Refer to the following instructions to embed:

1. Enhancing your posts by embedding media including slides, quizzes, comic strips, polls
2. Embedding videos from video sharing websites into posts
3. Adding a Voki speaking avatar to your blog’s sidebar

Below’s a list of tools to get you started:

Brainstorming Tools

1. AnswerGarden – is a word cloud site that collects words and phrases.   Great for brainstorming, collecting ideas, feedback etc.  Check out this AnswerGarden embedded in a blog post or here’s another.
2. Bubbl.us – used to create color brainstorms and mind maps.
3. Wallwishers - an online notice board creator.  It’s a really fast and easy way to create engaging activities to use with students.  Learn more about Wallwisher here.

Comic and Cartoon Tools

1. Bitstrips – here’s a BitStrop embedded in a blog post
2. ToonDoo – here’s a ToonDoo embedded in a blog post

Poll and Survey tools

1. Google Forms
2. PollDaddy – Here’s a PollDaddy embedded in a blog post.
3. PollEverywhere

Presentation Tools

1. AuthorStream -  - A site where you can host your presentations and share with others. Check out this Authorstream embedded in a blog post here!
2. Fotobabble – lets  you create a talking photo.  Excellent for speaking practising.
3. Glogster – lets you combine images, video, music, photos and audio to create interactive posters.   Here’s Glogster’s embedded in a blog post.
4. Prezi – is an online presentation and story telling tool that uses a single canvas instead of traditional series of slides.  The images, text, videos and other objects are placed on the canvas and users can zoom in and out.  Here’s a Prezi embedded in a blog post.
5. SlideShare – A site where you can host your presentations and share with others.  Ideal for those who want to embed Presentations in their posts and websites rather than upload their PowerPoints directly and insert as a link.  It’s also an excellent site for locating Presentations created by others.  Check out a SlideShare embedded in a blog post here!
6. Scribd – allows you to upload your MS Word documents, PDFs, PowerPoints and then share them within an embedded viewer on your blog.  Here’s an example of a Scribd embedded in a blog post – check out the Scribd as it contains cool tips for backing up your blog!
7. VoiceThreads – Creates an interactive slideshow using images or videos.  Allows others to leave comments on each photo by adding text, audio or video.  You can check out the VoiceThread in our post for advanced bloggers.
8. Voki – allows you to create talking avatars.  Excellent for speaking practise and engaging students.  Here’s a Voki embedded in a blog post.

Slide Show Tools

1. BookR – Super easy slide show maker.
2. Flickr – Flickr is a PhotoSharing website for hosting and sharing your photos online.   SlideShows of photo sets or tags can be embedded into blog posts.
3. PhotoPeach – lets you quickly upload photos to make great looking slideshows and even simple quizzes. Here’s a PhotoPeach embedded in a blog post and here’s instructions for creating PhotoPeach quizzes.
4. Slides – Super easy slide show maker.

Quiz Creation tools

1. QuizRevolution – allows you to quickly create quizzes with images and/or videos.
2. PhotoPeach – lets you quickly upload photos to make great looking slideshows and even simple quizzes. Here’s a PhotoPeach embedded in a blog post and here’s instructions for creating PhotoPeach quizzes.

Video Creation Tools

1. Animoto – great site for quickly creating professional looking videos from your images.  Here’s an Animoto embedded in a blog post.
2. xtranormal – lets you create 3D animated videos.

Video Hosting Websites

Here’s some of the popular site used by educators who want to embed their videos within embedded players rather than uploading them directly to posts as links.

1. Blip TV
2. Vimeo
3. YouTube

There’s a gazillion online tools nowadays. Most provide code that you can use to embed what you’ve found or created into your blog posts.

Adding embed code to posts or pages is as simple as:

1.   Completely write your post including adding title, text, images, tags and categories.

2.  Click on Save Draft, previewed your post and make all necessary edits.

3.  Go to the online tool you want to use.

• Create or find the media you want to embed in your blog post.

4.  Locate the embed code for the media you created or want to embed.

• If the online tool provides embed code you’ll see a link that’ll use words like Share, Embed or Publish.
• WallWisher embed code is located under the Do More menu on the top right hand side of your WallWisher
• Click on the link and look for any code that says Embed in Blog, or Add to website.

5.  Copy the embed code.

Here’s how to copy the embed code on PhotoPeach

Here’s how to copy the embed code on Voicethreads

6.   Click on HTML Tab on your blog post.

7.  Paste the embed codeinto your post where you want it to appear then immediately click Publish

• Don’t click back to Visual Tab before hitting Publish as it can break the embed code.
• Immediately close your post once you’ve published.
• Change back to Visual Editing mode when you write your next post by clicking on the Visual tab.
• You use this same process for any website that provides embed code.

8.  You should now see your embedded media when you view your Post on your blog!

Please note:

• If the embed code is removed when you click Save, and you don’t see your voki in your blog sidebar,  it means you are using a free Edublogs.org blog.
• To enable the use of almost any embed code in posts, pages and text widgets on your blog, and up to 50 other blogs, you need to upgrade your blog to Edublogs Pro or be using an Edublogs Campus blog.
• Remember to enable extra features, including ability to add embed code,  on your other blogs by going to Pro > Upgrade up to 50 student blogs inside your Pro blog dashboard  (refer to these instructions).

Important tips when working with embed code in blog posts

Tip #1 – Use HTML editing mode

Remember never to click on the Visual Tab to change back to the visual editing mode once you have added the embed code.

This can break the embed code with some types of embeds.   If this happens it can impact how your blog loads in a web browser like Internet Explorer or cause your blog sidebar to be pushed to the bottom of your theme.

If you need to edit a  post that contains embed code make sure you change to HTML editing mode before opening up the post to edit.

The easiest way to do this is to:

1. Go to Posts > Add New and click on the HTML tab.
2. Close the post while still in the HTML tab and then go to Posts > All Posts to open the post for editing.

Tip #2 – Adjusting the embed size

Some embed code is designed to be embedded into normal websites and can be too wide for the width of your blog post.

Ideal width for embedding for most blog themes is 450 pixels wide.

If the online tool doesn’t provide the ability to adjust the embed size you can often do this by editing the code yourself.   All you need to do is try adjusting the scale, width and/or height after you’ve added it to your post.

Here’s an example of adjusting the Glogster embed code.

Glogster embed code is for 960 pixels wide.  Changing the scale in the embed code means your Glogster now fits your blog post.

This is handy when you want to:

1. Change multiple posts back to draft mode to hide the posts, and their comments, from your new group of students
2. Apply same new category or tags to multiple posts.

This is as simple as:

1.  Go to Posts > All Posts.

2.  Select the posts you want to edit.

3.  Then in the Bulk Actions dropdown select Edit and then click the Apply Button

4.  Now all you need to do is select the change(s) you want to apply and then click Update.

For example, you can:

A.  Change post status back to Draft mode by selecting ‘Draft‘ from the Status dropdown menu.

• This removes the posts, and any comments associated comments, from your blog and they are only viewable inside your blog dashboard.
• Drat mode is handy when you want to take last year’s posts off line but be able to refer back to them.

B.  Select new categories to assign additional categories to the posts.

C.  Assign additional tags to the posts (remember to add a comma between each new tag).

D.  Disable comments on the posts by selecting ‘Do not allow‘ from the Comments dropdown menu.

• This hides any existing comments on those posts and stops any one from adding new comments.

E.  Disable pings on the posts by selecting ‘Do not allow‘ from the Pings dropdown menu.

This video introduces you to a quick 3 minute demonstration of how to embed videos from video sharing websites such as YouTube into blog posts.

It also shows how to embed objects from other websites like SlideShare and Voicethread.

Video Tutorial!

Pages are usually displayed alphabetically, but you can change the order pages are displayed in:

• your top navigation area of your theme using a custom navigation menu
• your pages widget by changing their page order

Using a Custom navigation menu

All Edublogs themes support custom menus which means you can customize your navigation menu and add a top navigation to any theme.

This allows you to easily:

• Re-arrange, add, and remove items from the menu bar at the top of your blog
• Change the order of pages
• Create nested pages
• Display posts on multiple pages by linking to category pages
• Add custom links to your navigation menu
• Create a custom menu for your sidebar

Custom menus allow you to fully control the links that appear in your navigation menu- you can even add links to website and pages not on your blog!

Below’s an example of a custom menu with nested pages and custom links:

Here’s how:

1. Go to Appearance > Menus in your blog’s dashboard

2.  Give your menu a name – ‘Main Menu’ will work great!

3. Click on the blue ‘Create Menu‘ button

4. A Theme Location box will appear in the top left. Choose your newly created menu from the drop-down box and click on ‘Save’

5. Select the page, categories, or custom links you want to add to your menu.

• Do this by dragging the link you want to make over to the main box on the right or click on Select All and Add to Menu.

6. Arrange the menu items as you want them to appear by drag and dropping.

• In the example below, ‘Contact’ will show in a drop-down nested page under ‘About’.

7.  Click ‘Save‘ when done.

8. Visit your blog and see your new menu!

Changing order of pages in your Pages Widget

You can change the order of pages in your widget by changing their page order.

Say for example you have four pages: About, Blogging Rules, Contact Me, Help and you wanted to change their order from alphabetical to About, Blogging Rules, Help, Contact Me.

All you need to do is the following:

1.  Go to Pages > All Pages

2.  Hover your mouse over a page title to bring up the action menus and then click on Quick Edit.

3. In the order field change the number to the new order you want the page to appear and click the Update.

• You repeat this process for all the pages, and numbering them from 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on for the Order field. This tells the blog to make these pages the first second, third and fourth items in the list.
• In our example,  we would add 1 to the Order for the About page, 2 to the Order for the  Blogging Rules, 3 to the Order for the  Help, and 4 to the Order for the Contact Me

4.  Now to display the pages in the correct order you just need to add your Pages widget to the desired sidebar, change it to Page order and then click Save.

Educators occasionally use a static home page to provide background information to parents or students about the purpose of the blog. Their Home page normally contains content that rarely changes and latest posts are viewed by clicking on the link to the Posts page.

This isn’t necessarily your best option. Take the time to first learn more about:

1. Differences Between Blog Pages and Posts
2. Differences Between Tags and Categories

How To Create a Static Home Page

1. Go to Page > Add New

2. Give the page the title Home, write the content you want displayed on the front page of your blog and click then Publish.

3. Click Page > Add New again and create a new page titled Posts.

• You don’t need to add content to this page since this is the page that will display your latest posts.

4. Go to Settings > Reading

5. Change your settings to A Static page with Front page: Home and Post Page: Posts and then click Save Changes.

The front page of your blog should contains the content that your wrote for the Home page and your latest posts are viewed by clicking on the link to the Posts page.

The Solution If You End Up With Two Home Links

With some themes you can end up with two Home links.

This happens because many themes are hard coded to display “Home” link even when there are no other pages on the blog.

To remove the second Home link you just edit the Home page to make it a sub page of another page.

When you set up a new Edublogs blog it automatically comes set up with an ‘About page’. Readers access this page by clicking on About in the page links at the top of your theme or in the link in your sidebar.

The idea is you change the default text on this about page by inserting your own information.

Video

 Watch the video below to learn about Editing Pages

Writing your About Page

Your about page is all about letting people know who are you, what’s your interests and what you write about.

Start with telling people more about yourself as people are more likely to engage with your blog if they can relate to you as an individual. Then tell them about your blog and the reasons why you blog.

Not too long and not too short – include photos that help readers relate to you as a person.

What’s included on an About Page does vary depending on the type of blog and its intended audience.

1. Here’s my ‘About page’ on my personal blog.
2. Here’s the ‘About page’ on The Edublogger
3. Here’s tips for writing About pages for Student and Class blogs.

Editing your default ‘About page’ is a simple as:

1.  Click Pages > All Pages in the navigation menu in your dashboard

2.   Find the page About and click the action link Edit.

3.  Now it is just a case of replacing the default text on the about page with your own text, images etc.

4.  Click the Update Page button.

Pages appear in the Pages widget and in navigation tabs across the top of some themes.

Examples of pages commonly used by educators include:

• An About page – for readers to find out more about you and your blog. Readers often use it to decide whether to bother subscribing to a blog.
• Blogging Rule and Guidelines – used on Class blogs to explain how-to’s, rules, guidelines for students and their families
• Contact page – provides your contact details
• Info For First Time Visitors! – for new readers to understand how to subscribe to the blog and leave comments

Video

Writing a New Page

There are two ways to create a new page:

1.  Clicking on Page > Add New in your dashboard

2.  Selecting New Page in the dropdown menu in the admin bar

Brief Overview of Using Your Page Screen

Your Page screen works very similar to your Post screen except that:

• You don’t assign categories or tags to pages
• You can arrange your pages in hierarchies, using sub-pages, to nest pages under other pages

Writing a page is similar to writing a post.

Use these instructions for both posts and pages.

1. Writing your First Post – But you can’t assign categories or tags to pages
2. How to insert links in your post
3. Inserting images into your Posts
4. Inserting photo gallery into your Posts
5. Inserting video or audio files into your posts
6. Embedding Videos from Video Sharing Websites into Posts
7. Inserting Documents, PDF and PowerPoints into Posts
8. Editing Posts
9. Scheduling a post for a later date
10. Why you shouldn’t write your post in MS Word

1. Posts
2. Pages

New bloggers often struggle with the concept of posts and pages.

Introduction to Posts

Posts are where you publish the latest update or new article on a blog.

Posts are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order with the most recent post at the top of the page (e.g. check out the Teacher Challenge blog).

Most of the content published on a blog is normally written as Posts.   The information you want to share or reflect on are normally published as Posts and not on Pages.

Blogs are designed to have only one Post page which normally displays on the homepage of the blog.

If you look closely at a post you will see it is normally made up of:

1. Post Title – tells the reader what the post is about.  A great post title grabs readers attention and is more likely to encourage them to read your post.
2. Date published – all post display the date a post was published.  You’ll normally see this displayed at the top of the post.
3. Categories and tags - are used to help readers locate information in different ways.  We’ll explain how to use categories and tags in a later activity in this series.
4. Your post content – this is the main information that you want to share or reflect on with your readers
5. A link to comments - This is where your readers can click to write a comment in response to your post.  Comments give readers an opportunity to share their thoughts, connect with you and interact with other readers.

Introduction to Pages

Pages on blogs are normally used for information that you want to share with your readers but don’t expect to update frequently.

Example of Pages used on blogs

1. The most common type of Page on a blog is the About page.   Your About Page is used for telling readers more about yourself and your blog.
2. Class blogs often use Pages for Blogging Rules and Guidelines (check out these examples of Blogging Rules and Guidelines on class blogs).

There are key differences between pages and posts that are important to understand when working with them.

Below is a sentence that was written in Microsoft Word then copied and pasted into a blog post.

Viewed using the Visual Editor it looks perfectly fine.

But click on the HTML tab – see how much code was transferred from MS Word by just copying and pasting one sentence.

Same can happen when you copy and paste text from emails, other word processor applications, websites etc.

Safest solution is always write your posts in your blog dashboard. However if you do need to copy and paste text into your post then the best method to remove any extra code is using a plain text editor like:

• NotePad – PC (Programs > Accessories)
• TextEdit – Macs

Just paste the text into the text editor and then copy the text from the text editor and paste into your post. This strips out all code and prevents formatting problems. Please note pasting into a text editor does remove all links to websites.

NOTE: There is a Paste from Word button inside your dashboard which is meant to be used for this purpose. However it doesn’t always remove the extra code.