2. What are class blogs?
• Class blogs are like a class
website where parents,
students, and others can visit to
keep up with what is going on
in class.
4. Top Uses of a Class
Blog
• Post homework
• Daily summaries of what was learned in class
• Weekly news posts – much like a traditional printed
newsletter
• Class calendars of important dates, tests, field trips, etc.
• Extending class discussions outside of class by asking
students to reply to questions and comments
• Posting course documents, expectations, and contact
information
6. Blogging Vocabulary
• Dashboard – This is the back-end area of your blog where you make changes and
edits. This area is not seen by the public and only accessible to blog
administrators, editors, or contributors.
• Theme - Usually one of the first things bloggers do is pick out a theme. This is
the template or look of the blog which helps give it a personal touch.
• Post - Posts are the basic entry in blogs. Usually, the main page of a blog shows all
of the posts in reverse chronological order.
• Page - Pages are similar to posts, but are best for “static” content which you want
to always be accessible and doesn’t change to often. For example, you usually find
pages such as Contact Us, About, or Calendar on blogs.
• Comments – Depending on your theme, comments are allowed on posts and
sometimes on pages. Here, users can reply to what you write, leave links or
comments, and create a general discussion. You can turn on and off comments on
individual posts and pages in your blog’s dashboard.
• Sidebar - The location and even existence of sidebars depend on your theme.
Some themes even have 3 or more sidebars. You can add and rearrange widgets in
your sidebars in your blog’s dashboard.
• Widget - These are the blocks that make up sidebars. Popular widgets include the
ability to subscribe to a blog, user statistics, and suggested links.
• Plugins – Plugins are extended features that you can turn on and off on your blog.
Popular plugins include form creation, facebook and twitter connections, and
calendars.
• RSS - RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” which is a way for people to use
RSS Readers to subscribe to and follow your blog. For all Edublogs, the rss feed
is found by going to yourblog.edublogs.org/feed.
7. The five roles a user can be assigned
in decreasing level of responsibility
are:
• Administrator – can do everything including complete
power over posts, pages, plugins, comments, choice of
themes, imports, settings, assign user roles and are even
able to delete the blog.
• Editor – is able to publish posts/pages, manage
posts/pages, upload files, moderate comments as well as
manage other people’s posts/pages.
• Author – can upload files plus write and publish own posts.
• Contributor – can write own posts/pages but can’t publish
them.
• Subscriber – can read comments and write comments.
