The Edublogger - Help with Blog Audit

[Sue Waters]

James Farmer from Edublogs (“the largest education community on the Internet” where you can sign up for a free WordPress-powered blog ), invited me to be the editor for The Edublogger (set up by Edublogs) and dedicated to helping educational bloggers with using emerging technologies in education, share their own experiences and promote the blogging medium.

It is a great honour but a definite step up in my blogging. I would really love it if community members could check out The Edublogger and provide feedback. There is need for some tweaking as it is a new blog. Some features I will not be able to change e.g. the header.

Things that are concerning me are the tagline. Thinking it could be better? Not sure if all the words I have used on the About page are the best use. e.g. I ended up using the words emerging technologies because Web 2.0 was too limiting but expanding to e-learning, mlearning, web.20 was too lengthy. Have I missed any important widgets? Features etc?

[Christine Martell]

Hi Sue,
Overall the blog looks great. Don't think anything NEEDS to change, but here were a few things I wondered about.

Tagline--- are you going to be publishing or trying to build a community? This tagline implies you will be pushing great stuff out to me. Yet, I experience your engagement with the blogosphere to be more community focused than that. What really stands out to me about you is your amazing ability to recognize what others need to know and to boil down vast stores of information then use that to engage others. You certainly don't just push info...... it's a real gift you have. I don't know that the tag line quite captures that differentiator yet.

I'd like to see the search up higher. Mainly because I use it more on your site than most others. I remember details about what you write, and often the witty headlines, but I don't necessarily remember which ones go together. And you have such great info, I find myself searching on your blog rather than just bookmarking everything you write.

Recent comments will be important, since you get a lot of interaction and it will be good to show that.

Having the automatic notification and RSS and email is a bit confusing, but probably because I know they are the same. I suspect this section isn't aimed at me though......

Date archives don't make any sense to me. I never use them on any site. I assume edutags are the tag clouds and such in Wordpress 2.3. A bit unclear now, but that will change as they get populated. And will be helpful. No categories? Do you plan on using just tags? I would suggest both, just because of the sheer volume you publish. We need all the help we can get to find all your wise bits.

When you get enough, I think best/popular posts will be helpful.

Like the new photos you are using of yourself. So jealous you can get real Cadbury. We can get some here, but my favorite one----the chocolate filled with mint doesn't come to the states unless someone visits NZ.

What strikes me about the About page is the same as the tag line......the piece about how you engage with the community isn't really captured. It seems to be more about what you write about than who you are. And who you are is what makes your blogs stand out. How you have that deep knowingness about how to really deliver VALUE to other people. It probably just seems normal to you....but it's really not. Most of us miss that essence even when we try.

Looking forward to seeing how this develops. It's great to see you getting recognition. Hope you'll still talk to us when you are more famous.

[Sue Waters]

Wow - thanks Christine. This is all such great feedback although not sure how can capture the essence of community focus more in the tagline and on the About page. Any thoughts on how to change wording to achieve this?

What aspects of automatic notification, RSS and email is confusing you? Will put the search up higher. Recent comments are currently being shown.

For me, there is no other chocolate that compares to Cadbury. Definite unique taste.

Yes, edutags are the tag clouds - thinking James choose Edutags to link well with the name Edublogs. Will be adding the categories but as a drop down menu.

Can't see anyway you will be able to shut me up. Cause that is who I am but more importantly the people I truly admire are those that make time to connect with others. This is the part of me I never want to change.

[Christine Martell]

Hmmm. Maybe something along the lines of assisting the edublogging community or Inspiration for the edublog community? Switching the focus from the vehicle or topics to the benefit (assistance/inspiration).

When I looked at the RSS I wondered why the repetition......so I asked aren't they the same? Then I thought about it for a minute, and realized they are but appeal to different audiences? Partially a visual thing......appears to be three options, but it's really two. Certainly not a problem per se.

[Sue Waters]

Thanks for the feedback re-community. Will keep thinking how to make changes.

RSS - I thinking the RSS icon at the top of the page is confusing. I can remove this one.

[Simon Thomas]

Hi Sue, something I noticed straight away is that there's no way of contacting you via the blog. I'm not sure if this is intentional or not, but it also seems to have been mentioned by one of your commenters, and is something I'd expect to see.

I think I agree with Christine regarding the subscription options. Going down the right hand side of the page you have the small RSS button above the header, then you have the "Subscribe via RSS" section, image and link, then the "What is RSS?" section with link and then the "Subscribe by Email" section and form. If I wasn't familiar with the terminology (I don't know enough about your audience to say whether they will understand it or not) I'd be wondering what subscribe means and what the difference between RSS and email is.

The only other, really minor thing I would say is that the "Home" link goes green and deactivates when you're on the homepage, which is fantastic from a usability point of view, but the other page links don't.

Overall, it looks great and it seems you do a fantastic job of engaging your audience.

[Sue Waters]

Hi Simon

Have thought a lot about the contact information and normally I would have it. Trouble is The Edublogger is about helping people but not about customer support. Edublogs has a large number of blogs - I'm worried that people who are unable to find the link for customer support will start contacting me. I do have a link to my own personal blog on the site - which has my contact. Perhaps I could add my contact information but state if you need support here is where you need to go.

Looks like I need to remove the top RSS. Bummer just changed the wording - I had the Title Want Automatic Notification and then changed it to What is RSS. Have changed it to "Automatic Notification". It is position between the RSS feed and the Subscribe by email. Is there a better order? I did move search to the top of the Side Bar as suggested by Christine.

Also between your visit and Christine - I changed Edutags to Tags. Not sure can do anything about the links of pages as it is a standard template.

Thanks for feedback - I am really appreciating how our community is supporting one another.

[Simon Thomas]

The approach I've seen other blogs take is to have some text explaining that there are mechanisms in place to keep up to date with the latest content, and then explain that they can do this via RSS, explaining what RSS is briefly, or email, and then explain what the implications are. If your readers aren't that familiar with the internet and/or blogging, it's always worth pointing out that subscriptions are free and they can un-subscribe at any time. Many people think subscriptions are similar to magazine subscriptions which cost money and are difficult to get out of.

I can see your point for not having contact details, but it's made me curious. Is this blog the/an official front for the edu blogs network? If so I can see you getting lots of requests for support. You can head most of these off at the pass by having some text on your contact page that points people in the right direction for technical support, or even direct them to a FAQ/tutorial page, if there is one. If you end up getting a lot of the same sort of questions, or lots of support questions, you can always set up an auto-responder on the email address that replies to the contact request automatically with usefull links and resources. But many find that approach too cold (although it clearly works).

[Sue Waters]

I do have the text explain the different methods of subscription - which is located under the title Automatic Notification - however you make excellent points about explaining subscription is free and you can unsubscribe at any time. I will make the changes. The information I have is located here.

Edublogs does have several blogs on its network that are for the company however I agreed that I should add the contact page. So will add it later and let you know.

Thanks for all your help I really appreciate it.