Given there are 100 Edublogs themes to choose from ranging from those that can’t be altered to themes that are “extremely customizable” you can spend considerable time testing themes to find the “perfect theme”.

So to help make your task easier we’ve categorizing the 100 themes based on:

1. Layout – number of columns
2. Color Scheme and how customizable the theme is
3. Ability to upload custom image header – those that allow are shown as recommended header image dimensions, in pixels, to upload (written as width by height)
4. Presence or absence of links to pages as navigation tabs at the top of the theme – as shown in page link column as Yes/No
5. Presence or absence of tagline in blog header – as shown in display tagline column as Yes/No

ONE COLUMN THEMES

Single Column themes have a central post area with no sidebar.

These theme appeal to people who like to keep their theme simple by preventing the clutter often created by sidebar widgets.

All widgets are located at the bottom of the blog on one column themes.

TWO COLUMN THEMES WITH LEFT SIDEBAR

Two Column themes normally a wide column for content with a narrower sidebar.

These are the most common theme layout and location of the sidebar (left or right) is personal preference.

TWO COLUMN THEMES WITH RIGHT SIDEBAR

Two Column themes with right sidebar are the most common theme layout so we’ve separated these themes based on:

1. Ability to upload custom image header
2. Colour scheme

With custom image header

Without custom image header

Black, White and Grey themes without custom image header

THREE COLUMN THEMES WITH LEFT AND RIGHT SIDEBAR

Three column themes have either:

1. Sidebars side-by-side on one side of the blog
2. Sidebars on either side of the wider content column

THREE COLUMN THEMES WITH RIGHT SIDEBARS

The most appealing aspect of three column themes is the ability to place more widgets in the sidebar.

Sidebars side-by-side three column themes on one side of the blog allows you to use this aspect well.

FOUR COLUMN THEMES

Four column themes have one content column and three sidebars.

The content column is often the same width as the other columns. This type of layout tends to be cluttered looking and less suited to reading lengthy content.

However this category includes themes like CommentPress which is very unique.

CommentPress is ideal for writing collaborative documents or for providing resources because its Table of Content Skin places the oldest post at the top table of contents and your readers can comment paragraph by paragraph!

MOST CUSTOMIZABLE THEMES

These themes provide greater opportunity for customizing if you want to change color of your blog based on font color code or change font type.

1. Roundflow – One Column. Can change the colors on the blog, width of column and type of font used.
2. Simplr – One Column. Able to change width of column and type of font used.
3. Striped plus – One Column. Able to change colors on the blog and type of font used.
4. Mandigo – Two Column. Extensive range of image headers to choose from and able to change colors on the blog using font color codes.
5. OceanWide – Three column

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free!

Here’s your opportunity!

Nominations for the Edublog Awards 2009 are now open!

And best of all this year we have new categories including my favorite Best Student blog…

So students, teachers, class bloggers (and everyone) start nominating your favorite blogger(s) and web sites — we’re all looking forward to learning about great blogs!

About The Edublogs Awards

The Edublog Awards is an annual event that is now in its 6th year.

Each year the Edublogs Awards creates fabulous resources to share ideas on how social networking tools can be used in different educational contexts.

To be involved all you need to do is:

1.  Nominate

Choose the sites that you want to nominate in the following categories (you can nominate for as many, or as few, categories as you like):

Best individual blog
Best individual tweeter
Best group blog
Best new blog
Best class blog
Best student blog
Best resource sharing blog
Most influential blog post
Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion
Best teacher blog
Best librarian / library blog
Best educational tech support blog
Best elearning / corporate education blog
Best educational use of audio
Best educational use of video / visual
Best educational wiki
Best educational use of a social networking service
Best educational use of a virtual world
Lifetime achievement

Nominations close Tuesday 8 December!  And you MUST follow exactly the instructions explained below!

2.  Vote

Once the nomination process is complete voting will commence and you’ll be able to submit your votes for as many, or as few, categories as you like on the Edublog Awards website.

Voting ends Wednesday 16 December!

3.  Award Ceremony

Winners are announced at the Award Ceremony on Friday 18 December!

How To Nominate!

You must follow these two simple steps to nominate or your nominations won’t be counted!

Step 1: Write a post on your blog linking to:

1. The Edublog Awards Homepage
2. The blogs & sites that you want to nominate (you must include a link to each site you nominate!)

You can nominate for as many categories as you like, but only one nomination per category, and not yourself

You can nominate a blog (or site) for more than one category)

Check out these nomination posts to see how it can be done!

• Silvia Tolisano has made her nomination post really EASY to grab her links to use in the voting process
• Liz B. Davis’s nomination post has done an excellent job of explaining her choices

Step 2: Email the link to your nomination post as follows:

1. Go to The Edublog Awards nomination
2. Scroll to the contact form at the bottom of the page (The Edublog Awards nomination)
3. Complete the contact form and click send
   • You MUST include a genuine email address (spam free, just in case we need to confirm identity)
   • You MUST include the link to your nominations post

Your complete contact form should look similar to this example below!

You can’t submit your nominations without writing a blog post — please note class blogs can submit multiple posts by different authors!

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free!

And it’s great to get comments that express concern such as “Sue – you’re back and…not blogging yet?:)”……. only to discover it’s a spam comments.

I’ll tell you how I minimize spam comments below – but first a little on the WHAT.

What are Spam Comments?

The reason why people write spam comments is to provide links to the spammer’s commercial web site; to get you and/or your readers to visit their site.

Common spam commenting techniques include:

1. Adding links to their web site in the comment and their URL
2. Adding the link for their web site in URL
3. Creating pingbacks to blog post

Spammers generally write comments with minimal substance such as:

Thank you for this tips; Good Stuff!; Good job, bro; Very informative and helpful; Yes, it is very helpful; Thanks you for the information and I’ll return here often…….

If it smells like spam it normally is!

Check the URL to confirm— and DELETE!

Refer to Managing, editing and approving comments for more info on deleting comments!

Ways of Minimizing spam comments!

An annoying aspect of spammers is they’ll often target posts with numerous comments.

So while deleting their comments helps it doesn’t prevent emails being sent to commenters who selected ‘Notify me of followup comments via email’.

The key is make it harder for spammers to leave comments so eventually they give up and move on!  And in the process reducing their spamming of your readers!

The two main methods I use are:

1.  Comment moderation

I’ve found comment moderation the most effective method because it allows me to target specific spammers.

It’s as simple as:

1. Go to Settings > Discussion
   
2. Add the spammer’s URL, email address, IP address or word(s) commonly used to the Comment Moderation field
   • Tip: For pingbacks I’ll normally include the word(s) they are using to link to my posts
3. Click Save Changes

Now any comments written that contain any of these words in its content, name, URL, e-mail, or IP will automatically be held in your moderation queue where you can decide if to approve or delete them.

2.  Akismet

Askimet is a spam commenting service designed to reduce comment and pingback spam.

It checks the content of the comment anonymously with an online server, to determine whether it is spam or not.

All comments considered spam automatically placed by Askimet in a spam queue where it is held for a month and then deleted.

Refer to these instructions for setting up and configuring Akismet!

Please Note:

• With Akismet it is important to regularly check your spam screen to make sure Askimet hasn’t captured any legitimate comments or pingbacks.

Final Thoughts

@spammer!  Yes, I’m back from holidays and thanks for inspiring this post

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free!

I’ll tell you how to do it below – but first it’s important to mention educators have differing opinions on moderation and use two main approaches:

1. Students are allowed to publish own posts and approve all comments
2. Students posts and comments aren’t published until approved by a teacher

There are pros/cons to each of these approaches which I don’t have time to discuss in this post but would love to follow up in a later post.

So please share your thoughts on moderation by leaving a comment:

1. Which approach do you take and why?
2. Do you moderate all comments and posts?  Or not?

Step 1: Create the student blogs using the gmail+ method

The easiest way to moderate all the comments is for all comments from the student blogs to be sent to one email account.

You do this by creating the blogs using the gmail+ method.

How it works is Gmails 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.

If you don’t want to use your own gmail account then set up a gmail account for your class e.g. room15@gmail.com.

This means every comment that is posted on any of the blog will automatically be sent to the one gmail account making it really easier for you to read, approve or delete.

All you need to do is just click on appropriate link in the email!

Here are instructions for creating student blogs:

1. For free Eublogs blog users – read Creating student blogs using the Signup page
2. Edublogs Supporter and Edublogs Campus users – refer to Using Blog & User Creator to create student blogs

Tip: Remember to add yourself as administrator to the student blogs!

Step 2: Change The Comment Moderation Settings

The default comment setting for all newly created blogs is ‘Comment author must have a previously approved comment.’ This means once you’ve approved one comment from a commenter all subsequent comments by that person will be automatically published without being moderated.

For all comments to be moderated and approved by a teacher before appearing on the blog you need to change the comment moderation setting for all student blogs to include ‘An administrator must always approve the comment’.

Changing comment settings is as simple as:

1. Go to Settings > Discussion
   
2. Select ‘An administrator must always approve the comment’.
3. Click Save Changes at the bottom of the page
   

For more information about managing comments refer to:

1. Engaging with readers through comments
2. Controlling who can comment on posts
3. Managing, editing and approving comments

Step 3: Changing the Student’s role on the blog

In most situations student blogs are created with the students automatically assigned the role of administrator.

To moderate their posts,  so it a post is only published after approval by a teacher, you need to change their role on the blog to Contributor.

To change their role:

1. Go to Users > Authors & Users
   
2. Select the user you want to change, click on drop down arrow to select Contributor and then click Change

When a contributor writes a post it is saved as a pending to await approval by an administrator or editor.

To approve a post:

1. Navigate to the dashboard of the student blog
2. Click on Post > Edit
   
3. Those posts submitted for review by your student will have pending next to their title.
4. Hovering your mouse over the title of a post brings up four action links: Edit; Quick Edit; Delete and Preview.  
5. To publish just click on Edit or Quick Edit and then click Update Post.

For more information refer to Editing posts.

Please note:

• Contributors have decreased responsibilities on a blog and can’t upload  media files to posts.  Also contributors can view comments but can’t edit, delete or approve the comments.
• Read Managing Students on Blogs…What Role Do You Assign Students? for more information on user roles

FINAL THOUGHTS

Please share your thoughts on moderation by leaving a comment:

1. Which approach do you take and why?
2. Do you moderate all comments and posts?
3. Or do you allow students to publish own posts and approve all comments?

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free!

Yes sounds very vain!  And this is why bloggers normally refer to this as ‘Vanity Alerts.’

I’ll tell you how I do it below — but first let’s talk about why it’s a common blogging practice.

How Vanity Alerts Work

Vanity alerts involve using email alerts and/or RSS feeds to automatically notify you of the use of specific keywords such as your name,  your blog’s name, and your blog URLs in blog posts, news articles, twitter…..

While this seem quite egotistical they are important.

It means you are automatically notified of any conversations relating to yourself, your blog(s) or any posts you’ve written regardless of whether a person has remembered to pingback your post or included you in a @reply on twitter.

My approach is to check all alerts to see what and/or why someone’s written about me, my blogs or a post.  Where appropriate I’ll engage in conversation with the blogger while also using it as an opportunity to build a relationship.

Vanity alerts also useful for:

1. Tracking specific blog posts in terms of how successful they’ve been at generating conversations on other blogs.
2. Monitoring plagiarism and inappropriate use of blog posts.

How To Set Up Vanity Alerts

The easiest way to set up vanity alerts is using RSS feeds in folders in Google Reader.

Here are the tools I use (and why) for my vanity alerts:

#1 Ice Rocket

Ice Rocket is an Internet search engine that specializes in searching blogs.

Other blog search engines commonly used for vanity alerts are Technorati and Google Blog Search. While I use both Technorati and Google Blog Search I prefer Ice Rocket as it’s more reliable.

Setting up Ice Rocket feeds is a simple as:

1. Go to Ice Rocket homepage
2. Add your search term — for your name remember to enclose with quotes
3. Click Search
   
4. Scroll down the search results page to the Subscribe section and copy the Feed URL for the search term 
5. Open up your Google Reader account and click on Add a subscription
6. Paste the Feed URL into the Add a subscription box
7. Click Add
8. And finally to keep all your subscriptions easier to manage – set up a folder in Google Reader for your Alerts

You repeat this process for each search term.  For example I have separate Ice Rocket searches for:

1. “Sue Waters”
2. http://theedublogger.com/
3. http://suewaters.com/

#2 Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a service offered by Google  which provides the option to be notified by email or subcribe by RSS feed.

It offers  six types of alert searches based on what it searches: “News”, “Web”, “Blogs”, “Comprehensive”, “Video” and “Groups”.

I use a ‘Comprehensive’ alert as it includes results from multiple sources (News, Web and Blogs) and subscribe by RSS feed.

Please note, unlike Ice Rocket which immediately returns search results, Google Alerts take time to feed the search results through.

#3 Search Twitter

Search Twitter is a popular tool for monitoring keywords on twitter using RSS.

Using it is simple:

1. Go to Search Twitter
2. Add your search term and click Search
3. Copy the Feed URL for the search term
4. Add the Feed URL to Google Reader same as you did for Ice Rocket

#4 Backlinks

Backtweets is searches links on Twitter (including those that have been shortened) so it really useful for monitoring any tweets that have links to blog or posts (which Search Twitter isn’t very good at).

All you need to do is:

1. Go to Backtweets
2. Add your blog URL and click Search
   
3. Copy the Feed URL for the search term
4. Add the Feed URL to Google Reader same as you did for Ice Rocket

FINAL THOUGHTS

While I’ve shown you how to use these tools for Vanity alerts — you can also use them to monitor any keywords.

For example, you could create an alert on a current news event such as Hurricane Ida so your students can monitor the differences between updates on Web 2.0 compared to traditional media outlets.

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free!

But as a blogger it’s important to know ‘Is the content you’re providing is fulfilling your readers needs?”

Metrics provide you with insights into how your readers are interacting with your content and the type of content that interests them.

Trouble is there’s numerous metrics you can use,  each provides different insight and its meaning depends on what you’re trying to achieve from your posts.

So lets start by seeing how I use one metric, reader bookmarking, to analyze post performance.

My next post will demonstrate how another metric provides different insights.

Types of Posts

As I said the meaning of a metric really depends on what you’re trying to achieve from your posts.

I think of my posts in terms of three main types:

1. Informative - ‘how to’ or information packed posts
2. Conversations – posts that focus on encouraging readers to share their thoughts in comments
3. Sharing – posts that share helpful links

All three types fulfill different readers needs and are an important part of achieving my goal of helping others using technology.

As a general rule informative posts are longer, more likely to be bookmarked and less likely to have a high comment rate.  While conversations posts are normally shorter with more comments but less likely to bookmarked.

Calculating Reader Bookmarking

Reader bookmarking shows the number of readers bookmarking your posts on social bookmarking sites such as Delicious and Diigo.  It provides an indication of how much they value it as a source of information in terms of storing it for later retrieval and sharing with others.

When using this metric I’m looking to determine:

1. What type of posts are being bookmarked?
2. Are specific topics preforming better than others?
3. Are the informative posts achieving my aim?
4. What are characteristics of posts that are highly bookmarked compared to those that are less bookmarked?

I use PostRank because it’s an easy method for determining the number of reader bookmarking per post.

Moving your mouse cursor over a PostRank score displays all their metrics associated with that post including bookmarking on Delicious and Diigo.

Check out how easy this is on The Edublogger’s PostRank page.

Read  my Latest Statistics Say My Blogs Are……? post and comments to learn more about how the PostRank score is calculated.

Top Posts Based on Bookmarking

So here’s the top 20 Edublogger posts based on Delicious bookmarking — the numbers after each post is how many times the post has been bookmarked.

1. 50+ Ways To Create Digital Stories With Students — 117
2. How I Use RSS To Make My Life Easier — 79
3. What Everybody Ought To Know About Podcasting: Part I –77
4. Creating Student Accounts Using One Gmail Account — 73
5. Here’s My First Five Tips For Writing Better Blog Posts — What Are Yours? –73
6. Are You Twittering? Here’s How I Use Twitter — 72
7. Embedding Jing Screencasts Into Blog Posts –71
8. Quick Start Tips For Student Blogging Part I: Setting Up Your Class Blog –59
9. Quick Start Tips For New Skype Users — 59
10. Copyright and Using Images in Blog Posts — 56
11. What Everybody Ought To Know About Podcasting: Part II — 48
12. Here’s My Top Five Mistakes Made By New Bloggers — What Are Yours? — 39
13. Finding and Adding Creative Commons Images To Your Blog Posts — 38
14. Setting Up iGoogle For Your Personal Learning — 37
15. Quick Start Tips For New Flickr Users: Part I — 31
16. Ideas For Student Bloggings From….How Do You Do What You Do! — 29
17. Adding A Voki Speaking Avatar To A Post or Page of Your Blog — 29
18. Managing Comments and Posts On Student Blogs Using Google Reader — 28
19. What Are The Different Roles Of Users? — 27
20. What’s The Difference Between Tags and Categories, You Ask? — 27

Definitely there are posts in the  list that have ranked considerably higher than I’d expect and others that haven’t done as anticipated.

What does it mean?

Not sure but I know my headache is getting worse

So I would love to hear your thoughts on:

1. What topics are readers finding more valuable in terms of bookmarking?
2. What are characteristics of posts that are highly bookmarked compared to those that are less bookmarked?

Meanwhile I feel the headache may continue as I ponder which metric we should look at next?

What is your thoughts?  Page views?  Linking? Comments rate?  And what tool(s) should I use to obtain the metrics?

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free!

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:

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?

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free!

Here’s the winners with a brief summary of why they won:

Gail Desler has extensive experience in both student blogging and supporting others educators in the use of blogs with their students.  She submitted three posts for the competition that all are ‘must read’ posts packed full of advice on blogging with students which is why I’ve decided all three posts are winning posts:

1. Five Tips for Teachers New to Blogging
2. Five Tips for Helping Students Become Better Bloggers
3. Five Borrowed Tips for Helping Students Become Better Bloggers

Lauren and Abbey are two truly amazing student bloggers who consistently astound me with the posts they write.  Joining them with an incredible post is Dominique, another student blogger.

The posts they submitted are so ‘must read’ that it would be an honor if they guest posted their posts here on The Edublogger

Considering their ages and the fact I’ve never approached anyone ever to guest post on The Edublogger gives you an indication of how incredible the posts by these student bloggers are:

1. Starting Out Blogging (Abbey’s post)
2. Edublogs Advice (Lauren’s post)
3. Le blogging défi de Sue Waters…. (Dominique’s post)

Carla Arena is a Brazilian EFL teacher who supports other educators learning how to blog through programs like “Blogging For Educators“.  Her Blogging with Students in 5 Tips post highlights the importance of connecting your student bloggers to a global multicultural audience.

Dave Mendall’s 5 Important Tips for Blogging with Students post provides  a timely reminder of need to keep it simple, remain focused, lower your expectations, embrace the unexpected and don’t give up!

Danielle Maley wrote a clever poem explaining early childhood educators can use blogs with their students while providing student blogging tips.  And Mrs Harvey shows us how she explains to her different classes what they can post on their blogs.

While Sheri Edwards and Peter Vogel both shared the challenges, and what worked, with student blogging:

1. Blogging in Writing Class post (Sheri’s post)
2. Blogging in ICT Class (Peter’s post)

Gregory Stringer has helped us by providing a few of his “secrets” for blogging and joining social networking sites.

Sarah Korlaki and Karen Barnstable challenge us by asking their ‘5 most important questions they would like to answered by experienced bloggers.’  I love these types of questions (and the answers) because they give you lots of post ideas.

Check out their posts and share your thoughts:

1. What I really want to know about blogging (Sarah’s post)
2. Five Questions I would like to ask Experienced Bloggers (Karen’s post)

And most importantly Jess tells us why as a student she loves blogging!

Winners Badge

Congratulations to all winners!

Here’s a badge if you would like to add to your sidebar.

All you need to do is add a text widget to your sidebar and write a link to the image here on this blog using HTML code.

Here is an example of how you need to write the code:

Please send an email to tell me if you want to use the free 12 months Edublogs supporters subscription on your own blog or to give away to a reader.

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free!

Ingrid’s a journalist at Rattler Magazine (published by Armedia).

We don’t often get the chance to get our message across to educators and parents using traditional news media.

But why limit to my thoughts when collectively responses from our global community are more powerful!

So here’s your opportunity!  Teachers, Students, Everyone!

Please share your thoughts on any or all of the following questions:

1. How are blogs, web 2.0 and social networking being used by teachers in primary schools and/or early childhood environments?
2. Can you give examples of good use of blogs in the early childhood environments?
3. Are social networking sites being blocked or embraced?  What’s your thoughts on this?
4. How do people balance their personal use of the technology versus their professional?
5. Is there a lot of misunderstanding about the use of electronic technology? I imagine there are a lot of ‘knee-jerk’ bans in many workplaces/educational institutions?
6. Is there any guidance for teachers on responsible use?  Can you provide examples?
7. How can social networking websites and blogs be used to support teaching practice and/or boost staff morale?
8. What tips would you give early childhood teachers about using this technology?
9. Given child protection and the very nature of childcare provision, is it a good idea for services to perhaps avoid Facebook/Blogs altogether? Does it open Pandora’s Box?

Alone — I’m a small voice!  Collectively we’re a powerful voice!

Help me demonstrate our collective power by leaving a comment!

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free!

I really tried to come up with an idea for this post but I’m totally stuck!

Every blogger knows that feeling.  Especially new bloggers.

Can you help us out by sharing your secrets?

1. Where do you get your ideas for blog posts from?
2. What are your thoughts on how often a blogger should write posts?  And why?
3. What are your tips for maintaining a consistent blogging routine? What works well for you?
4. What other advice would you give to new bloggers?

Image by Caveman 92223 — On the Road Again! licensed under Creative Commons ShareAlike.

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free!