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Edubuzz blogs: “Add media” Flash uploader now working

If you’ve an eduBuzz blog, you’ll have had to avoid using the default “Flash uploader”, which was generating an “HTTP Error” message: that’s now sorted.

We believe the fault’s now fixed (a site-wide WordPress plugin needed to be upgraded).  Feedback welcome - please leave a comment.

Light Up Your Blog With Glow Games

With interest in Glow increasing rapidly around Scotland, these Glow Games have been let loose to help get people talking - and, of course, help with learning too.

Once you get your Glow login, you’ll find they’re in there too - with some advantages.

If you’ve an edubuzz blog, why not embed the games in a post or page? Enjoy. Continue reading ‘Light Up Your Blog With Glow Games’

All East Lothian Staff Can Create eduBuzz Blogs

All East Lothian staff with either school or council email addresses can now use “Create new blog“.

After a spate of spam blogs, this option was temporarily restricted. Before long, usage took off and we had to keep the restriction in place to avoid server overload. Capacity has now been increased, and restrictions partially lifted. If you’re East Lothian staff, you can now create as many edubuzz blogs as you want. What are you waiting for?

Using French Videos from Dailymotion in Your eduBuzz Blog

French video sharing site Dailymotion.com offers a wide range of entertaining French-language videos which can help make language learning fun. And if you’ve an edubuzz blog, you can easily embed them in your posts. Here’s how to do it:

  1. Click “Menu” in the bottom right of the video, then choose “URL and embed code”
  2. Under the Embed box, click “Copy code”.
  3. In your WordPress blog’s editor, click the yellow A (for Anarchy) toolbar button.
  4. Paste the Embed code into the box that pops up. (You’ll notice the box says “For DAILYMOTION and BREAK videos and iTUNES IMIXES just copy and paste the code from their embeddable players.)

Thanks are due to Jackie Swan for the idea. And here’s the end result, using one of Dailymotion’s most popular recent videos:

eduBuzz Videos Teach WordPress in 5 Mins!

The eduBuzz Support Wiki at http://edubuzz.org/support now features five short video tutorials on WordPress.

Each video is around 5 minutes long, and is ideal for new users or for people needing a quick intro to the redesigned back-end menu system. Topics covered are:

The videos, presented by James Farmer, are from WPMU DEV Premium.

Catch up on eduBuzz’s new menus with this 5-min video

Edubuzz.org has been updated over the holidays, so if you’ve an edubuzz blog you’ll notice changes to the admin screens. If you just need a quick tour of the basics, get your speakers on and watch the 5-minute video (11MB, opens in full-screen), or use the player below.

The good news is these changes make WordPress easier to use. The more advanced options, for example, have been moved below the Write Post screen to make the interface less intimidating for new users. This will make it easier for more students and staff to get started with web publishing.

Some new features have been added in response to feedback from WordPress users world-wide. These include:

  • the ability to set the size of image thumbnails, and to use mid-sized thumbnails
  • the replacement of the separate Upload area, which confused some people, with “Add Media”
  • a full-screen editing option
  • easier, more obvious, options for making posts appear on future dates

Jeffrey Zeldman provides a good 10-point summary of the key changes.

Of course, if you need a bit more assistance, please get in touch by leaving a comment or by email.

B-Safe B-Sensible!

b-safe b-sensibleEast Lothian Police want you to be safe over the holidays, and would like to ask you to be sensible! Find out more about their new B-Safe B-Sensible campaign.

edubuzz entered for ICT Excellence Awards

BECTA ICT EXcellence Awards 08 logo

Today we’ve entered Edubuzz.org for the BECTA ICT Excellence Awards Support for Schools category.

This category aims to reward those organisations who support school improvement with ICT, encouraging the systematic and innovative use of appropriate technologies to deliver learning and teaching, communicate with the wider school community and improve administrative efficiency.

Luckily it’s accepted that not every project will hit all the targets, so our inability to make any claims for improving admin efficiency shouldn’t be too much of a disadvantage. Last year’s winners were announced in November, so we may have a while to wait before we know how things have gone…

Preston Lodge helps local Gala Day engage young people

Longniddry Gala

Preston Lodge High School  students are helping engage young people in the local Longniddry Gala by creating an attractive, interactive web site based on an edubuzz weblog.

The project started with an approach from Richard Walsh of the Gala Committee, who had noticed Preston Lodge’s lively prestonlodge.net site, and approached the school to see if they could help him do something like it for the Gala.

Duke of Edinburgh Award logoCalum Stewart at the school agreed to help, and developing the site is now part of the Duke of Edinburgh Award activities for some students at the school. Educational benefits of this project include:

  • It’s providing a source of locally relevant, real tasks which provide a context for literacy, technological and social studies learning outcomes
  • It’s providing a model of how an activity that interests students can be used to provide a context for Curriculum for Excellence outcomes
  • It’s showing how web sites can help engage a school with its community at low cost without any time or money being lost to travel

Glow kicks off in East Lothian

Glow screen East Lothian is starting to find out what it’s possible to do with Glow.

Mentors met after-school again today for an informal session where Dave Rawson , ELC’s Glow Implementation officer, showed some of the things that he’s been doing, and some things going on in other authorities. This screenshot, for example, shows the way the East Lothian page of the Glow portal is currently looking. (Click the image to enlarge.)