Reminder - Posterous Is Shutting Down - Here's What To Do Next

Like many others this morning I received a reminder from Posterous that the service will close on April 30th. If you don't export your content from Posterous by April 30th it will be gone forever. So if you have anything on a Posterous blog that you want to save, take action now.

In this post I used annotated screenshots to show the basics of how to export your content from Posterous.

In this post Wes Fryer provides detailed directions on how to import your Posterous content into WordPress.

It's Official, Posterous Is Shutting Down - Get Your Data Now

A few weeks ago when it seemed inevitable that Posterous Spaces would be shutting I wrote directions on how to deal with it. Yesterday, Posterous made its official announcement that it will be shutting down on April 30. The announcement includes some directions on how to export your data. You can also follow my annotated screenshots of the process. (click the images to view them in full size)


Step 1: Sign into your Posterous Spaces account and select "backup."

Step 2: Select the blog(s) that you want to backup.

Step 3: Enter captcha code and your email address to be notified when your backup is ready.

Step 4: Download zip file containing the contents of your blog.

One of the great things about Posterous was that students could post to a group blog via email. That option is also available in Blogger. You can learn how to set that up in Blogger in my post here.

What To Do Before Posterous Shuts Down - And How To Do It

Last March the popular blogging service Posterous Spaces was bought by Twitter. Since then it has intermittent outages (including once just before I was going to use it in a workshop), issues with its SSL certificate, and now according to TechCrunch it appears that Posterous Space is not accepting new registrations. All of this indicates to me that Twitter doesn't seem to be too interested in keeping Posterous Spaces running for much longer. For that reason I am no longer recommending Posterous Spaces as a good place for teachers and students to blog.

If, like me, you're worried about Posterous Spaces shutting down you can create a backup of your the content of your Posterous blogs to use in another blogging platform like Blogger, Edublogs, or WordPress. The backup files include your post content (except for the images in my test of it), the CSS file, and the WordPress XML file associated with your blog. I've included screenshots of the process below. Lifehacker also has written directions for moving content from Posterous to WordPress, Blogger, and Tumblr.

Step 1: Sign into your Posterous Spaces account and select "backup."

Click image to view full size.

Step 2: Select the blog(s) that you want to backup.

Click image to view full size.

Step 3: Enter captcha code and your email address to be notified when your backup is ready.

Click image to view full size.

Step 4: Download zip file containing the contents of your blog.

Click image to view full size.

If You're Worried About Posterous Shutting Down...

Yesterday, I Tweeted this story about Posterous having some issues with its SSL certificate. Those issues have since been resolved, but the fact remains that Posterous was acquired by Twitter last winter and it's not clear how long they are planning to keep the service running. If yesterday's Posterous problems and other Posterous outages over the last six months have you nervous about the long-term viability of Posterous blogs, you might want to consider moving to another blogging platform.

Posterous doesn't have an easy export option, yet (they said in March that one was coming soon). But there are a few ways that you can import your Posterous into Blogger, WordPress, or Tumblr. (Blogger and WordPress would be my first choices). Lifehacker has detailed directions on how to do it. Rather than rehashing what they wrote, I'll encourage you to click through to their directions. 

Easy Group Blogging With Posterous Spaces

Posterous Spaces was bought by Twitter earlier this year, but it appears to still be going strong and hasn't changed at all since it was acquired by Twitter. One of the things about Posterous that I have always liked is the ease with which you can create a group blog.

In Posterous Spaces you can allow people to make contributions to your blog by simply sending an email to "yourblog'sname" @ posterous.com. For example, if I created the blog "awesomeblog.posterous.com" I could allow others to contribute to the blog by simply sending an email to "awesomeblog@posterous.com." You can choose to moderate or not moderate those contributions. From an administrative standpoint, using the email method of contributing to a group blog is much easier than having to enter permissions for each person you want contributing to your group blog.


Applications for Education
Accepting email contributions to your Posterous Spaces blog means that don't have to spend time walking students through creating log-in credentials for another service. Simply have students send an email to "yourblog'sname" @posterous.com and their posts can appear on the blog. It's the quickest way that I have found to get a classroom full of students contributing to one blog.

7 Tools for Collaboratively Creating Image Galleries

This morning I received an email from a reader who had taken a group on a tour of historic places in Boston and was looking for some suggestions for ways to create a collaborative image gallery. Writing a response to that email got me thinking about some ways to collaboratively create image galleries. The following tools could be used by you and your students to create galleries of images captured while on a field trip. These tools could also be used to collaboratively create galleries of Creative Commons and Public Domain images.

ZangZing is a free service for creating collaborative online photo albums. There are many services that allow you to do this now, but what makes ZangZing different is that you can pull in the photos you already have on other photo sharing sites. You can pull in photos from Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, Instagram, and other popular photo sharing sites. You can also email photos directly to the album(s) you create on ZangZing. Each collaborative album you create on ZangZing has its own privacy setting so that you can create a combination of public and private albums within your account.

Drop Event is a free service for creating public and private group photo albums. To create a group photo album you do need to register for the service, but contributors to your photo album don't need to register. When you create your photo album it is assigned an email address that contributors can send photos to through email. To invite people to contribute to your album, just give them the email address assigned to your album.

If there is such a thing as "old and reliable" in Web 2.0 tools, Flickr qualifies. Using Flickr you can create public and private image sharing groups. There are two public group settings. You can create a public group that anyone can join, contribute to, and view. You can also create a public group that anyone can view, but only invited members can contribute to. Finally, you can create a private group that only invited members can contribute to and only invited members can view the images. Of course, all contributors will need to have a Flickr/ Yahoo account (Yahoo owns Flickr) to contribute to the group galleries.

Drop Mocks just might be the simplest tool for constructing an image gallery and slideshow that I've come across. To create an image gallery with Drop Mocks just go to their site and drag images from your desktop onto the Drop Mocks canvas. Then click on an image to have it featured while the other images are blurred in the background. Click another image and it will come into clear view while the previously featured image fades back into the background. You can share your Drop Mocks gallery by giving people the url assigned to it. To create and save multiple galleries sign into Drop Mocks by using your Google Account. You do need to be using a WebGL compliant browser for Drop Mocks to function correctly.

If you want to create a small gallery to which each student contributes his or her favorite picture from a field trip or favorite picture to represent something they learned online, have them add those pictures to a Wallwisher wall. Have students use the 160 character text box to add descriptions or discussion prompts to the images that they add to the wall.

Create a collaborative Google Map and have students geo-locate images on the map. If you're teaching something like the Civil War have students find images of important people and places and add those images to the map. If you're students are reading a novel or other work that mentions a lot of location, have students add images of those places to the map. And if you're taking students on a field trip that will stop at multiple locations, have them geo-locate the images that they capture.

Even though it was bought by Twitter a few months ago and it's future is uncertain, for now Posterous Spaces provides the simplest way to build group blogs. You could use Posterous Spaces to have students contribute images to a blog organized around an event or a theme. You can create a blog and allow your students to contribute to it by simply sending emails with image attachments to the blog's name. For example, I could create a blog titled fieldtriptoportland.posterous.com and allow students to contribute to it via email by sending a message to fieldtriptoportland@posterous.com. To contribute my students won't have to register on Posterous at all if I allow email contributions.

Creating an Online Classroom With Posterous - Guest Post

© Nathan Hall

Before becoming an English language teacher, I had primarily worked in the photographic industry as a salesperson, manager, and teacher/trainer. I was a prime example of the old adage, “those who don’t, teach” since I don’t have an artistic bone in my body (I blame my older sister for taking all the talent with her when she was born). My focus was on the technical skills, helping people learn how to use their cameras, especially during the seismic shift from film to digital. Once I started teaching English, I thought I would never again have the opportunity to use my photographic knowledge in the classroom. I was wrong.

Shortly after moving to a new city and starting a new teaching position at a language school, I was approached with the idea of starting an English and photography class. I had never even considered the idea before, but since I was in the middle of a curriculum development class for my MA TESOL, I thought it might be an idea to explore further. I scratched out a few ideas and started planning my course with the idea of integrating the four main language skills into a content-based photography class. Knowing that it would involve a fair amount of technology, I sought out a place online for the students and myself to post and share what we were learning and creating during the course. It would be a spot where I could post classwork, lectures, and homework and the students could share their creative projects, presentations, and homework. That was when I came across Posterous.


There is a plethora of blogging and online website creation options such as Wikispaces, Blogger, Wordpress, etc., but I wasn't overly impressed with how each of these sites handled images and documents and didn't feel that they were simple enough for what I was asking the students to do in the class. I wanted a place where photos could be displayed in a gallery type viewer, presentations could be watched, and documents such as PDFs could be read and downloaded. Sure, some of these sites could do this with the help of other online tools such as Flickr, Picasa, or Scribd, but I wanted it to be straightforward and simple for the students.

With Posterous, I can integrate photos into the post as a gallery, upload documents and presentations directly into the post for the students to view and download, and students can contribute and comment. All of this could be done without third party plugins or storage limits.

The following are some of main features of Posterous I think that could be useful in the classroom.


Mobile use: With mobile apps for iOS and Android, it is easy for students to read, post, and comment directly from their smartphones. Students even posted pictures and did homework directly on their phones. Also, each Posterous site is automatically created into a mobile site making it easy for the teacher to create interactive classroom sites that students can view anywhere. I even have some of my students doing their homework on the bus ride home. 

© Nathan Hall

Embedded files: Posterous automatically embeds files such as videos, audio files, documents, and photos without installing any plugins or using HTML codes. Photos are put into a gallery that can be viewed fullscreen, PPT presentation are converted and can be played fullscreen as well, and videos and audio files are put into their own players to be used directly on the site. This is really helpful when you want to have students give presentations on a SmartBoard, give them listening homework, or you just want to use something in class. Also, there is no limitation on the amount of space you can use for the files.

Simplicity: Everything on the site is meant to be used with the minimum amount of learning. While other sites are more flexible in regards to expansion and customization, the functions of Posterous are more than enough for a class site while making it easy on learners to use.

Integration with social media: Posterous allows for autoposting to various social networks and also has links at the bottom of each post for sharing on Twitter and Facebook. This can be turned off quite easily if the teacher wants to remove it. I found it was nice for students to be able to share their work on their favorite social network and gave them a sense of pride regarding their work.


Email posting: This is an excellent option if a teacher doesn't want to make students register for Posterous. I had one class where I had the students email in their homework to the site instead of web posting. The email posts did not appear on the site unless I moderated it. This way, I didn't have to give my students my email address and they could ask questions at any time. Email posts with attachments will automatically embed the files into the post.

Posting information from other sites: Posterous has a wonderful bookmarklet that allows users to post text, videos, or photos directly from other sites. This can be used in a WebQuest style format and then students can comment on each others discoveries.

Price: Free. Can't get any better than that. Oh, and ad free, too.


Posterous can also be a helpful tool for professional development. Our school has started using a Posterous site for teachers to share ideas and post questions. The ease of adding and removing contributors to the site make it a great place to collaborate on and search for ideas to use in the classroom. Teachers can also have separate sites as well to share their ideas to educators beyond their own school.

No, Posterous isn't perfect, but it certainly works much better than most of the tools out there, even those you have to purchase. As education moves more and more online, sites such as Posterous could play a valuable role for smaller institutions that can't afford a large scale integrated IT operations.

Have you used Posterous in the classroom? What has been your experience? Do you have anything to add?


About the Guest Blogger
Nathan Hall is an ESL instructor with Global Village Calgary in Alberta, Canada. He will be completing his MA TESOL at Trinity Western University in April 2012. He has taught in five countries, including 4 years in Klaipeda, Lithuania as an English in the workplace instructor. He is an advocate for using technology in the classroom and has given various PD sessions on the topic. He can be found online on his blog, nathanhall.ca and on Twitter, @nathanghall

How to Get Started Using Posterous Spaces

Yesterday, in preparation for a workshop I'm running this week I created a new set of slides demonstrating the basics of creating a blog on Posterous. As I mentioned last month, this semester I am using Posterous to have my students contribute to a group blog in which they summarize what they learned each week.



If you're introducing other educators to Posterous, please feel free to use these slides. All I ask for is attribution. These slides have been added to my page about creating blogs and websites.