Don’t you love RSS? I do except when an item I’ve embedded into a post is removed so people who read them in feed readers like Google Reader or Bloglines don’t realise it’s there! Definitely a problem if you are embedding an online poll in a post and you need readers to see it so they vote.
So let’s test out this solution while at the same time getting you to help me prioritize your needs. I’ve chosen 8 9 topics and I’d love to hear what you would like to learn more about so I can plan future posts on The Edublogger. Feel free to expand on your choice or add your own topic in comments.
This time I’ve created the poll using PollDaddy — so you can compare the look of a PollDaddy poll with the poll I created using Vizu. Downside with PollDaddy is a free account only allows 100 survey results per month (anyone know the restrictions on free Vizu accounts?).
What Do you Most Want To Learn More About?
( polls)
Here are the choices that you can vote for:
- How To Start A Blog
- Blog Design
- Finding Ideas For Blog Posts
- Using Blogs with Students
- Increasing Blog Readership
- Creating Podcasts
- Building your blog community
- Developing Personal Learning Networks
- Process of Setting Up Blogs Within Your School
Add your vote here! Free to expand on your choice or add your own topic in comments.
FINAL THOUGHTS
If you’re having trouble embedding the polls into Edublogs the trick is:
- Write your entire post adding all text, images, categories, tags etc
- Preview your post to do any last minute edits
- Click on HTML tab and paste the embed code where you want it to be displayed then immediately click Publish (don’t click back to the Visual Tab)
Yes I know when you read the post directly on the blog it is a bit more messy doing it this way but at least it should grab the attention of people who are reading in their feed readers. Every poll I’ve tried so far is being removed from posts in RSS — if you know of any that don’t please let me know!
Remember always a good idea to subscribe to your own blog to pick up issues like these!
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@Leewin I totally agree. I’ve been visiting quite a few student blogs as part of the student blogging competition and notice several of them are using them. I like PollDaddy best so far.
This poll gadget is excelllent! I know I will be using this in my blog and my students will really enjoy using this gadget as well.
@Kerry J Must admit that sometimes it is hard to make sure that it is really obvious that there is an embed. I’ll always include the link etc but I know as a skim reader it can be missed.
Branding your blog with a recognisable identity is a good tip and something ideally you should do early on because Feed Readers like Google Reader remember the old names and doesn’t change it.
Results are interesting so far and looking forward to posting about it.
Whenever I embed anything in a blog post now, I take the RSS readership into consideration.
I mention that something is embedded and provide a link to it – saying something like – “For your RSS readers, here’s your link.
For you on the blog readers, here’s the embedded video/whatever.”
Thanks to a tip from Nancy White, I renamed my blog to put my name in front of the title. So my Neotenous Tech blog is now “KerryJ’s Neotenous Tech”. That way if my blog is one of 20 or 50 or 500 you’ve subscribed to, you’ll know which one is mine without having to click through first.
Thanks for the tip on the poll tool – look forward to checking that out.
Cheers
KerryJ
@poulingail Always good idea to check your own blog posts in a feed reader because this is how most people will be reading your post. I also subscribe to mine by email to see what it looks like as an email because I have some that prefer by email.
@Ines (Inpi) Lots of people get caught out with the HTML tab. Translating for WikiEducator and adding to the site will definitely be keeping you busy — but sounds so exciting. Still a bit of time until the Competition begins.
Thank you, Sue,
for all the help you provided about both my questionnaire and poll. To be fair I must confess that I was just forgetting to click on the HTML tab!
I would rather not having to admit that, but just in case you keep wondering about this issue…well, it was just that silly reason.
I keep translating the Tutorials for Wikie Educator, but I don’t know where to learn how to create templates; when I translate them, they just turn into simple words. I know I can get help from the site itself, I just wish that you know why I’m busy now, but I keep in touch with the posts about the Students Blogging Competition.
As for Twitter, whenever you announce a new post, I come to your blog to read it.
Thank you for everything.
Ines
After your intital post about using polls, I immediately added one to my site asking readers to tell me how often they anticipated visting my blog. I will now take your advice and subscribe via RSS so I can see what’s happening from the readers angle.
@Larry I definitely like the way PollDaddy analyses the data since it creates nice graphs with numbers of voters. What is the analysis like for Poll Monkey?
@Anne Will be interesting to see. This site gets minimal traffic from Twitter — I think I only twittered the post today so will check my stats tomorrow and let you know how many sites visits as a result. Currently the PollDaddy has 68 votes and the Vizu has 84 votes. I think that people starting out would feel more comfortable adding their vote compared to leaving a comment — so from that point of view it is good.
Unfortunately, I think the polls will be skewed as those who know of this poll, via twitter etc are already well versed in a lot of these needs. It is a pity we cannot more readily access those who are just starting out.
Sue,
I added Poll Daddy to the list a couple months after I originally posted it — I just didn’t know about it. They recently came out with a major upgrade which makes it even better.
Just an aside — I actually ended up using Poll Monkey for the polls I use in my posts. I’ve just found that it’s very easy to make links as part of the polls using that tool (I use polls to have readers vote on which sites they like best). However, I think the others work just fine for student polls, or ones where you don’t need to have links in them, or have to worry about restricting users to voting just once.
Larry
Larry
@Larry That is definitely a plus for Vizu. I did read your post while researching for this post and was puzzled why PollDaddy didn’t make the list when many have it as their first choice.
Interestingly enough Darren Rowse’s poll choices are displaying in his post but I can’t tell what tool he is using. But I agree I think most polls will be stripped out which is a shame as I hadn’t realised you had polls embedded in your posts.
Hi, Sue,
There are no limits to Vizu polls.
I’ve exchanged a few conversations with them since I wrote The Best Sites For Creating Online Polls and Surveys(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/06/22/the-best-sites-for-creating-online-polls-surveys/).
I rated them second at that point, with Fo.rec.ast at second, but I’d probably switch the order around now.
I’ve also never seen anybody’s poll appear in an RSS Reader, so I’m assuming that’s not possible.
Larry