How do you encourage your blog visitors to not only start reading your posts but also stick around to the end? We offer you ten tips to enhance the readability of your blog posts. And you might just have to forget a few of the things you learned at school ..read more

When I first started blogging with Edublogs we only had categories; which most of us used like tags. But then came Christmas — and Edublogs gave us tags for every post and tag clouds for our sidebars. Now all we had to work out was “What’s the difference between tags and categories, and how would we use them?.” The aim of this post is to provide an overview of categories and tags; there is so much more that could be covered. Tags vs Categories The whole reason why tags, categories, and search widgets are used on blogs is to serve one purpose — help your readers locate the information they want ..read more

As part of my ongoing series on Best Web 2.0 tools, so far I’ve covered Google Tools and How to use Your Twitter Network For Help & Providing Recommendations. Web browser featured highly in my Twitter network and readers “best 3 Web 2.0 tools” so let’s talk about web browsers. Web Browsers Your web browser, originally called Internet Browser, is your window to the web and impacts on how effectively you interact with content, your social networks and websites on the Internet. A common misconception is you can only run one web browser. Wrong! Web browsers are just programs; just as you can i ..read more

It was great to see that Edublogs featured highly in the “best 3 Web 2.0 tools”, as recommended by my Twitter network and our readers. Graham Wegner, John Larkin, Larry Ferlazzo, Rafa Ribas, and NZ Chrissy selected their blogging platform in their top 3, Edublogs for four of them. Larry explained that Edublogs is his #1 best Web 2.0 tool because “it’s so easy to use and not blocked by my School District filters”. While Rafa agreed with Larry saying “especially with the new facility to create blogs for my students. I have a small group project started which involves every team running a bl ..read more

Do you use Twitter? Perhaps you’ve not heard of it or tried but didn’t get it? Let’s be honest, watching from the outside, Twitter like the the dumbest thing you’ve heard of “Why would anyone want to tell others what they are doing in 140 characters.” And yet to dismiss Twitter is a mistake because it’s an incredibly powerful tool for your personal learning, connecting with others and complements your blogging. Twitters way more than telling people what you’re doing! The key to “getting twitter” lies in using it effectively. Fortunately besides being a RSS power user I’m also well known as a T ..read more

Our last post showed how to upload videos directly into your blog plus linked to tutorials on creating your own videos. I love teaching people how to create digital stories and videos because it’s a skill that most learners, regardless of age, enjoy learning and experimenting with and are more likely to spend time perfecting their skills in their own time. A great way of engaging even the most reluctant educator to use technology. However, there are so many videos available online, on so many different topics, that it’s sometimes more effective to use ‘others videos’ than create your own video ..read more

Are you confused about the point of a blog page? Or perhaps you’ve been trying to separate topics or classes on your blog using pages but are struggling to get it to work how you would like. Deciding when to use blog posts vs pages can be puzzling so we decided to write a post to explain the difference between a Page and a Post, plus share ideas for separating topics or classes on a blog to help address some of the confusion. Posts properties Blog posts appear in reverse chronological order by default so that the most recent post is the first post that your readers see. Posts are dynamic ..read more

This is the next post in our “blog makeover” series that provides an excellent opportunity to respond to a reader’s suggestion to include an image using HTML in a page or sidebar. It is recommended you read the previous post on Getting more out of Widgets prior to reading this post. Basic knowledge of HTML provides greater ability for customizing text widgets. It means you can embed photos in your sidebar, link to pages on your blog or other websites, write text using bold and italics, for example. What is HTML? HTML is a bit like RSS, for bloggers there is no need to fully understand it but ..read more

Fantastic news! Our Getting More Out of Widgets! post inspired community members to make adjustments or add extra widgets to their blog, plus motivated some to do “blog makeovers”. Larry Ferlazzo suggested Here in the U.S there’s a popular TV show where producers go into someone’s home, and completely redo a room. Crazy idea, I know, but it might be fun for you to offer to do that to a blog and as a teaching tool for the rest of us. What an excellent idea Larry and here’s the best news! As you asked for assistance, we choose your blog for the makeover and will be writing a series of posts o ..read more

So we’ve tried our best to explain what is RSS and why it’s important to learn how to use. And as we said it’s hard to explain probably because the power of RSS is really something you need to experience first hand. We’re really into RSS — RSS power users may be an appropriate title since we grab every RSS opportunity to make our lives easier and maximise our ability to interact effectively with others. Remember that using RSS is a simple and effective way of keeping in touch when new information is added to a website without having to visit the site; instead information is brought to one loca ..read more