How to start blogging with students

Here’s an example of a game created using Classtools.net.  This is a great site that enables you to embed games in your blog.

Click here for full screen version

Welcome to the blogging course!  Today, you will get a blog address and begin to set up your blog.

Before the end of the session, please save this blog address to your favourites:

http://apstrainingblog.edublogs.org

You also need to save your own blog address to your favourites, so you don’t forget where it is!

A couple of you asked me how to do this and I said I didn’t know but I’d find out…

So now I have…

This post here takes you step-by-step through the process.  It’s from The Edublogger, a great site for tips on using Edublogs.  I strongly recommend you subscribe to it, so you get regular emails, or at least add it to your favourites.

The only problem with the process of embedding ‘code’ so that a YouTube video plays in your blog is it seems for some reason to be a bit unstable so everything I’ve read recommends you do everything you need to do to your post and then add the link at the last minute, or it’s likely to go wrong. 

That’s what I’m going to do now and hope it works, so you can have a nice bit of gratuitous and entirely non-educational nostalgia with your CPD (and if you’re too young for it to be nostalgic, please don’t tell me.  I’ll only get upset.)

I hope that you’ve all now had the email required from Edublogs to activate your blog.  Before Thursday, please do the following:

·     Click on the link in the email, which should take you to your blog.

·     At the bottom right of the page, where it says ‘Meta’, click on ‘Log in’. 

·     Use the username and password you were sent by edublogs to check you can log in.  This should take you to the ‘backstage’ area of your blog, which we will be using on Thursday.

That’s all you need to do – if you have problems with any of the above (e.g. no email received), email me with your blog address and username and I can try to fix it.  Or you can try going through the process again yourself. 

See you on Thursday!

I’ve just reorganised the links on the right, so all your new blogs are up there, in a separate column from what I’ve called the ‘existing blogs’.  So you can look at the established blogs for ideas, but also link to each other’s to see where you’ve got to as you start to develop them.

I’ve also put the tutorial pages in numerical order – obviously you don’t have to look at them in that order, but it might be helpful if you’re not sure where to start!  Those of you who were at the first session have all done step 1 and have mostly done some or all of step 2.  The rest is all ready to explore!

The second session on 27th March will be looking at how to use blogs with students – the logistics of setting it all up as well as general ideas.  It will also be a troubleshooting session, so try to do some more on the blogs before then, so you can come to us with any problems you’re having…

What classes, groups or units of work are you planning to use your blog with?

Let us know by posting a comment on this message, and include your blog address so we can add it to the blogroll…