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Viewing My Students' Blog Under "Blogs I Follow"

  1. martensu
    Member

    ( have three classes so three similarly named blogs: en09901martens.wordpess.com
    en09902martens.wordpress.com
    en09905martens.wordperss.com

    I am a college reading teacher and am in the process of setting up blogs for my students to post their comments and then have others respond. I got them through the sign-up process and had them use (first name, last initial, and section number).wordpress.com as their blog name.

    I then had them write their blog name on paper and I went to each one and clicked "follow" from the lower right corner. I also instructed them to go to my blog site (listed above) and click "follow" in the lower right corner. A friend showed me how to go into Appearance/Widget and move the "Blogs I Follow" so that it shows up on my home page, but there are no names listed. What am I doing wrong?

    The blog I need help with is en09905martens.wordpress.com.

  2. zandyring
    Staff

    Hi there,

    When I check your site, I do see blogs listed under your "Blogs I follow" widget. Were you able to resolve this issue, or are there other blogs you want to see instead?

    Cheers!

  3. martensu
    Member

    Yes, I see there are some there now, although I'm not sure if it was something I did or they did. When they provided me with their blog addresses, I went there and clicked on "follow me" and had them do the same for my classroom site. Is that the correct procedure? The problem is that I have three classes, so I was hoping I would separate the list into three so that each class could follow their classmates' blogs and not all 75. Any suggestions on how to do that?

    Thanks for your help.

    Sue Martens

  4. auxclass
    Member

    You did correct - you will have the 75 blog mess thing - but each class only needs to follow the blogs in their own class (I am guessing here on that) so each student would only have around 25 other blogs to follow to see the other students in their class plus your blog -

    The only way to divide things up would be to use a different reader that lets you do some more grouping or have a different user name that you used for each different class to follow just that class's blogs (then you have 4 different accounts for yourself - you regular account and 3 others - one for each class)

  5. martensu
    Member

    That was my plan, so when I had them set up their blogs I told them to use this format: en09901, en09902, and en09905 (last two numbers are the section number) so they can scroll through the list and read only those in their section. If course, typical of students, some didn't follow directions. Can they change their blog name?

    Also, I thought I did set up four different accounts for myself. But since this is new, I probably didn't do it correctly. See my first post about the blog names.

  6. zandyring
    Staff

    I may be misunderstanding (in which case, please feel free to correct me!) but if you have the set up I think you do, this could be very easy.

    If you have three blogs for the three different classes, you can simply add the blogs of the students in class en009901 to the blog roll widget in blog en009901martens.wordpress.com, the students in en009902 to en009902martens.wordpress.com, and the students in en009905 to en009905martens.wordpress.com. Then just omit (or remit) the students from the course blog that they're not in.

    Now, as far as the students changing their blog names, this could mean one of two things. If it's the site title (for example, your site could be "The Greatest Site Ever!" but your blog address is greatest.wordpress.com)
    Site title can be changed at Settings -> General in your blog's Dashboard.

    Changing a blog address has more steps, and it is irreversible, so I do recommend you opt to have students change their site title. Here are the steps to change the blog address, and a bit more information in general about it:
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/changing-blog-address/

    I hope that helps!

  7. martensu
    Member

    I thought that's what I did. I went to each student's blog and clicked on "Follow me." I'll go back and retry.

  8. zandyring
    Staff

    You will want to log into each blog individually to add the students from that section. If you still seem the same full list instead of each separate blog, just let me know, and I'll look into it further!

  9. martensu
    Member

    That's what I did! I had them provide me the name of their blog, and I logged in there and clicked "follow me." I'm still working on getting everybody listed. Even though I told them the format (first name + last initial + section number = marys05.wordpress.com) about half the class hasn't done it right. The fact that half did do it right means that I told them correctly! So I'm contacting the others by Blackboard and explaining the directions AGAIN! Perhaps they should just start over and leave whatever address they have out there in cyber? I'll need to go back and re-follow everyone, I guess.

  10. martensu
    Member

    OK, I logged into en09905martens.wordpress.com (one of my student sections). Under the list of Blogs I Follow, I clicked on each one and went to their individual blog of those who are not in that section. I clicked on Unfollow to remove them from that class blog. I then went to en09901martens.wordpress.com and en09902martens.wordpress.com and went to the blogs of those I had just Unfollowed and clicked Follow while I was logged into their correct section.

    There still is a long list of students from all three sections, although the three sites do not show the same list of students! What am I doing wrong?

  11. martensu
    Member

    It looks like the maximum number that the Blogroll widget will display is 50. I have 75 students in the three classes, but 25 per class. I'm trying to figure out how to remove the students from sections 1 and 2, for example, from showing in the section 5 site. Does it take awhile for changes to effect?

  12. zandyring
    Staff

    I think that the widget that would serve your purposes is actually the Links Widget:
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/widgets/links-widget/

    The Blogs I Follow widget does, indeed, pull from all the blogs your account follows, so it will continue to show however many the widget is set to show.

    I think you'll have better luck setting up the Link Widget on each blog, populating with the correct blogs, and having your students see that curated list rather than all the blogs (as you have already mentioned).

    I'm sorry for the confusion! I didn't realize that the Blogs I Follow widget would read from all your blogs.

  13. martensu
    Member

    Zandyring,
    Yes, your suggestion worked! I deleted all the Blogs I Follow and set up the link widget on each blog and individually linked each student URL from that class. It's exactly what I wanted - students in each section see only the blogs of their fellow classmates in that section. Thanks so much for all your help!
    Suzanne Martens
    Grand Valley State University (MI)

  14. zandyring
    Staff

    Great! I'm so glad we could get that worked out for you!

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