Our tips for getting blogs ready for the end of the school year

Modified on June 1, 2011 by Sue Waters

The school year’s almost ended in the Northern Hemisphere!

Everyone’s focusing on holidays and completing end of year tasks.

But what about your class and student blogs?

Now’s the time to tidy them up — it’ll save you frustrations when you come back from your holidays.

And here’s our tips to help you based on the questions we’re asked in Edublogs Support.

Approaches used with student blogs

There are two main scenario’s for the fate of student blogs – unless you’re part of a school-wide program:

Fate of student blogs

Dealing with Student blogs that are discontinuing

While these two scenario require a different approach, they both have to deal with student blogs that are no longer required such as:

Students that don’t wish to continue blogging
Students leaving the school

Unless the parent, student or school absolutely demands these blogs be deleted, it’s better not to delete the blogs. These blogs are part of their journey, one day they may change their mind, want to check them out or another teacher might like to use them.

Delete is DELETE; it’s impossible to undelete them.

Here’s what we recommend:

1. Set up an Archive page on your class blog of all student blogs

Here’s an example on Huzzah’s class blog.

2. Change their role to Subscriber so they can’t write any posts

Only possible if you are an admin user on their blog

Change user role to subscriber

3. Disable the ability for comments to be added

Select ‘Automatically close comments on articles older than 14 days” in Settings > Discussion

Disabling comments

Dealing with Student blogs that are discontinuing - if you’re using an Edublogs Campus site

Edublogs Campus provides total control of all blogs in ways not achievable using other blogging solutions. This means you have extra options for managing them at the end of the school year.

Some Campus sites allow students blogs to remain live on their site after the student has left their program while others require the students to move their blogs to another service.

If your decision is for them to move their blogs here’s how to do it:

1. Encourage those that want to keep blogging to set up a new blog on Edublogs.org or any other standard blogging platform.

2. Give them these instructions to import the contents from their Campus blog into their new blog

3. Once their blogs have been moved go to Site Admin > Blogs and click on the archive link underneath their blog URL to archive their blog

This just archives their blog and if needed you’ll be able to easily bring back online
Please don’t delete their blog as it will be deleted and you can’t bring it back online if you make a mistake

Archiving blogs

Supporting Students that want to continue to blog

For students that want to keep their blog you need to consider who monitors the blog. Or does some one even need to?

Some teachers organise for parents to take over the responsibility. Or perhaps you are happy to continue to support them?

Organising parents to take over

If a parent (or another teacher) is taking over the role of assisting the student blog then you’ll need to add them as a user to the blog using Users > Add New - here’s the instructions you’ll need to follow.

Once they’ve been added ask them or your student to log in and remove you as a user from the blog.

This’ll remove their blog from your Dashboard > My Blogs area.

Removing an admin user

If you used gmail+ for the student username and blog then you might want to discuss options for using an alternative email address.

Here’s the two locations you’ll need it changed:

Users > Your Profile when the student is logged in with their username
Settings > General

Monitoring Student blogs you continue to support

If you’re happy to continue to support their blogging then we recommend you do it using separate folders for posts and comments in Google Reader.

Here’s how you set it student blogs in Google Reader!

You’ll find that posts and comments decreases and you’ll be able to focus on those that are keen to continue.

About your Edublogs Pro subscription

If you use an Edublogs Pro blog as your class blog:

You can create as many student blogs are you want – there are no restrictions
You can only enable features on up to 50 blogs and change which blogs these are at any time

Creating a memento of their Student blog

Obviously if you don’t delete their blogs they will remain online and be a keepsake.

However if you do want the student blogs in alternative formats you could create a PDF version using BlogBooker.

Refer to page 9 of this Scribd Document.

Approaches used with Class Blogs

Most educators use the same class blog each year. You’ll get ideas on how they do this by looking at our Class blog list here.

Hiding content from new students

The easiest option to protect content you don’t want the next group of students viewing is to change the posts to draft mode, for those posts you want to hide, by going to Posts > Edit.

Changing a post to draft mode

If you want to re-use the same post without the comments you just copy the content of the post into a new post then publish it when ready.

Handing a Class blog over to new teacher when you change schools

If you’re leaving your school and another teacher is going to be using the class blog here’s what you need to do:

Add the teacher as a user to the blog using Users > Add New - here’s the instructions you’ll need to follow
Change the email address in Settings > General to their email address
For Edublogs Pro blogs – cancel your Edublogs Pro subscription and get them to resubscribe when the subscription expires (as per the date shown in the Pro tab) by following these instructions
Change the email address attached to your username in Users > Your Profile

Changing your Class blog URL

Occasionally youll have situations where you do need to change the URL of your blog.

While you can’t change a blog URL you can create a new blog with your preferred blog URL and import all content from an existing blog into your new blog.

Here is how you do it:

Create your new blog attached to your existing username as per these instructions.
Log into your original blog dashboard
Click on Tools > Export
Click on Download Export file and save onto your hard drive
Log into your new blog
Click on Tools > Import
Click on WordPress
Browse to locate Download Export file. Make sure you select Down and import the attachments.
Click on upload file and import

This will import all pages, posts, comments, files.

You will need to manually set up your blog theme and widgets. The best way to do this is to have both blogs open in separate browser tabs or windows and work between the two blogs to change the theme and add in the widget.

You’ll find detailed instructions in this Scribd Document.

Backing Up Your Blog

Keeping posts by former students while making them easily findable

Most educators manage student posts on class blogs by getting the students to assign their name as a category to the post before they publish their post. This makes it easy to find and manage their work.

Here’s a detailed explanation of how educators use categories to organise student posts on a class blog.

The easiest option to keep their posts while making them still easy to locate is to assign a parent category to designate their year.

You can use numbers at the start of categories to change the order they’re displayed.

Here’s an example of how to set up parent categories:

Adding a parent category

You’ll need to make sure ‘Show Hierarchy’ is selected in your category widget.

The category widget

Final Thoughts

Hope this has helped!

What other advice would you give?
Or are there any other questions you would like answered?

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The Why and How of Using Facebook For Educators – No Need to be Friends At All!

Modified on June 1, 2011 by Ronnie Burt

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If you are one of those out there that believe that Facebook has no place in the classroom, then, well maybe this post isn’t for you. But please first take a look at just a few reasons why you should reconsider:

The fact is, the majority of your students and their parents are probably already on Facebook
Even when schools have a policy against being “friends” online, there are tools you can use that won’t violate policy
Despite what you may hear, there are strong privacy options that you can set up so only those that you want can access your information
We have an obligation as educators to model appropriate online behavior and learn right along our students

From http://www.mindjumpers.com/blog/2011/04/education-industry-infographic-2/

Where do we begin?

Just today, Facebook released their own sponsored Facebook For Educators guide, but we found that there really wasn’t enough “how-to” in this guide to make it worth it.

FacebookForEducators.org

However, it is a good document to read through to get the philosophical stuff down and get familiar with some of the unique facebook vocabulary such as profile, page, groups, etc.

The rest of this posts seeks to lay out all of the options you have for using facebook in the classroom and connecting with your students, parents, and community.

Should we be “friends” with students?

This is certainly a hotly debated question.

Your school might have a policy that doesn’t allow you to friend your students on Facebook. We definitely don’t want you to go against any policy! But, we feel that done responsibly, you should absolutely friend your current students! Why?

Get to know them in a whole different light – students share their likes, hobbies, and more. Really getting to know your students transfers into a better experience in the classroom and a better ability to reach every student.
Create an open and supportive environment – if you are open to it, students could even send you a quick chat message if they are stuck on a homework question in the evening.
Keep up with students years later – there is no doubt you are one of your students’ favorite teachers ever. Keep in touch and communicate years after they leave your classroom.

Just one personal example from a former student that just posted to my wall last month:

How to safely “friend” students on facebook

Option 1: Use Lists to keep some things private

To set up a list of all of your students you will want to take the following steps:

1. Click on Friends in the left sidebar after logging in to Facebook

2. Click on Edit Friends at the top right

3. Click on +Create a List which will appear in the same location as the button from step 2

4. Add all of your students to the list you just created by clicking on “Edit List” next to their names

5. Click on Account > Privacy Settings in upper right corner

6. Click on Customize settings in bottom left

7. Use the drop down menu to limit your students from seeing what you don’t want them to by clicking on Customize and then type in the name of your list in the Hide these from these people: text box

I limit everything under the “Things others share” category, as well as my posts, photos, location, and contact information. Really, when they visit my profile, all they can see is my profile image, school and work info, and that’s about it.

Option 2: Set-up a second account just for your students (and parents)

Many schools and experts are recommending that teachers create a whole new facebook account just to use in their professional lives.

This may work for you, but in reality, you are less likely to be able to keep up with more than one account and it kind of defeats the whole purpose anyway.

That being said, it may be a good option for you. Just create an account using your school email address and only let students and parents friend you there.

Why every educator, school, and organization needs a facebook “fan” page

Even better than friending students online is setting up a fan page.

Fan pages allow you to distribute announcements, blog posts, events, assignments, and more right into the “live streams” of those that “fan” your page.

This is better than using your personal profile because there is no need for parents or students to be your friends to get the updates, and it can really be used to develop an online community around your class or school.

An example of using a teacher page

However, many parents will have to be coached into seeing the benefits of a facebook page and there might be resistance. It is important to only post things such as names and photos if permission is granted, and announcements will want to be more generic in nature.

Here are a few examples to take a look at (and maybe even fan!):

Know of more or have your own?

Leave a comment so we can add it to the list!

Other facebook pages for educators:

And fan pages for Educator Blogs:

How to create a facebook fan page

1. Login to your facebook account

2. Go to facebook.com/pages

3. Click on “Create a page” in top right

4. Choose “Artist, Band, or Public Figure” if you are a teacher and choose “Organization” if you are a school or group

5. Follow the steps on screen to get started

Adding the “like box” to your blog or website

One of the best ways of letting your students and others know about your fan page is to put a “like box” on your blog, wiki, or website.

Here is an example of a small like box for our facebook page:

It wouldn’t hurt to press that like button here either

Here is how to get your own:

1. Go here to get the code needed for your box

2. Type in the URL or link to your facebook page

3. Choose if you want to show the stream – this will display the most recent posts to your facebook page’s wall

4. Change the size and decide on the other options available

5. Click on Get Code and copy the iFrame code from the top box

6. In a blog, paste the code into the HTML Tab of a page or post, or into a blank text widget in your sidebar

7. This code should also be able to be pasted in most wikis and websites – look for help info on embedding code for more

Groups – An alternative to Pages

Note: This section was added on 5/12/2011 and didn’t appear when the post was originally published.

After initially deciding to leave Groups out from the discussion, we received comments down below about how many educators prefer Groups over Pages.

The truth is, Facebook made some recent changes to Groups since the last time I played around with them – so maybe they are a good alternative after all.

So what are the differences between a page and a group?

Here is a chart that hopefully will make the differences (and similarities) a bit more clear:

I think Pat McCullough sums it up best in his comment below, “My sense is that people would take more ownership of activity in a Group than a Page. In terms of what the two features signify to users, my impression is that a Group implies that the students are creators of content, while the Page places the instructor more prominently as the ultimate mediator of content.”

So in deciding between a group and a page, you will want to think about your goals for setting one or the other up.

How to set up a group

Setting up a group is a quick process.

1. Sign in to your facebook account.

2. Visit facebook.com/groups.

3. Click on the green “Create Group” button in the top right and follow the on screen prompts.

You will want to be careful as you create your group to make sure that you limit messaging and other privacy issues if it is frowned upon by your school.

The great Facebook debate

Many educators and parents have their own (and valid) opinions about the use of facebook in schools.

Some say it is a distraction, an unnecessary mix of leisure and learning, and even dangerous.

Others realize the power of reaching out to students and understand how facebook can be the best way to keep parents informed and encourage their participation in the learning process.

So what do you think?

Leave us comments below with anything you would like to add.

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And Don’t Use Wikipedia! Or Should we?

Modified on June 1, 2011 by Sue Waters

Can’t tell you how many times I’ve shaken my head and muttered when my kids come home from school to work on a project saying:

And we can’t use Wikipedia!

Pretty much happens each school year and uttered by most of their teachers.

Unfortunately most educators still fail to:

Appreciate the benefits of Wikipedia as a reference source.
Don’t understand how it can be used for writing projects.

As digitally connected educators, it’s important for us to keep addressing the misconceptions associated with Wikipedia.

And here’s how you can help!

Dierdre Shetler has written a great post on using Wikipedia’s Simple English feature with students for the Teacher Challenge ‘best of the web’s free tools for educators“.

She’s asked educators to extend the Wikipedia conversation by asking us to reflect on:

Why is Wikipedia sometimes considered an “invalid source?”
How is it that studies show that Wikipedia is just as reliable as a print encyclopedia?
When is it appropriate to use Wikipedia? When is it not?
How can we have this discussion with students?

Please share your thoughts by leaving your comments on this post or Deirdre’s guest post.

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‘Sound off’ on standardized testing: It’s a love-hate relationship

Modified on April 28, 2011 by Ronnie Burt

butters_pre_school_icon Last week in the Student Blogging Challenge, one of the suggested activities related to the fact that in much of the world, April and May are the months where students are bombarded with so much testing.

It’s a touchy and stressful subject for many for sure.

So we thought it would be fun if in the next few days, we can encourage anyone out there with a blog to sound off and share thoughts about standardized testing and accountability. The interesting thing here will be to learn about how individual states, countries, and areas of the world handle it differently.

A few things to consider:

Are test scores tied to teacher pay? Should they be?

Do scores determine if students are moved on from one grade to the next?

Is there a better way to do it all?

Just my 2 cents…

I started out teaching secondary math in the state where No Child Left Behind was essentially born and tested before it went national: Texas.

In my first years of teaching, I’m not going to lie, I hated it all! I felt I was only teaching so my students would pass a test, I wasn’t able to effectively enrich and challenge my stronger students, and it just created such a negative atmosphere.

Then, I spent a year teaching at a school in Mexico. We had no standards, no tests, no accountability. Sounds like a dream, right?

But it wasn’t at all. Living in Mexico was a dream (it was a bit safer at the time), and the students were incredible to work with – it was just there was so much inefficiency in the school.

I found myself over the course of the year fighting with others to align our curriculum, develop assessments that we could use from year to year, and essentially bringing in much of what I thought I hated before!

When I returned to Texas, I definitely appreciated it all much more.

So what do you think?

Leave a comment with a link to any post you write and use the hashtag #ebshare to let us know about it that way.

Not up for a post, we’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments too!

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Want More Readers? How Online Reading Habits Are Changing and What You NEED To Know

Modified on April 27, 2011 by Sue Waters

Building readership on our new blog, set up this year, compared to the The Edublogger in 2008 – has fascinated me.

It has really highlighted the extent of our changing blog reading habits!

These do have implications for building our readership!

So what have I learnt?

We’ve changed how we use RSS

There’s been considerable chatter the past year that RSS is dead, dying or not doing so well.

Maybe in other blogging niches it’s doing well but in the edublogosphere she’s struggling.

Feedburner subscriptions on the Teacher Challenge have barely increased since we’ve set it up and 70% of these are email subscribers. Similarly, The Edublogger subscribers haven’t increased much for the past year and I’m seeing the same trend on blogs of other well known edubloggers.

The simple truth is we’re less likely to use RSS or email subscription now compared to our RSS usage in the previous era of the Web. We’re just less into RSS readers and start pages.

Am I saying throw away your RSS and email subscription options? NO!

You need them for those readers that prefer these options. And I still believe that all educators need to learn about RSS as it does make managing students’ work online considerably easier.

We’re using real-time web & social networking more

We’re far more social now and more likely to use social network sites like Twitter and Facebook as a buffet.

Consuming whatever we want at our leisure by selecting posts from links shared by our networks.

So while we’ve struggled with RSS we’re getting good site visits on our new Teacher Challenge blog and it’s easy to see the increase in visits to The Edublogger this year compared to the same time period last year.

So what does this mean?

Increased traffic to blogs and posts compared to when we were more reliant on RSS
Less likelihood that our posts will be read if we’re not an active part of the edublogosphere and aren’t social networking with others

My advice:

Make sure you know how to use tools like Google Analytics to monitor your blog’s traffic
Be an active member of the blogging community by taking a genuine interest in other blogger’s work, hyperlinking your posts to other bloggers’ content and making time to leave meaningful comments on their posts – read Scott McLeod’s great advice here.
Learn how to use Twitter well
Add social tools like Tweetmeme, Facebook Like, ShareThis to your blog to make it easier for readers to share with their network!
Look at how you might use other social networks like Facebook to interact
Learn how to monitor the social engagement of your posts using tools like Post Rank — you can check out The Edublogger’s PostRank and Teacher Challenge PostRank metrics here!

We’re using mobile apps and mobile devices more

Mobile devices like iPhones and iPad have changed how we’re using the mobile web.

No longer is the mobile web the realm of the geeks —these devices made it easy and they’re becoming increasingly ubiquitous.

And they’re starting to change blogging reading habits in a big way!

Check the growth in visitors to The Edublogger using a mobile device over the past year.

So what does this mean?

It’s important to understand how readers are using their mobile devices to consume content.

No! I’m not telling you to rush out to buy an iPad or iPhone… unless you want me too?

Instead I’ll explain how it’s changed reading habits for people like me.

Firstly I no longer read books — they’ve been replaced by ebooks.

Nowadays most posts are read while relaxed lazing on the couch or in bed on my iPad. It’s more enjoyable, faster and easier to scan through the content.

And when I’m out and about, and bored waiting for an appointment, I’ll pull out my iPhone to access my content on it!

Here’s my Computer – iPad work flow:

The key with mobile devices is how we use and our preferred apps is very personal.

Final Thoughts

The world’s a lot different from when I first started blogging in 2007. Our readers are changing and we need to be evolving with them.

Would love to hear your thoughts!

Have your reading habits changed?
Have you noticed the same types of changes to your blog’s metrics?
What advice would you give others on building readership?

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