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.

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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?

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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?

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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.

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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!

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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.

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Why?  Because visiting blog to check for new content is time consuming.

Most people read the latest posts from their favorite blogs by subscribing using RSS or email subscription.

Email is extremely important for:

1. Readers who prefer to receive latest posts using email subscription
2. Private blogs — these don’t have RSS feed because only logged in users or logged in registered users are allowed to view the content

Email options

There are three main options for adding email subscription to your blog:

1. Feedburner email subscription – all blog users except private blogs
2. Email Subscription Widget – Edublogs supporters only
3. Subscribe2 email subscription- Edublogs Campus only

Feedburner email subscription

Feedburner is one of the most common free services used by both bloggers and podcasters to manage their RSS feeds.

It’s popular because it provides bloggers with the ability to easily analyze their subscribers in terms of:

1. how many subscribe by RSS
2. which feed readers they use
3. how many subscribe by email.

Your email subscribers are sent an email of your full post that day after it is posted.

Setting up a Feedburner email subscription is as simple as:

• Step 1:  Creating a Feedburner RSS Feed For Your Blog
• Step 2:  Adding the Feedburner Email Subscription to Your Blog
• Step 3: Redirecting all your feed through Feedburner

Email Subscription Widget

The email subscription widget is the fastest and easiest way of adding email subscription to your blog.  It sends an email immediately when the post is published.

Readers click on the link in the email which takes them to the post on your blog.

Just go to Appearance > Widgets and drag the email subscription widget into the desired sidebar.

Subscribe2 Email Subscription

Subscribe2 is the most sophisticated email option with lots of management choices for both readers and the blog owner.

Email notifications can be either:

1. Latest posts
2. Daily or weekly digest of posts
3. Plain Text – Excerpt; Plain Text – Full Post or HTML – Full Post

Bloggers can monitor their email subscriber; easily adding and removing subscribers inside their blog dashboard.

Subscribe 2 also provides the ability to send out emails to all confirmed subscribers; for those occasions when you want to send an email but not write a post.

Setting up a Subscribe email subscription is as simple as:

• Step 1: Setting up Subscribe2 email notification
• Step 2: Using Subcribe2 Email notification

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Currently over 3000 students from 346 individual student blogs and 86 class blogs, from 13 countries, are participating in the weekly tasks.

Have you joined yet?  There’s still time.

How to Join The Student Challenge

The weekly tasks are like a buffet;  you pick and choose what works best for you!  It’s all about having fun, improving your skills and connecting with a global audience!

Joining is as simple as:

1. Completing the registration form (if the form blocked at your school refer to these instructions)
2. Choosing the tasks you want to complete:
   • Week 1 – activities include ‘About me’ page, avatar and post about why join the challenge
   • Week 2 – includes commenting guidelines, writing comments, clustrmap and global audience widgets

Would You Like To Be A Challenge Helper?

Alternatively we also need lots of Challenge Helper!

Perfect for students and classes that aren’t in the position to be a Challenge participant but would like to be involved in a less formal manner.  Or for teachers and preservice teachers (student teachers) to increase their understanding of how blogs can be used with students.

Signing up to be a Challenge Helper is as simple as 1, 2, 3….

1. Reading what’s involved
2. Leaving your name, blog URL and a short blurb about yourself in comments of Miss Wyatt’s post!
3. Letting me know you’ve complete the blurb so I can add your details here — just leave a comment on my post

Reminder!

Win one of 16  free Edublogs supporter 12 month subscriptions for your own blog or to give away to a reader?

Just write a post and follow these instructions to enter The Edublogger ‘Win It Big’ competition!

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Why?  Human nature!

As individuals we’re all driven by personal ownership; class blogs have less sense of ownership than an individual blog.

Here are my tips for creating your student blogs.

#1 Choosing Usernames and Blog URLs

Educators normally use the same name for both the student’s username and blog URL.  Keep them simple and easy for the student to remember.

Most use a combination of their student’s first name followed by numbers that might represent the year or class number.  For example, username misty09 and blog URL misty09.edublogs.org.

If you want the students to use the blog for their entire school then use a combination of letters and numbers that achieve this goal.

#2 Adding yourself to  your student blogs

Always add yourself as an administrator to your student blog.

This means if you need to edit/delete a post, page or comment you can quickly access their blog from your blog dashboard.

#3 Moderating Comments

Educators either prefer to let their students moderate their own comments or they moderate all the comments for their students.  There are pros and cons to each approach.

If you want to moderate all comments, so comments are only posted once you have approved them, you need to create the blogs using the gmail+ method

You must use a real gmail account– educators either use their own gmail account or set up a gmail account for their class e.g. room13@gmail.com

For those comfortable with students moderating comments I recommend you subscribe to the comment feeds from your student blogs — here is how to subscribe to their comments using Google Reader.

#4 Assigning Student Role

You need to think about how much responsibility your students are given.  Do you want them to be able to write own posts/pages, change themes, add widget and approve comments or do you want (or need) to limit their level of responsibility?

Choose  your student’s user role on their blog based on your comfort level and the school or district guidelines.

For those comfortable with students having a higher level of responsibility I recommend you subscribe to the post feeds from your student blogs — here is how to subscribe to their posts using Google Reader.

# 5 Creating the blogs

How you create the blogs depends on the type of Edublogs blog you have.

Here are instructions for creating student blogs using:

1. The Signup page – free Edublogs blogs
2. The Blog & User creator – Edublogs Supporters & Edublogs Campus only

Remember spam filters, especially strict ones for institutional email addresses, often block activation and password reset emails from Edublogs.org. If unsure use free webmail accounts such as gmail, hotmail that don’t block these invitation emails.

There are no limitations on the number of student blogs you can create!

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But how many of your readers know how to even leave a comment?  Or what are your comment approval guidelines?  Or how you interact with their comments?

In case you forgot to tell them here are some ways to help your readers.

#1 A Newbie Guide

Providing a guide that includes how to leave comments is always helpful–  not everyone knows how to write comments on posts.  The key is to think what does some one new to reading your blog really need to know.

Here are some examples of Newbie Guides:

1. This is my Info For First Time Visitors! – explains how to subscribe using RSS or email and how to leave comments
2. Michele Martin’s A Newbie Guide to The Bamboo Project – highlights purpose of her blog, what is a blog, how to leave comments, how to participate and important pages on her blog
3. Tony Karrer’s First Time Visitor Guide – purpose of  blog, how to interact and an index of his posts

#2 Commenting Guidelines

Unfortunately not everyone knows what is/isn’t appropriate to write in comments on posts — this is where commenting guidelines can help.

Use your class blog as an opportunity to educate students, parents and other readers on appropriate commenting practice such as:

1. Types of identifying information that is appropriate in a comment e.g. What are your rules about use of last names, IM and personal information?
2. What sort of comments will you approve?
3. What are you looking for in comments?

It’s also worth reminding readers that blogs are works in progress — they need to remember this when writing comments.  Check out how Jan Smith’s does this in the left hand side bar of Huzzah Blog.

Why not get your students to help write the commenting guidelines for your class blog? You might like to also include examples of good and bad comments.

Check out:

1. Lisa Hill’s Mossgiel Park PS Blog Commenting Policy
2. Abbey’s Blog Guidelines for ideas on how a student can add a comment guideline to their blog

Using Pages and Post For Your Information

Approaches taken by bloggers varies.  Some prefer to regularly inform readers on how to comment and/or their comment policy using posts while others use pages.

Larry Ferlazzo uses posts really well to inform readers about commenting.  Here are:

1. His comment policy posts
2. His leaving comments on this blog posts

Bloggers who use pages will either:

• Link to the page in the main navigation — if needed they change the order of their pages
• Or create it as a subpage and link to the page using a text widget

Final Thoughts

Remember I’m looking for examples and ideas to share with others.

Please a comment with links to any ‘About pages’, ‘Commenting Guidelines’ or ‘Newbie Guides’ you create so I can check them out!

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