’s first birthday we’re giving away twelve Edublogs supporter 12 month subscriptions which you can use on your own blog or give away to a reader – entries close March 5.

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider feed-icon32x32 Finding and Adding Creative Commons Images To Your Blog PostsSubscribing For Free!

Writing Links in Comments

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A common frustration for commenters is how do you write links in comments on blog posts.

Inserting links in posts is relatively easy because your Visual Editor provides a Insert/Edit Link button but this tool isn’t available for writing comments on posts.  This is where a basic knowledge of HTML helps because you use HTML to write links in comments.

What is HTML?

HTML is short for “Hyper Text Markup Language” which is a language used to tell a browser how to organise the layout of a web page it has downloaded from the Internet.  It influences if text is bold, italics, a heading, bullet points.

When you write a post or page inside your blog dashboard you don’t worry HTML because the Visual Editor does it for you. If you click on the HTML tab it shows the HTML code in your text.

Here Is the HTML you use to write links:

<a href=”http://theedublogger.com/”>check out The Edublogger</a>

produces

Check out The Edublogger

Image of HTML for writing links

Make sure you close the tag with </a> and enclosed the website URL with quotation marks (needs to look like this “http://theedublogger.com/”)

Please note:

  • If you write several links in a blog comment it may be held in moderation for the blogger to approve – this is done to minimise people writing spam comments
  • There are some blog platforms that don’t allow you to use HTML in comments

FINAL THOUGHTS

You can also write HTML in text widgets which you add to your sidebar to:

  1. Link to websites or pages on your blog
  2. Display photos to your sidebar

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Have You Joined The 2009 Student Blogging Challenge?

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The student blogging challenge starts in March…..have you joined?

Currently 14 class blogs and 80 individual students blogs from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, USA, England, Portugal and Argentina have signed up for the student blogging challenge.  Each week there will be one challenge, and some weeks will include three choices within the one challenge so that students can choose their blogging tasks based on their blogging ability.

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 don’t need your own blog! You can do the activities using your class blog or by commenting on other students’ blogs.

To join as a class or student blog you just need to complete the form at the bottom of this post.

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How Is Your Blog Looking In Internet Explorer?

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Image of IE not workingAre you viewing your blog ONLY using FireFox, Flock, Chrome or Safari?  Have you checked it lately using Internet Explorer?

NO?

Oh dear you may be in for a BIG SHOCK! If you are unlikely you may find that your blog isn’t viewable in Internet Explorer and totally locks up your web browser or isn’t displaying properly.

What’s Happening

I’ve spent considerable time over the past few weeks fixing blogs that aren’t loading properly in Internet Explorer.Image of axe

As an experience user it has caused me considerable anguish as I’ve battled to shut down Internet Explorer.  If I was a reader, with computers skills similar to my husband, there would be considerable swearing, while blaming the blogger for all the Worlds’ problems, followed with a high probability of the computer being destroyed with an axe!

90 % of  Internet Explorer issues we are seeing are being caused by users copying and pasting text directly from Word into their blog posts which becomes a MAJOR problem if they have lots of posts. Occasionally widgets from some websites are causing problems.

Please DON’T embed Google Presentations in your blog posts at the moment.  There is an issue with the Google Presentation embed code and Internet Explorer which is causing it to totally lock up the web browser.  This is happening for all blog platforms we have tested the embed code with!

The Solution

If you are using another web browser please do both me and your readers a favour!  Check your blog in Internet Explorer regularly especially when you use:

  1. Embed codes e.g. YouTube, VoiceThreads, Voki in blog posts
  2. Add new widgets to your sidebars

Making this part of your blogging routine means you’re able to immediately identify any issues and implement a fix.

FINAL THOUGHTS

While you mightn’t use Internet Explorer as your web browser, many new visitors to your site and existing readers will be!  50 % of people who visit The Edublogger view it using Internet Explorer.

Image by viZZZual.com under Creative Commons ShareAlike License.

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