Brought to you by Connecting Learning Ltd 1 Setting up your Weblog After you have signed up for a bogs2teach weblog, you will receive a confirmation email. You will be asked to go to a URL to complete the signup process. When the process is complete, your blog URL (the web address you will use to access your blog) will be confirmed as well as your username and password which you will use to login and administer your weblog website. When you login to the site, you will be presented with the administration panel for your blog. If you follow all of the steps below, you will have made all of the critical decisions on how you wan your weblog initially setup. Don’t forget that at any time you can change any of your settings. There are other features and settings an additional help is available in both the FAQs and ‘How to’ sections of the www.blogs2teach.net website. Brought to you by Connecting Learning Ltd 2 Setting up your Options Section One Work you way through these questions and comments. They all relate to the 'Options' – ‘General’ tab 1. Weblog title: Provide a title for your weblog. This is free flow text. For example; 'Evaluation and Evidence Weblog'. 2. Tagline: Do you want your blog to have a tagline? A tagline is a one sentence description that appears underneath your weblog title. For example 'Bringing evaluation and evidence to Essex'. If you don't want a tagline, delete all the text in this field and leave the field blank. 3. Your public weblog website address [URL]: This will be http://username.blogs2teach.net/. Notice your username within the URL. This can not be changed. 4. E-mail address: Enter an admin email address. By default, this will be the email address you used when you created the account, but you can change it. 5. Membership: a. Do you want to allow anyone to register for your weblog? For some, it might be easier to check this box, get their learners to register themselves and then after everybody has registered, un-check this option to prevent further signups. If you check this box from the very beginning, you will need to manually register your learners [we will cover this later on] b. Do you want tutors/learners to be registered and logged in to your weblog in order to make comments to posts? If so, check this box. We would recommend this to prevent unwanted comments. 6. UTC time is: Universal Time Co-ordinated, the international time standard, also known as Greenwich Meridian Time (GMT) ignore 7. Times in the weblog should differ by: You only need to change this when our clocks change in the spring and autumn – and only then if you want to! 1 2 3 5 4Brought to you by Connecting Learning Ltd 3 8. Default date format: This presents as ‘Fj,Y’ and is case sensitive. Below this option is how the date appears -‘April 9, 2006’. If you changed the text in this box to ‘Jf,Y’, the date format would change to 9 April, 2006’. If in any doubt, just leave it alone. 9. Default time format: Leave alone unless you really want to mess around! 10. Weeks in the calendar should start on: For most, this will stay as ‘Monday’. If you wanted to change it to another day of the week, click on the dropdown box and select another day. Brought to you by Connecting Learning Ltd 4 Section Two Work your way through these questions and comments. They all relate to the 'Options' – ‘Writing’ tab 11. When starting a post, show: This defaults to simple controls. You can leave this as it is. At a later date, you can always come back and change this as your users become more familiar with using the blog. 12. Size of the writing box: How big do you want the box to be when you type your posts. It defaults to 9 lines. You can change this, but for most people, this is probably ok. 13. Default post category: You may set up your weblog to have different categories. For example; if you had a food weblog, you may want a category for ‘Meat’, ‘Vegetables’, ‘Recipes’ etc. You will need to create the categories [which we will do later on]. Until you set up categories, the only one available is General, so learners will post to this category by default. Once you have set up other categories, you can make any of those the ‘default’ category. 14. Newly registered learners/tutors: When your learners or tutors first register, or you register them, what initial functionality do you want to give them in relation to posting articles? a. Cannot write articles? b. May submit drafts for review? c. May publish articles? 15. Writing by e-mail: This is only for very advanced users. The vast majority of you can just ignore this. If you do want to use this feature, we refer you to the FAQ “Can I email to my weblog?” This can be accessed from the blogs2teach homepage at http://www.blogs2teach.net/faq.html Note: When you have completed setting up your Writing Options section, make sure you click on the ‘Update Options’ button in the bottom right of your page to save your changes. 12 13 14 15 16Brought to you by Connecting Learning Ltd 5 Section Three Work you way through these questions and comments. They all relate to the 'Options' – ‘Reading’ tab. 16. How many posts do you want to show per page? It defaults to 10 posts. However you can change the 10 to any other figure. You also have the option to select either posts or days. Therefore, if you wanted to show the last 3 days of posts, you would enter the figure 3 and using the drop down list select ‘days’. If in doubt, just leave alone! 17. Ignore ‘The weblog software should compress articles [gzip] if browsers ask for them’. This is for very advanced users only. Note: Make sure you click on the ‘Update Options’ button in the bottom right of your page to save your changes. 17 18 Brought to you by Connecting Learning Ltd 6 Section Four Work you way through these questions and comments. They all relate to the 'Options' – ‘Discussion’ tab. Usual settings for an article: 18. Unless you are an advanced user, the only option for you to consider here is whether or not to allow your learner/tutors to post comments to posts. Check the box to allow, uncheck to dissalow. E-mail me whenever: 19. Anyone posts a comment. We recommend you check this box as it means you will receive an email anytime somebody posts a comment to an article. 20. A comment is held for moderation. We recommend you check this box as it means that if you have set up weblog not to allow anybody to post comments without it being moderated by yourself, you will automatically receive an email telling you there is a comment waiting your attention. 19 20 21 22 23 24 Brought to you by Connecting Learning Ltd 7 Before a comment appears: 21. Do you want the admin [presumably yourself] to approve any comments. This relates to point 20. above. 22. Do you want to make learners/tutors who post a comment to fill in their name and email? The answer to this is very much dependent on your learner group. Do they have email addresses? Are you happy with them giving out their names [could be just first name or even a nick name]. If in doubt do not check. 23. Comment author must have a previously approved comment. Pretty self explanatory. Comment Moderation 24. You can decide to hold comments in a moderation queue if it contains more than your chosen number of links [defaults to 2. This is an anti spam device, so no need to change unless you really want to. 25. In this field, you can type in any words that are inappropriate so that if they appear in any comments they will be held in a queue for moderation. Comment Blacklist 26. Self explanatory Note: Make sure you click on the ‘Update Options’ button in the bottom right of your page to save your changes. 25 26 Brought to you by Connecting Learning Ltd 8 Section Five This relates to the 'Options' – ‘Permalinks’ tab. Alterations to this section will change the way your permanent links are displayed on your weblog. You should not alter anything here unless you are an advanced user. 27. Advanced users only. Section Six Work you way through these questions and comments. They all relate to the 'Options' – ‘File Upload Permissions’ tab. 28. Allow file uploads: Do you want your learners/tutors to be able to upload files? You have the option here to enable or disable file uploads. Check the ‘Allow File Uploads’ box if you want to allow file uploads. 29. Minimum learner/tutor authorisation level to upload: There are a total of 10 user settings. Details are contained at http://www.blogs2teach.net/userlevels.html. The higher the user level, the more functionality that learner/tutor has. You have the option here to set the user level at which learners/tutors can upload files. It will default to level 5. This means that later on when we set levels for users, you will need to remember to set user levels at or above this value if you want them to upload files. If in doubt, set this to level 2. You can always change it again at a later date. You can also be clever here and allow the more proficient learners to upload files, but not others simply by allocating different user levels. Note: Make sure you click on the ‘Update Options’ button in the bottom right of your page to save your changes. 29 30 Brought to you by Connecting Learning Ltd 9 Activating Plugins Section Seven Work you way through these questions and comments. They all relate to the 'Plugins' tab. 30. Click on the main ‘Plugins’ tab. You have the option to ‘activate’ or ‘deactivate’ plugins. Information about each of the plugins is available on the main FAQ section of the Blogs2teach website or via http://www.blogs2teach.net/plugins.html. However, in simple terms for setting up your weblog, ‘activate’ the following plugins, by clicking the ‘activate/deactivate action button to the right of the following plugins: a. Fallen Media Filter b. WP SpamAssassin c. WYSI Wordpress 31. Consider carefully at this stage the ‘ViewLevel2’ plugin, which gives you the ability to hide your weblog posts to ANYONE under a certain user level. This is a very powerful plugin for teaching and learning and we will return to it later as part of the setting up our weblog list. Brought to you by Connecting Learning Ltd 10 Setting up your Theme [The look and feel design] Section Eight Work you way through these questions and comments. They all relate to the 'Themes – ‘Discussion’ tab. 32. When you click on the main ‘Themes’ tab, you are default to the ‘Themes’ sub tab. This is where you can select from any one of 22 different theme styles. You can preview any theme by clicking on the ‘Preview’ hyperlink. You can also view all of the themes from the main http://www.blogs2teach.net/themes.html website pages. When you find a theme you like, you can ‘select’ it by clicking on that button to the right of that theme. Brought to you by Connecting Learning Ltd 11 Section Nine Work you way through these questions and comments. They all relate to the 'Themes’ – ‘Advanced Users Only – Theme Editor’ tab. 33. Advanced Users Only – Theme Editor: From this tab you can modify and personalise your selected theme even more. We would recommend this is for advanced users only. However, most users should be able to add their own logo by watching the screen video on the How To pages at: http://www.blogs2teach.net/howto.html. There is also additional information in the FAQ section of the website. Setting up and Managing Tutors /Learners Section Ten Work you way through these questions and comments. They all relate to the 'Manage Tutors / Learners – ‘Your Personal Profile’ tab. 35. This whole page relates to YOUR own profile. All of the fields are self explanatory. Note: Make sure you click on the ‘Update Options’ button in the bottom right of your page to save your changes. Brought to you by Connecting Learning Ltd 12 Section Eleven Work you way through these questions and comments. They all relate to the 'Manage Tutors / Learners – ‘Learners & Tutors’ tab 34. Add New Learner or Tutor: This is where you can add new learners or tutors. If you decided that new learners or tutors could not register themselves [see Section One – point 6] you WILL have to do this yourself. As admin, you can add and manage your weblog tutors/learners at any time. a. Nickname: If you do not want your learners identified by name, they could always use a Nickname. If you haven’t got any Nicknames, you can always add later. All learners also have the ability to change their own profiles b. First Name: Self explanatory. c. Last Name: Self explanatory. d. E-mail: Your tutors/learners do NOT need an email to use this weblog. This is a VERY useful feature. We would recommend you use your own email or setup a temporary weblog email using something like hotmail. e. Website: Optional field f. Password: Use simple passwords, all lower case and sensible so your learners will remember them. They will have the ability to change their password if they want. However, as admin, you can ALWAYS override their account. g. When the above fields are completed [or not] click on the ‘Add Tutor/Learner’ button in the bottom right of the page. 35 Brought to you by Connecting Learning Ltd 13 35. When you have added your tutor/learner, you will see that they now appear at the top of the page in the ‘Registered Tutors and Learner Bloggers!’ area. In the first instance they will always be set at ‘Level 1’. You can find more information on levels and functionality at the main http://www.blogs2teach.net/userlevels.html website. However, you can promote [and demote] them. First click on the word Promote. Then by clicking on the + or – under the ‘Level’ column, you can promote your individual learner. Note: If you decide to disallow tutors/learners to upload files, you should make sure their level is below that which you set to allow file upload. (See Section 6, points 29 and 30 above.) 36 36 Brought to you by Connecting Learning Ltd 14 Setting up Categories Section Twelve Work you way through these questions and comments. They all relate to the 'Manage Posts’ – ‘Categories’ tab 36. Add New Category: You can setup any number of categories and sub categories for your learners /tutors to post into. This is a simple way of managing posts. a. Name: The name of your category. We recommend one or two words only. b. Category Parent. You might setup a category called ‘Food’ 37 Brought to you by Connecting Learning Ltd 15 c. You could then set up sub categories under the Food parent category called ‘fruit’ and ‘meat’. In this case, when you added either the fruit or meat category, the category parent would be food. The categories you have created will now be displayed in the categories list. Note: Your new categories will not appear when you view your weblog page until somebody has posted into that category. This saves you having lots of empty categories. d. Description: Keep it short or leave blank. e. NB: Also worth referring to Section Two – point 14. Brought to you by Connecting Learning Ltd 16 Adding Weblinks Section Thirteen Work you way through these questions and comments. They all relate to the 'Weblinks’ – ‘Weblink Categories’ tab 37. Add a Weblink Category: You can manage you weblinks by putting them into categories if you like. In terms of initially setting up your weblog, just add the name of your weblink category. Keep it short. Click on the ‘Add Category’ button in the bottom right of the screen. You can explore other options at a later date. Brought to you by Connecting Learning Ltd 17 Section Fourteen Work you way through these questions and comments. They all relate to the 'Weblinks’ – ‘Add a Weblink’ Category tab 38. Add a Weblink – Basics: a. URL: This should be the full website address, including the http://b. Weblink Name: A short Name This will appear as the hyperlink text. c. Short description: Not really necessary. d. Category: If you have set up categories, you can select the appropriate category from the dropdown list Note: Remember to click “Add Weblink” when you have entered your weblink information 39. Add a Weblink – Advanced a. Ignore. Explore at a later date if required. Brought to you by Connecting Learning Ltd 18 Weblog Privacy Unlike a large number of weblog tools, we understand that educational practitioners and their organisations have specific requirements when using blogs to support teaching and learning, so there are a range of privacy options available to you if you use the blogs2teach software. Note: Points 1 and 3 will first require you to activate the "ViewLevel2" plugin from the main 'Plugins' Tab: 1. Only users above a certain user level can view your weblog You can make your weblog only viewable by learners/tutors who have been allocated a certain user level. This keeps your weblog basically private. For example, by setting a ViewLevel of '4' would mean that anybody without level 4 authority could not read your weblog entries. Alternatively you could set the view level to 'public' which would mean that anybody could read your weblog. Or you could set the view level to ‘registered users' so anybody who was registered and at any level could view the weblog. If you set the View Level to anything other than 'public', the 'viewing public' would see only a blank blog! To explore this functionality when you login as admin, click on the main 'Options' tab and select the sub tab underneath called 'ViewLevel'. We suggest you play with this functionality so you really understand what it does. Try this: 1. set the ViewLevel to level 4. 2. Write a post and publish it. 3. Log out and then view your public website as a normal member of the public Brought to you by Connecting Learning Ltd 19 4. Your post will not be viewable unless you log back in again. 5. It will only be viewable when you log back in again, or you have other learners/tutors who login and viewsite when logged in at level 3 and above. 2. Private Posts When writing an actual post, you can use the 'Save as a PRIVATE Post' in the write tab. Simply write your post, click on the 'Save as a PRIVATE Post', Now click on the 'Manage Posts' tab and select that post Brought to you by Connecting Learning Ltd 20 Add a password. When publicly viewing your post, unless you can input the password into the box, you can not read the post. Brought to you by Connecting Learning Ltd 21 3. Hide individual posts to users below a certain user level You have the option to totally hide individual posts from your weblog to viewers below a certain level. To do this, write your post as usual and then at the end, just put in a bit of code: vl=5 This hides the post to anyone not allocated level 5. For example; 'This is my first post to my weblog. v1=5' Write this post (you can delete it later) and publish it. Check that no-one below level 5 can read the post