This is a bit of a babble, but it explains the process I went through to help BestPrep Blog.
Today started out a little differently than I planned. We needed a Plan B for a blog for the BestPrep Tech Integration Workshop. I have had success with blogging with Edublogs, so I set Plan B into motion. I created a free Edublog for BestPrep. While I was used to running a district account with the possibility of data import, I started creating users by hand. I added the BestPrep workers and fellow Tech Integration Specialists. I had their emails, so I was able to create accounts they could authenticate themselves. But, the 100 participants were another story. I didn’t have a list of their emails. Even if I did, we didn’t know which email they are checking over the summer. They would have had to go check their mail, log in, and change their passwords. Instead, I used the Google+ method to create accounts. (You can read Edublog’s description of this process here: http://help.edublogs.org/2009/02/27/creating-student-accounts-using-one-gmail-account/) I made each participant’s username the name listed in the program. But, instead of personalizing their emails, I added their name to my Google email. In this method, you type the beginning of your username + more text. This sends individual emails to one email inbox. 100 emails arrived. With the help of two other Tech Integration specialists, we reset each participant’s password. Then, by the time the blog was introduced, each participant was ready to go. The moral of the story? By this afternoon, BestPrep was blogging! You can follow their posts here. http://bestprep.edublogs.org/
Thank you, Edublogs!