iBlog – Technology Department

How’d They Do That? ELL Department Website

October 9, 2015October 8, 2015 by WebGuy

In this guided tour we will look at how the wonderful staff in the ELL department designed their brand new department website using iBlog. Here is a run-down of what they have done so far.

What makes this site stand out is the clean design, custom menu, use of Google Drive, and static homepage. Read the rest of the tour to learn how you can implement some of these concepts in your classroom website.

Theme: ePublishing
Widgets: Subscribe by Email, Links
Custom Homepage
Custom Menu
Documents Page which links to docs in Google Drive
Contact Us Page
Websites and Resources

Homepage

Did you know that your iBlog website doesn’t have to show the posts on the homepage? Yep! You can have a nice clean homepage and have all your blog posts appear on a different page within your blog. That is exactly what the folks in the ELL department decided to do. To make this happen on your website do the following.

Create two pages: Home and News
Go to Dashboard > Settings > Reading. On the Reading Page change the Front Page Displays “Your Latest Posts” to “A static page”. Then from the drop down pick “home” for frontpage and “news” for posts page.
Be sure to scroll down the page and Save your changes.

Custom Menu

The custom menu allows you to organize links on the site. You can add links to pages, post categories, and other websites. The nice part of the custom menu is that it is all organized by drag and drop. You get to determine the order and can even create drop downs by simply moving a link to the right. Here is an image of what a custom menu looks like.

Notice the indented menu items? These are the drop downs that are generated when viewing the website. To build your custom menu you select items from the right column and add them to the menu. Once in the menu the item can be moved around simply by dragging it from place to place. Each theme is a little different so you have to tell your theme to use the custom menu. This is especially true when switching themes.

Summary

That’s it. iBlog allows you to have control over the user experience. You can customize your site as you want. Each department and teacher has the ability to create a fantastic experience for the viewer.

Slimming Paint

September 16, 2015 by Troy Patterson

There is an issue with slimming paint. Wait. Why would you care about slimming paint? Or maybe, what is slimming paint? Technically, slimming paint is a project to re-implement the Blink<->cc picture recording API to work in terms of a global display list rather than a tree of cc::Layers (~aka GraphicsLayer in Blink terminology).

Clear? Now that we have that out of the way, what it means is that using Chrome 45 and iBlog and lead to some intermittent issues with the display of the Dashboard. Items in the Dashboard may move out of place. This can be frustrating.

We expect a Chrome update will fix this soon.

iBlog has been updated – WordPress 3.9

April 22, 2014 by WebGuy

iBlog has been updated to the latest version of WordPress – 3.9.

Here is a video showcasing some of the improvements.

Here are the highlights that will be most apparent…

A smoother media editing experience

Improved visual editing

The updated visual editor has improved speed, accessibility, and mobile support. You can paste into the visual editor from your word processor without wasting time to clean up messy styling. (Yeah, we’re talking about you, Microsoft Word.)

Edit images easily

With quicker access to crop and rotation tools, it’s now much easier to edit your images while editing posts. You can also scale images directly in the editor to find just the right fit.

Drag and drop your images

Uploading your images is easier than ever. Just grab them from your desktop and drop them in the editor. You can also upload regular files such as PDF’s or Word Docs.

iBlog Inspiration – Check out these teacher websites

November 7, 2013 by WebGuy

Every now and then it is good to see what others are doing. iBlog is great for posting homework and classroom communications. I found a few exceptional websites and hope these can spark some creative ideas for you.

https://iblog.dearbornschools.org/takata/unit-videos/
Amazing use of iBlog and Google. Check out this impressive list of Unit Videos for Science. Very neat and nicely displayed for students.
https://iblog.dearbornschools.org/harrison/
Want to see what a site geared for Blended Learning looks like? This site demonstrates the powerful features and what is possible beyond posting homework and announcements. Definitely worth poking around and clicking on things. This website is also connected to the teacher’s iLearn classes where the blended learning occurs.
https://iblog.dearbornschools.org/9thgradealgebra/
Great way to explain Learning Targets covered during the day, SLOT (Sustained Learning Over Time), Classwork, and Homework.
https://iblog.dearbornschools.org/mrsj/
Nice example of how to handle multiple grade levels and mulitple classes from a single blog.
https://iblog.dearbornschools.org/krawczykam/
Cute concept “A Peek at our Week” for parents. Outstanding elementary blog with a simple layout that is very easy for parents to follow. Lots of photos and fun stuff for parents and students.
https://iblog.dearbornschools.org/farhoud/
I really like the way this blog displays daily classwork: Bellwork, Objective, Notebook Activity & Discussion, Classwork. Really lets the parents and students know what is being taught in the class.
https://iblog.dearbornschools.org/msfakhoury/
Cute theme choice for elementary. Teacher is using the iBlog (WordPress) App for easy posting of photos.
https://iblog.dearbornschools.org/grecoj/
Pinterest – like theme! Looking good.
https://iblog.dearbornschools.org/baydoui1/
Very nice theme that looks like a journal.

iBlog Email Newsletter Issue

September 4, 2013 by WebGuy

There is an issue with the Subscribe by Email plugin for iBlog. We are aware of this and are diligently working on a solution. We will post an update as more information becomes available.