edna.edu.au

Adding Images to me.edu.au blog

Adding images to your me.edu.au blog isn't as straight forward as you think, but once you know how to do it, it is easy.

Click the Edit Blog link from your me.edu.au profile

Click on File Uploads



You may like to upload all the images you might use in your blog post first or I personally like to keep one window open on my blog post and the other on the file uploads area.

When an image is uploaded you will see the screen below and will need to copy the address of the image

If you miss this screen, you can find all your uploaded images stored in your File Uploads area.

Back in your blog post, place your cursor in the text area where you want your image to display and then click on the Insert Image button in the text editor.

Paste the URL of the image your copied from the File Uploads area into the Insert/Modify Image window, Image URL box. Click on the Preview button to see the image and write a description of the image in the Alternative text area. Click OK.

The image you inserted should now appear in your blog post.

Note: There is no autosave! If you have to navigate away to your File Upload area to get an image address, SAVE A DRAFT!

Tags: help images blogging showme
Posted at 10:44AM Sep 11, 2009 by Alison Hall  |  Comments[1]

Commenting release

I have made a really rough screencast on me.edu.au's new commenting tool. Feel free to watch and leave any comments or suggestions, we'd love to hear from you!

Tags: commenting showme
Posted at 03:55PM Jun 10, 2009 by Alison Hall  |  Comments[0]

Sharing links and messages in communities

When you visit any me.edu.au community you will now notice the new share a message or a link functionality. You can now share a longer description of the link you have added or share a message to the whole community. This new feature does not replace the functionality of the community whiteboard but instead forms the 1st step to the introduction of Social Bookmarking to me.edu.au.

Tags: howto me.edu.au how to sharing help communities showme about me
Posted at 04:17PM Feb 11, 2009 by Alison Hall  |  Comments[0]

Help - edna Blog

Can't publish your me blog post?  Can't save your me blog post? Your text has gone haywire and and changed the look of your blog? Keep getting an error message and don't know what to do? Well then hopefully this blog post can help you out.

Most issues arising from the edna Blog tool is related to HTML. If you are unable to complete, save, or publish a blog posting there is probably HTML somewhere in the post which the blog tool does not recognise. It is the same if your entire blog suddenly makes every post you've ever done to bold or italics formatting.

It is often caused by copying and pasting in content which contains its own HTML eg. copying something from a Microsoft word document, or straight off a websites, or from another HTML editing program like Dreamweaver. The error can also occur when you are trying to embed content from other websites such as pictures, widgets, videos etc.

I find that the easiest solution is NOT to go through and try to pick/guess which bits of HTML may be causing the issue (trust me you can waste a lot of time doing this), instead I do the following:

1. Copy the entire blog post and paste it into a plain text document such as Notepad
2. back in me.edu.au, delete all of the HTML from the blog post by clicking the TOGGLE HTML SOURCE icon (looks like <>) and delete everything in view. Unclick the Toggle HTML icon when you have got rid of everything.
3. Now highlight and copy the text from the plain text document and paste it back into the post.
   
4. Save it straight away and keep saving as you start to reformat your post.
   

If you feel you need to write out your blog post in full before you get online and post it, why not write it in a plain text document first? This can save a lot of tears later.

Also always, always save your blog posts as you are writing them. There is currently no autosave function in the me.edu.au blog and if you decide to navigate away from your post or take too long to compose it and get logged out, you will lose everything. Many a blogger has had their heart broken by this...

If you continue to have issues with posting to your me.edu.au blog don't hesitate to contact the edna team at groups@edna.edu.au Someone there is sure to be able to get you back on track again.

Happy blogging!

Tags: edna blog about me blogging showme help
Posted at 12:15PM Jan 16, 2009 by Alison Hall  |  Comments[1]

Get out there and get involved!

So there's this new thing called me.edu.au .... wow that's wonderful!.. I've joined...  but what do I do now?

A question I feel a lot of people are asking. Honestly, I feel the best way to utilise me.edu.au fully is to just be brave and put yourself out there. You may feel like you are totally alone but once you start to open up to the community and get involved you may feel differently! me.edu.au is meant to be a place for educators to share and collaborate, so lets get cracking!

Join: visit some of the me.edu.au communities and join them if they interest you and introduce yourself on the whiteboard.

Contribute: add some of the resources you regularly use to the left hand link sharing space of your communities.

Find: search for collegues, friends or people who have similar interest to you and add them as a collegue.

Write: Start up your me.edu.au blog. If you don't know where to start, try a few ideas suggested in some of the communities and from other blogs eg. About me, blogging community

Tag: make sure you tag your blog posts with relevant tags, but also with the names of the communities you'd like to share your blog post with. Once published, your blog post will flow through to those communities and appear as in the related links from edna and blogs box on the community pages.

Feed: gather RSS feeds of all the places where you do things online eg. flickr, wiki spaces, nings, other blogs, facebook, del.icio.us, diigo, twitter, plurk etc etc etc etc and put them into the feed part of your profile (edit my profile > feeds) Here is an example of the feeds I have coming through.

What will happen now? = Anything you add to your networks across the web will be picked up from your RSS feeds and displayed in your public profile. If your collegues also do this, you will be able to see what they are doing as well. Personally I think this is one of the best things that me.edu.au has going on right now.

So start joining, contributing, finding, writing, tagging and feeding so you can get the most out of YOUR community!

Tags: blogging showme communities me
Posted at 04:34PM Jul 11, 2008 by Alison Hall  |  Comments[0]

Feeling Shy?

 Sentence 3: How do I represent myself online?

Are you are feeling a little shy about putting your picture up for your me.edu.au profile, or having your students put photos of themselves up on blogs and projects? Why not create an Avatar! edna has some great links to interactive, fun and kid friendly avatar makers which you can then use to represent yourself or your student when online.

Here's one I created with a nifty little online avatar maker called BuiLD YouR WiLD SeLF whilst on my learning journey around the web (you will find more listed in edna by following the link above).

To add your avatar to your profile, simply go to "edit my profile", and click on the Image tab and then upload your avatar and save. Then stand back and admire!

How did I embed my avatar pictures into this blog post? Check out About Me's instructions in the blog post Adding Images to a Blog.

Tags: cooltools showme image avatar
Posted at 03:25PM Jun 26, 2008 by Alison Hall  |  Comments[1]

embeding video into blogs

Sentence 2: Today I learnt how to share video content with others on my other blog, all in bits and pieces.

The videos are from YouTube and are of teachers demonstrating to other teachers how they use their interactive whiteboards. I found them on the RSC-Northwest eMagazine page from Lancaster University  and simply copied the embed HTML provided by the YouTube block and pasted it into a HTML block in my own blog.Voila instant teacher inpiration goodness!

The special thing about these videos is that once you have watched the first one, a whole series of other related videos appear within the YouTube block. This means you can watch a series of videos which are all related in subject matter without leaving your blog page. Pretty cool huh?!

This little YouTube gadget also gives you the option of embedding a hard link into your blog which will whisk users off to a YouTube page. Still cool but I think having the block in your own page is great idea. Havn't quite learnt how to create my own series, but the possibility of having all your YouTube videos streaming to a personal or educational online space, without having to navigate away would, possibly, solve a few access issues.

To add the video to this blog, I had to click on the "toggle HTML source" button when I was in the writing pane and then paste the video's HTML code exactely where I wanted it to appear in the post. Easy! (after a little help from my friends...)

Tags: whiteboards demonstration interactive whiteboards showme embed video
Posted at 12:13PM Jun 25, 2008 by Alison Hall  |