It’s that time of year again!

And I’m off to attend ISTE 2010 conference and network with people:

What does this mean?

I would love to catch up with anyone.  I’m always happy to chat and answer questions.

I’ll be in the following locations on these dates:

1. San Francisco from 12 – 16 June
2. New York from 16 – 25 June
3. Denver from 25 June – 2 July
4. Los Angeles from 2 – 7 July

If you would like to meet:

• Send me a tweet using twitter @suewaters
• Leave a comment on this post to coordinate a time
• Or, look for me at EduBloggerCon 2010 on Saturday June 26 and in the Blogger’s Cafe at  ISTE 2010

Final Thoughts

Thanks James for sending me!

Please feel free to share traveling advice, ISTE tips, ‘how not to get lost’ tips etc!

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free!

My posts lately have been very serious — off course, nothing wrong with that

But thought everyone might enjoy a bit of a chuckle? And a chance to see my funnier side.

Hopefully it helps those feeling frustrated with technology to see we all face the same challenges. 

But together we can get through it and help each other!

Enjoy watching my First Time using an iSight on a Mac

Video: First time using iSight on a Mac

Mobile Technology in TAFE

PS No Mac was harmed in the making of this film!  But my PC felt neglected.

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free!

Merry Christmas everyone!  Thanks for all your amazing support this year and I hope you enjoy your holiday break!

Let’s Celebrate Together

To continue last year’s tradition I’ve written this post so we can celebrate Christmas / holidays as part of a global community.

This year I’ve created a WallWisher.  Thanks to Lesley Edwards for suggesting we use WallWisher.

Just go to WallWisher Educhristmas09 or click on Post A Sticky to add your season’s greeting. Feel free to link to photos, videos, or audio!

Our Christmas /Holiday Photos

I’ll also be embedding a Flickr Slideshow again this year:

1. Just upload photos of how you celebrate Christmas /holiday in your part of the world to Flickr and tagged them educhristmas09
2. Please add a description, including your geographical location, to each photo.

Refer to this series of posts if you are new to using Flickr.

Have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Looking to thank your favorite bloggers?

Here’s your opportunity!

Nominations for the Edublog Awards 2009 are now open!

And best of all this year we have new categories including my favorite Best Student blog…

So students, teachers, class bloggers (and everyone) start nominating your favorite blogger(s) and web sites — we’re all looking forward to learning about great blogs!

About The Edublogs Awards

The Edublog Awards is an annual event that is now in its 6th year.

Each year the Edublogs Awards creates fabulous resources to share ideas on how social networking tools can be used in different educational contexts.

To be involved all you need to do is:

1.  Nominate

Choose the sites that you want to nominate in the following categories (you can nominate for as many, or as few, categories as you like):

Best individual blog
Best individual tweeter
Best group blog
Best new blog
Best class blog
Best student blog
Best resource sharing blog
Most influential blog post
Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion
Best teacher blog
Best librarian / library blog
Best educational tech support blog
Best elearning / corporate education blog
Best educational use of audio
Best educational use of video / visual
Best educational wiki
Best educational use of a social networking service
Best educational use of a virtual world
Lifetime achievement

Nominations close Tuesday 8 December!  And you MUST follow exactly the instructions explained below!

2.  Vote

Once the nomination process is complete voting will commence and you’ll be able to submit your votes for as many, or as few, categories as you like on the Edublog Awards website.

Voting ends Wednesday 16 December!

3.  Award Ceremony

Winners are announced at the Award Ceremony on Friday 18 December!

How To Nominate!

You must follow these two simple steps to nominate or your nominations won’t be counted!

Step 1: Write a post on your blog linking to:

1. The Edublog Awards Homepage
2. The blogs & sites that you want to nominate (you must include a link to each site you nominate!)

You can nominate for as many categories as you like, but only one nomination per category, and not yourself

You can nominate a blog (or site) for more than one category)

Check out these nomination posts to see how it can be done!

• Silvia Tolisano has made her nomination post really EASY to grab her links to use in the voting process
• Liz B. Davis’s nomination post has done an excellent job of explaining her choices

Step 2: Email the link to your nomination post as follows:

1. Go to The Edublog Awards nomination
2. Scroll to the contact form at the bottom of the page (The Edublog Awards nomination)
3. Complete the contact form and click send
   • You MUST include a genuine email address (spam free, just in case we need to confirm identity)
   • You MUST include the link to your nominations post

Your complete contact form should look similar to this example below!

You can’t submit your nominations without writing a blog post — please note class blogs can submit multiple posts by different authors!

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free!

It’s time to announce the winners of “Share your tips–and win BIG!” and a big thanks to everyone who entered.

Here’s the winners with a brief summary of why they won:

Gail Desler has extensive experience in both student blogging and supporting others educators in the use of blogs with their students.  She submitted three posts for the competition that all are ‘must read’ posts packed full of advice on blogging with students which is why I’ve decided all three posts are winning posts:

1. Five Tips for Teachers New to Blogging
2. Five Tips for Helping Students Become Better Bloggers
3. Five Borrowed Tips for Helping Students Become Better Bloggers

Lauren and Abbey are two truly amazing student bloggers who consistently astound me with the posts they write.  Joining them with an incredible post is Dominique, another student blogger.

The posts they submitted are so ‘must read’ that it would be an honor if they guest posted their posts here on The Edublogger

Considering their ages and the fact I’ve never approached anyone ever to guest post on The Edublogger gives you an indication of how incredible the posts by these student bloggers are:

1. Starting Out Blogging (Abbey’s post)
2. Edublogs Advice (Lauren’s post)
3. Le blogging défi de Sue Waters…. (Dominique’s post)

Carla Arena is a Brazilian EFL teacher who supports other educators learning how to blog through programs like “Blogging For Educators“.  Her Blogging with Students in 5 Tips post highlights the importance of connecting your student bloggers to a global multicultural audience.

Dave Mendall’s 5 Important Tips for Blogging with Students post provides  a timely reminder of need to keep it simple, remain focused, lower your expectations, embrace the unexpected and don’t give up!

Danielle Maley wrote a clever poem explaining early childhood educators can use blogs with their students while providing student blogging tips.  And Mrs Harvey shows us how she explains to her different classes what they can post on their blogs.

While Sheri Edwards and Peter Vogel both shared the challenges, and what worked, with student blogging:

1. Blogging in Writing Class post (Sheri’s post)
2. Blogging in ICT Class (Peter’s post)

Gregory Stringer has helped us by providing a few of his “secrets” for blogging and joining social networking sites.

Sarah Korlaki and Karen Barnstable challenge us by asking their ‘5 most important questions they would like to answered by experienced bloggers.’  I love these types of questions (and the answers) because they give you lots of post ideas.

Check out their posts and share your thoughts:

1. What I really want to know about blogging (Sarah’s post)
2. Five Questions I would like to ask Experienced Bloggers (Karen’s post)

And most importantly Jess tells us why as a student she loves blogging!

Winners Badge

Congratulations to all winners!

Here’s a badge if you would like to add to your sidebar.

All you need to do is add a text widget to your sidebar and write a link to the image here on this blog using HTML code.

Here is an example of how you need to write the code:

Please send an email to tell me if you want to use the free 12 months Edublogs supporters subscription on your own blog or to give away to a reader.

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free!

I’ve been approached to do an interview by Ingrid Maack who is writing an article about the use of social networking websites within early childhood environments.

Ingrid’s a journalist at Rattler Magazine (published by Armedia).

We don’t often get the chance to get our message across to educators and parents using traditional news media.

But why limit to my thoughts when collectively responses from our global community are more powerful!

So here’s your opportunity!  Teachers, Students, Everyone!

Please share your thoughts on any or all of the following questions:

1. How are blogs, web 2.0 and social networking being used by teachers in primary schools and/or early childhood environments?
2. Can you give examples of good use of blogs in the early childhood environments?
3. Are social networking sites being blocked or embraced?  What’s your thoughts on this?
4. How do people balance their personal use of the technology versus their professional?
5. Is there a lot of misunderstanding about the use of electronic technology? I imagine there are a lot of ‘knee-jerk’ bans in many workplaces/educational institutions?
6. Is there any guidance for teachers on responsible use?  Can you provide examples?
7. How can social networking websites and blogs be used to support teaching practice and/or boost staff morale?
8. What tips would you give early childhood teachers about using this technology?
9. Given child protection and the very nature of childcare provision, is it a good idea for services to perhaps avoid Facebook/Blogs altogether? Does it open Pandora’s Box?

Alone — I’m a small voice!  Collectively we’re a powerful voice!

Help me demonstrate our collective power by leaving a comment!

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free!

If you’re an Edublogs, Edublogs Campus, WordPress.com, WordPress.org or WordPress MU user I recommend you take the time to check out the new Getting Started With Your Blog I’ve been writing for our Help and Support site !

Sure a few sections, such as Signing up for your blog and Logging into your blog dashboard, are specific for Edublogs users but the rest apply to any blog powered by WordPress.

It’s broken into ‘tasty bite-sized’ sections with tips specifically to help educators use their blogs with students. Each part can be viewed online or downloaded as handy PDFs.

And yes, before you ask, it’s not quite finished yet! While you’ve been sleeping (and perhaps also awake) I’ve been slaving over the hot stove to get it done– subscribe to this RSS feed to have new sections home delivered!

Hope you enjoy and find them useful ….. please send chocolate to keep me sustained while I finish the rest.

Oh yeah, and if I’ve missed something — let me know

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free!

As James says “odds are you’ve noticed that Edublogs has just undergone a pretty radical upgrade – and that your admin area is looking a heap of a lot different!”

And I thought you might like a quick overview of the main changes since I’ve been working hard to get the new Help & Support section up to date.

Your Dashboard

The main area of your dashboard is now made of handy configurable modules such as Right Now, Quick Press, Recent comments — read using your dashboard to learn more about the cool features of each module !

These modules can be moved by left mouse clicking on their title, dragging to the new location on your dashboard and then release your mouse button. You can also expand and collapse these dashboard modules by left mouse clicking on their title bar.

Your Navigation menu

Your navigation menu is now on the left side of your administration panel.

Each navigation item can be expanded or collapsed to view their sub menu by clicking on the arrow on the right hand side of the item.

Action Links

Your administration panels for managing features such as posts, pages, comments, and media now all use action links. Hovering your mouse over a title brings up the action links associated with that item and then clicking on the action takes you to the required screen.

For example, in the Edit Posts screen hovering your mouse over a title of a post brings up links for Edit, Quick Edit, Delete and View. Clicking on the action link Edit opens up the post allowing you to edit the post.

Uploading Media Files

Media such as images, video, audio and documents are still uploaded using the Add Media icons.

The main differences are:

1. The Flash uploader is greatly improved (I’ve not experienced any problems or needed to use the browser uploader)
2. There is no Insert/Edit Image button in your formatting toolbar. All actions of this button are now done completely using the Add an Image icon. For example, if you want to add an image by linking to an Image URL you now use the Add an Image icon.
3. Once you’ve uploaded a video, audio or document file make sure you click File URL before clicking Insert into Post otherwise the link to the location of your file won’t be inserted into your post.

Adding Widgets to Your Sidebar

Your Design navigation menu has been changed to Appearance and this is where features such as Themes and Widgets are now located.

For blogs with more than one sidebar, all sidebars are displayed on the right hand side of your Widget screen. Clicking a sidebar expands it to show all its current widgets. This feature means you can add widgets to all your sidebars at the same time.

Widgets are added to a sidebar by dragging the desired widget to the desired sidebar. When added the widget opens up; all you need to do is configured it and then click Save. Click on Remove to remove a widget from a sidebar.

Accessing all your blogs

Gone is the tabs for all your blogs along the top of your administration panel or “All My blogs” link.

Instead you need to go your My Blogs screen via Dashboard > My Blogs and then click on the link to the desired blog dashboard.

FINAL THOUGHTS

As I said this was just a quick overview of the main changes.

For more details check out our guide for Getting Started with Edublogs which can be viewed online or downloaded as handy PDFs! — I’m working hard to get it all completed…please send chocolate to keep my energy sustained

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free!

Lots has been happening the past few weeks (besides my USA trip) and I know all readers, not just Edublogs users, would like to hear!

Introducing The Campus

Firstly we now have a new blog, The Campus, so if you enjoy reading The Edublogger I’m sure you will enjoy this new blog!

The purpose of The Campus is to:

1. Focus on blogging in an educational organizational context
2. Help schools, colleges, districts and universities take an organizational approach to blogging.

Through my work I’m fortunate to interact with a diverse range of educational organizations globally. What I’ve found is schools, colleges, districts and universities that take strong role in supporting their programs are achieving great outcomes. This is leading to greater adoption of all web technologies (not just blogs) by educators and their learners with involvement in some really amazing projects.

I plan to share on The Campus what I’m learning from my work, while providing helpful tips, and hopefully encouraging others to share their advice on using blogs in institutions.

The Edublogger will continue to share tips, tricks, ideas and provide help to the educational blogging community on a wide range of technologies while my personal blog will continue talking about elearning, Web 2.0 and technology while helping others (with, off course, the occasional chocolate story ). For those interested in WordPress MU you will also find me blogging on WPMU.ORG.

Check out Welcome to The Campus for more information! You can subscribe with this RSS feed or by Email!

Sales Manager position available

Edublogs Campus is looking for a Sales Manager.

We’re keen to hire asap, so check out the position details here. Maybe it’s not for you but if you share it around and we employ some one you send us we will pay you a $250 finders fee!

Edublogs Campus & Edublogs Upgrade

All Edublogs Campus sites are being upgraded to WordPress MU 2.8.2 this week. Your blog dashboard will look different and some features work differently.

Support material for site admin users has been completed and is located here (scroll down to the version 2.8.1 section). I am currently in the process of organising Campus blog users support material which will be located on this page of Edublogs Help and Support site.

Edublogs will be upgraded to WordPress MU 2.8.2 within the next few weeks. Watch out for more information about the upgrade in your blog dashboard and your support material will be located here on the Edublogs Help and Support site.

I will provide an overview of the main differences between the current version of WordPress MU and 2.8.2 in a blog post on The Edublogger, with a link to the user support material, once the upgrade has occurred.

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free!

For those that aren’t aware I’m off on an USA adventure for 3 weeks, from June 21 to July 13, to attend NECC 2009 and network with people.

What these means is:

1. I would love to catch up with anyone attending NECC that wants to chat or ask questions
   • You’ll find me at NECC unplugged
   • Send me a tweet using twitter @suewaters
   • Leave a comment on this post to coordinate a time
2. Probably less posts on this blog during July
3. Less access to provide support in Edublogs Forum
   • Grateful for any help answering posts in Edublogs Forum (willing to reward your efforts with a free 12 month Edublogs supporter subscription)
   • Also love it if you can respond back to any questions in comments on The Edublogger – here is The Edublogger comment feed
4. I may not always make sense due to tiredness caused by insomnia, jet lag and traveling
   • Well known for suffering extreme insomnia when I travel
   • Mere 23 hours traveling to USA (due to stop over in Brisbane for 3 days) and 31 hours return from USA to Perth, Western Australia
5. Chances are I will get lost – there is a reason why my husband says I’m ‘geographically challenged’

Following My Adventures

Unlikely I will blog about my adventures here on The Edublogger unless you and/or your students convince me readers would love to read about them here on this blog!

Instead you can find out what I’m doing (and if I’m lost or not sleeping) by following:

1. my twitter account
2. my Flickr account
3. my Personal Blog

For those wanting to know where in USA I’m going below are all the different airports mapped out!

FINAL THOUGHTS

Thanks James for sending me!

Please feel free to share:

1. Any traveling advice, NECC tips or ‘how not to get lost’ tips!
2. Thoughts on topics you think people would like to hear me present on at NECC unplugged!

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free!