eduBuzz: The Basics

"edubuzz.org provides web publishing tools to learners within East Lothian, Scotland and is the basis for a networked learning community."

Edubuzz is most famous for bringing the wordpress blogging platform to teachers and pupils in East Lothian. You can use this system to create your own blog, which can include static webpages, with ease. More and more teachers are making use of this system across the authority, and many are now using it with their pupils also.

Let's start by having a wee look at how others in East Lothian have made use of eduBuzz:

Ross High Parent Council North Berwick High School Website P6 at Pencaitland Primary School Daily notices at Preston Lodge Don Ledingham's Learning Log Ross High Biology Department (Or view one of our static pages)

So, if you would like to do something similar, you're in the right place. I've tried to write a simple guide to the various stages in looking after your blog, but if you're struggling give me a shout fkelly@edubuzz.org

1. Logging in

You should hopefully already have a username and password for the eduBuzz blog centre, if not you need to contact me to get one. Once you have one, you can click on this link to open the login screen: http://edubuzz.org/blogs/rosstestblog/wp-admin/  

You will be taken to the dashboard. From here you can manage your entire blog:

2. Writing a post

Let's start by writing a post on your blog. It doesn't matter what you put in it you can always delete it later. Click on the 'Write a New Post' button on the dashboard:

You will be taken to the editor. I hope you'll agree that this has been quite well designed to resemble most common webmail interfaces:

3. Adding a link

It can be very useful to the person reading your text if you have provided links for them. You can do this by highlighting the text you want to link, then click on the little linked chain:

A window will open. Enter the web address you are wanting to link to next to 'Link URL'. You can ignore the rest for now. Once you're done, click insert and your text should now be blue and underlined.

4. Adding a picture  

Blog posts are so much more interesting with a good picture. There are two ways of adding a picture to your post. You can either add a picture which is already on the web, or upload your own. If you're using an image which is online already, you should really make sure that it is copyright free or has a creative commons licence. You can use a creative commons search to find your image to make sure it's ok. Once you've found the image you want, right click on it and use the properties to find the address (URL) of the image. Copy this (use the keyboard to copy: Ctrl+C).

 

  You can now click on the add/edd image button in your blog post editor:  

  Paste (Ctrl+V) the address (URL) of your image into the popup window and click insert:  

 

It's more likely that you'll want to upload a picture from your computer to add to your post. To do this click on the 'Add media' button:  

The window that opens allows you to upload files into your blog's webspace, this works just like attaching a file to an email.  

Click on 'Choose files to upload':  

 

Choose your picture from your folders and click open:

Your file will now be uploaded to the web. All you need to do now is scroll down and press 'Insert into post':

 

Your image should now appear in your post. You may have some problems with the size of your picture, get in touch if you need some help with that.  

5. Adding a YouTube video  

Even better than a picture, add a youtube video to your post. It's actually really easy to do. Firstly you need to copy the URL of the video you want from youtube. You'll find this on the right hand side of the screen next to your video:

Now return to your blog post and click on the yellow 'A':

Paste the URL for your youtube into the box and click OK:

Some code will now appear in your blog post. This will be converted into your video when you publish your post.

See, told you it was easy :)

6. Tags & Categories

Below your post you'll see a couple of things called Tags and Categories:

These are both ways of organising your blog entries. Completing these also helps your blog posts to be found in search engines so if you're wanting people to find your posts put in a few words to describe what your post is about.

7. Publishing & Editing

Now you're done! You're ready to publish your post to the web. Go ahead, click on the publish button:

That's it your post is online, click on the view post link which appears at the top of the page:

Once your post is online, you might find a mistake - I normally do. How do you go back and edit it? Go back into the dashboard and click on Manage:

You will now see a list of posts. Click on the one you want to edit and this will return you to your post editor. When you're finished, click Save.

8. Making a page

As well as blog posts, you can also add static pages to your blog. These are made in exactly the same way as a blog post. All you need to do instead is click on Page under Write:

 9. Changing your theme

If you had a look around the various eduBuzz sites linked at the start, you might have noticed that they all look quite different. You can change the theme of your own blog by clicking on the Design tab:

From here you'll see a page full of themes to choose from. At Ross High, we seem to organically setting the Contempt theme as a standard for department pages, but there's nothing to say we have to:

10. The sidebar

The other thing you may have noticed as you surfed around the eduBuzz community, is they all have different boxes down the side containing links to different thigs. This is called the sidebar, and the different boxes are called widgets. To edit these click on Design and then Widgets:

You can add Widgets:

And edit/remove ones which are already there:

You can also drag these widgets around to rearrange their order. A good default set of widgets to start with is:

Make sure you click on Save Changes when you're done playing around with your widgets!