Last fall when I taught “Computers in the Classroom” for pre-service education students at the University of North Texas, I used a blog on the site 21classes.com. (untcic.21classes.com) Since the free version of 21classes just permits teachers to have 10 student accounts (and I had 25 students) I opted at the time to pay $9 per month for their upgraded service. (See my August 2010 post, “Day 1 experiences with a class blog on 21classes” for more details.) At the end of the semester, I emailed 21classes.com support and requested that my account be downgraded so I wouldn’t be charged additional fees, but my class blog would remain online / accessible in the future.
As sometimes happens, I neglected to follow up on their reply and as a result have continued to be charged throughout the spring term for this blog service I wasn’t using any longer. This was definitely my fault, and something I should have remembered to take care of in January. I’m pleased to report, however, after contacting 21classes.com support again this week they have taken care of me. They refunded the charges for the months I was not using their service, and provided me with quick instructions to downgrade my account to a free version.
Many, many thanks to the support team at 21classes.com!
For more background about some of my “lessons learned” teaching pre-service education students and using (among other things) different blogging platforms, see my post, “Lessons Learned Teaching EdTech to PreService Education Students (Fall 2010.)” You also might want to check out the February 2011 posts, “Individual vs Team Blogs for PreService Edu Students (Comparing KidBlog & EduBlogs)” and “Why I Upgraded my EduBlogs Account.”
I was finalizing my chapter on “Digital Text” for my forthcoming ePUB eBook, “Playing With Media: simple ideas for powerful sharing” last night. If you are not using a blog for interactive media sharing now with your students and others, you should definitely give it a try. There are more classroom blogging options available today than ever, and it’s wonderful to have a positive support experience like I had this week with 21classes.
photo © 2008 Edelman Digital Bootcamp | more info (via: Wylio)
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