If you are looking for a free, friendly service to host your webpage, I have been
using Wikispaces for some time now and am happy with it. They have a service just
for educators. Here's the link:
http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers
Gail Brewster
Media Specialist
Moline High School
Moline, IL 61265
gbrewste@molineschools.org
Phone (309) 743-8901
Fax (309) 757-3484
http://mhsav.wikispaces.com/
_____
From: Michelle Walker [mailto:michellekwalker@GMAIL.COM]
To: LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Sent: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:27:02 -0600
Subject: HIT: Edublogs
Many, many members expressed similar frustration over Edublogs' new
advertising. I had a number of people ask me to share any other
information I gathered, so if you're considering the Edublog, you
might find the following useful:
(Original post at bottom)
-------------------------
Here are links to discussions on Edublogs which should probably be
read by anyone considering starting an Edublog:
http://edublogs.org/forums/topic.php?id=7445#post-22267
http://edublogs.org/forums/topic.php?id=7409#post-22104
http://edublogs.org/2008/12/09/edublogs-and-supporter/
Here you'll find some of the concerns of users (including some who
found the ads linked to inappropriate content!) and the official
position of Edublog administrators. Unless the school was willing to
pay $40/year for ad-free pages, I would NOT recommend any school use
an Edublog.
--------------------------
I too am disturbed about this. Unfortunately, I feel there is little
I can do. Edublogs is the ONLY blog site that is not blocked by our
area-wide content filter. The powers that be in charge of the filter
are not reasonable, and refuse to even entertain the idea of opening
any
other blog. I am considering paying the yearly fee myself, since my
main blog is my personal blog which I want to continue after I retire.
-------------------------
The greatest difficulty with the advertising Edublogs has added is
that there is no possible way for students and families to tell the
difference between a link you've added as the owner of the blog, and a
commercial advertisement. Granted, your links are underlined once, and
the Google ads are underlined twice, but how would any viewer know the
difference? To blog readers, it probably looked as if I had added the links.
In the first 48 hours Edublogs added the "double-underlined"
advertising (about two months ago), I saw the following appear on my
student blogs:
--an ad for a TV show with a gun as the primary image,
--an ad for an adult-oriented show with a curvaceous lady,
-a video ad for an over-the-counter medication which automatically
played when mousing over the link. Edublogs offered to report the
offending ads' URL's to have them blocked, but I simply couldn't put
myself in the position of never knowing what our blogs might link to.
By the end of that week, I decided, regretfully, that I had to stop
using Edublogs.
When I complained, I was told that I could pay to become an Edublogs
Supporter, which costs about $40 a year. There were no ads when I
signed up for my first Edublogs blog about a year ago. Even now, you
have to get pretty deep into the registration process before the fact
that students will see advertising on their blogs shows up. I have no
difficulty with paying for a good service--which Edublogs undeniably
provides--but object to being told something is free, and then being
presented with the bill.
I switched to Wordpress.com for blogging. I'm looking into
classblogmeister.com and a regional Drupal-based website builder for
student blogging.
---------------------------------
Original post:
In light of the recent HIT on Book Discussion Blogs, I wanted to share
that I just realized that Edublogs (which markets itself to teachers
and students) is now linking content from Edublog pages to
advertising. I had a student ask me why random words were "blue" on
our library's Edublog, and when I went to look, I discovered the new
ads. My personal opinion is that while I understand the need for free
sites to make a buck, and I could perhaps tolerate minimal ads, I am
very disturbed by the way Edublogs is now doing this by randomly
linking the actual words of students and teachers to advertising.
(You can pay a monthly fee to turn these off.)
Since Edublogs was recommended by several members in the recent HIT
(including by me), I wanted everyone to be aware of this issue. I
personally will be looking at other venues for our blog. You can
visit our site for an example of the new advertising:
http://hamlib.edublogs.org/.
On a possibly related note, just today I received a message to be
moderated on our blog. The comment discussed a specific book on our
blog and sounded very much like an actual student comment, but the
informaton about the sender (author and URL) were for paydayloans and
www.checkcity.com and make me very worried that we may be getting
targeted with advertising in other ways. This may just be a strange
coincidcence and may be spam unrelated to Edublogs, but the time of
this shortly following the recent change in advertising practices make
me very suspicious. Has anyone else had such a problem with
spam/advertising in comments on their Edublogs pages?
I'd be happy to take comments off-list and compile them in a HIT.
--
Michelle Walker
Co-Moderator, LM_NET and El-Announce with LM_NET Select
Librarian, Hamilton Union High School District
620 Canal Street / PO Box 488
Hamilton City, CA 95951
(530) 826-3261
http://www.glenn-co.k12.ca.us/ham-hs/library.html
michellekwalker@gmail.com
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