Engage, Expand and Encompass through Technology

We’ll use this page as our “Getting Started” page. During this portion of the workshop you will be creating your EduBlogs class page. Before we close today you will:

• Know how to use your Edublog site to organize information
• Know how to use your Edublog site to promote collaboration
• Know when to use a post and when to make a page
• Be able to add a picture, video, audio clip and widget
• Be able to add a link in a post or page and add links to your Blogrol
• Be able to optimize your site for monitoring comments

To get started, sign up for your own Edublogs account. Click here for step by step instructions for signing up.

Now lets take a look at the main control center for your blog the Dashboard. It is the place where you will do all of your editing, review comments and change the look of your site.

Now lets take a look at customizing the look of your blog. Edublogs offers many themes that quickly turn a plain webpage into a pleasing easy to navigate site.

The next step is to understand the difference between a post and a page and to decide when and where to use posts and pages. Think of pages like that of a book. Everytime you open the book to a particular page, it has the same text…it’s static. This training page is a page. Now think of posts like a newspaper. When you pick up the paper it always has a sports section, but the articles are always changing. Post pages are dynamic, with most recent posts first. Click the Posts tab at the top of the page, each individual entry is a post. They are dated and stack from most recent to oldest.

You’ll need to decide next about your front page, do you want it static or do you want it to contain your updated posts? Think about your target audience, which approach will support them best? If you decide to make your front page static, just follow these instructions.

Next we’ll add a page. Then we’ll add a post. Then we’ll add a link to you post.

To keep posts organized and easy to find, let’s add tags and categories.

Now we’ll do some fancy posting. Let’s add a photo.

Next, let’s organize the side bars. Both the left and right side bars are customizable.

A word about comments. Managing who can comment on your blog. Next, monitoring, approving and responding to comments.

Finally, if you have time, add a widget. A widget is a chunk of html code already created that you can quickly add to your page to create on-screen tools such as calendars, link rolls and cluster maps.

Logging in to your site step by step.

If you prefer, there are also some video tutorials for some of the subjects listed above.