Tag Archives: username

Managing Students on Blogs…What Role Do You Assign Students?

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I’ve been asked a lot lately about ‘roles of users’ and what role should you assign student users on blogs.

Unfortunately there isn’t a simple answer because it’s a balance between:

  1. How much responsibility you’re comfortable with assigning your students
  2. School and District guidelines
  3. Providing them with an environment that’s motivating

So I’ve decided to explain the different user roles and I’m hoping others explain how they choose what roles they assign students.

Roles of Users

The five roles for users you can give students on class blogs or on their student blogs are: Administrator; Editor; Author; Contributor; and Subscriber.

The roles of users in decreasing level of responsibility are:

  1. Administrator:  This is the highest level of blog access.  An Administrator has full access to all blog functionality including changing themes, adding widgets, editing/deleting Posts/Pages, changing other user roles and deleting the blog.
  2. Editor:  An editor has similar access as an Administrator but can’t change themes, add widgets or manage plugins
  3. Author: An Author can’t write pages but can write posts, upload media files to their posts and publish posts but can’t edit or approve other Author’s posts.  Authors can view comments but can’t edit, delete or approve the comments.
  4. Contributor: When a contributor writes a post it is saved as a pending to await approval by an administrator or editor.  They can’t upload  media files to posts and like authors, contributors can view comments but can’t edit, delete or approve the comments.
  5. Subscriber: A subscriber is the lowest level of access on a blog.  This role is normally assigned on private blogs where access is restricted to either logged in users or logged in registered users.

Here is a summary of their differences based on User Capability:

userroles3

Here is a summary of their differences based on access to features in the dashboard:

For more information on working with usernames refer to:

  1. Creating and Adding Users To A Blog
  2. User Roles and Changing a User’s role

Please note:

  • The blog owner is automatically added as an adminstrator when new blogs are created
  • When student blogs are created using the Blog & User Creator the student is the blog owners and they are added to the blog as administrators
  • On an Edublogs Campus site there is an extra role of user; the Site Admin User.
  • The Site Admin user has a higher level of access than an administrator; they can access all blogs across the entire Campus site in their entity without being added as a user to the blogs.
  • Site Admin users can create large numbers of blogs and users, set privacy options for the entire site (and/or individual blogs), go into and edit any blog and monitor what any user is posting across the entire site.

FINAL THOUGHTS

So now we need your thoughts.

  1. Educators -  What role(s) do you assign your students and why?
  2. Students – What role(s) do your teachers assign you on your blogs?  What role do you think students should be assigned?

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Step 7 – Setting Up Student blogs

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bloggingsetp7We’ve designed a series of nine steps, with how-to info, to help you with your class blogging.

This step is to set up student blogs.

Why have student blogs?

Class blogs are an excellent starting point.   But the most incredible outcomes are observed when students are progressed onto their own individual blogs.

Why?  Human nature!

As individuals we’re all driven by personal ownership; class blogs have less sense of ownership than an individual blog.

Here are my tips for creating your student blogs.

#1 Choosing Usernames and Blog URLs

Educators normally use the same name for both the student’s username and blog URL.  Keep them simple and easy for the student to remember.

Most use a combination of their student’s first name followed by numbers that might represent the year or class number.  For example, username misty09 and blog URL misty09.edublogs.org.

If you want the students to use the blog for their entire school then use a combination of letters and numbers that achieve this goal.

#2 Adding yourself to  your student blogs

Always add yourself as an administrator to your student blog.Image of student and teacher users

This means if you need to edit/delete a post, page or comment you can quickly access their blog from your blog dashboard. Image of navigiating blogs

#3 Moderating Comments

Educators either prefer to let their students moderate their own comments or they moderate all the comments for their students.  There are pros and cons to each approach.

If you want to moderate all comments, so comments are only posted once you have approved them, you need to create the blogs using the gmail+ method

You must use a real gmail account– educators either use their own gmail account or set up a gmail account for their class e.g. room13@gmail.com

For those comfortable with students moderating comments I recommend you subscribe to the comment feeds from your student blogs — here is how to subscribe to their comments using Google Reader.

#4 Assigning Student Role

You need to think about how much responsibility your students are given.  Do you want them to be able to write own posts/pages, change themes, add widget and approve comments or do you want (or need) to limit their level of responsibility?

Choose  your student’s user role on their blog based on your comfort level and the school or district guidelines.

Image of user menus based on their role

For those comfortable with students having a higher level of responsibility I recommend you subscribe to the post feeds from your student blogs — here is how to subscribe to their posts using Google Reader.

# 5 Creating the blogs

How you create the blogs depends on the type of Edublogs blog you have.

Here are instructions for creating student blogs using:

  1. The Signup page – free Edublogs blogs
  2. The Blog & User creator – Edublogs Supporters & Edublogs Campus only

Remember spam filters, especially strict ones for institutional email addresses, often block activation and password reset emails from Edublogs.org. If unsure use free webmail accounts such as gmail, hotmail that don’t block these invitation emails.

There are no limitations on the number of student blogs you can create!

And here’s where you find the other steps for setting up your class blog:

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What You Really Ought To Know About Emails!

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The most common questions I’m asked and problems I have to deal with daily always relates to emails. To help with your email frustrations, let me explain the answers one at a time.

Do students need to use an email address?

It depends.

If you only want your students to write comments on the posts, you can change your settings so an email isn’t required. Simple as unselecting ‘Comment author must fill out name and e-mail in Settings > Discussion.

Image of removing email required in comment

On your posts the comment may still show author and email required but with these settings changed they definitely aren’t!

An email address is needed when:

  1. You want to add students to a class blog so they can write posts
  2. Your blog is private i.e. only visible to logged in users or logged in registered subscribers
  3. You want students to have their own blogs

Why is an email address required?

To create usernames or blogs you need to use a ‘real’ email address because:

  1. When you use the Edublogs signup page an email with a link to activate your username or blog is sent to your email address. If you don’t click on that link the account isn’t created.
  2. To reset your password when you forget it.
  3. To receive email notifications of new comments and any comments held in moderations.
  4. When you delete a blog you’re sent an email to the address attached to the blog URL; you can’t delete the blog without clicking on the link in that email.

Each username needs its own unique email address whereas you can have lots of blogs attached to the same email address.

It won’t allow you to create several usernames with the same email address because the system resets your password based on email address. But you can trick it using the gmail+ method.

Please Note: Don’t ask me to delete blogs; I won’t! Deleted blogs can’t be undeleted.

Do students need to use their own email addresses?

No! You can trick the system by using the gmail+ method.

How it works is Gmail ignores anything in the first half of an email address after a plus sign so if you create each email with the format username+studentname@gmail.com all emails will be sent to the inbox of username@gmail.com .

This also means that if you want to moderate comments on all student blogs they will be sent to your one email address.

Just remember if you use this method:

  1. You must first create a ‘gmail account.’
  2. All aspects of managing that blog and/or username is attached to that email address including password resets.

TIP: The gmail+ method can be used for creating accounts on most websites.

I signed up for a blog but I haven’t received the activation email!

The activation email is sent when you sign up using the Edublogs signup page. It normally arrives within 30 minutes and includes a link which you use to activate your username/blog.

The username and blog won’t exist in the system until you click on that link to activate the account. You have 48 hours to activate otherwise you need to reset up your account.

Unfortunately spam filters, especially strict ones for education email addresses, often block these activation emails. Try checking your spam folder. If it doesn’t arrive you will need to create a new account using a free web based email such as gmail, hotmail or yahoo.

Please note:

  1. When you create blogs using the Blog & User creator the accounts are automatically created i.e. doesn’t need activating.
  2. Make sure you test your email system before creating a large number of usernames/blogs to ensure your spam filter doesn’t block the emails
  3. Don’t ask me to send you the password and blog URL if you don’t receive the activation email — I can’t help you — your account doesn’t exist in our system

When I click the link for “Lost my password” I don’t receive my new password!

Unfortunately spam filters, especially strict ones for education email addresses, often block the password emails. Occasionally people will receive an email with the link to reset the password but not the second email with the new password.

If this happens you will need to contact us at Edublogs support (support[at]edublogs[dot]org) with your username and blog URL so we can manually re-set your password.

Once we’ve changed your password you will need to:

  1. Re-set it to a better password
  2. Change your email address to a free web based email such as gmail, hotmail or yahoo (Users > Your Profile)

I’ve sent an email to Edublogs Support and got no response!

Erm we do respond to emails but if you have used a school email address there’s a good chance your email filters are blocking all of our different emails.

Where possible don’t use a school email address unless you know it won’t block our emails!

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