… if you have a blog site, log in and notice that there are some nice menus on the top of the screen to help with navigation. (Thanks, Kevin, for upgrading our blog site!)
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Just a quick note –
When you are trying to upload photos to use in your blog posts, the picture must be in .jpg, .gif, or .png format.
1. You can change your file type by using the Paint program (found usually in the Start menu under Start–>Accessories–>Paint) or any other graphics program and click Save As.
2. Change the file type of the image file to any of the three listed above and save.
3. Upload the new image file to the blog.
You can also use websites, such as Online-Convert.com, to change one type of image file to a new type.
When I read through my RSS feed on Google Reader (linked in case you’d like to start using GR yourself), there usually are articles about blogging by various people that pop-up. Many of these articles are very informative with various hints and tips, so I thought sharing these articles would be helpful for our teacher leaders that blog.
- 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger (wiki)
- 31 Days to Building a Better Blog (wiki)
- 10 Ways to Write Better Blog Posts (Wesley Fryer)
- 30 Days to Kickstart Your Blogging (Larry Ferlazzo)
Writing Prompts
If at the end of the year, you wish to turn your blog into a book format, you can use Blog Booker (http://blogbooker.com/). This should work with our site, since it is based on WordPress.
You can use Curate.Us (http://www.clp.ly) (http://curate.us) to create a shortened URL and a thumbnail image of the webpage to share with others through a embed code.
Clipped from: bestpractices.oswegoboces.org (share this clip)
If you need to change information on a user you have already entered into your blog database, please go to the “Users” section of your dashboard menu, and try editing information of your user in that area. Deleting the user will not solve the problem… In fact, it’ll create a bigger headache as you will not be able to reuse the username. The user will be deleted from your teacher blog site, but it does not delete out of the school blog database.
If you are unable to edit the information, please contact me and I will have the changes made as soon as possible.
Thank you for your attention!
Here are instructions on how to import users into your blog:
1.) Log in to your blog site, go to your blog’s (your username’s) dashboard, and click on Tools in the menus on the right-hand side.
2.) Click the last item under Tools: DDImport-Users
3.) Use this template for importing users:
(If you want, copy & paste this to make it easier!)
Username|FirstName|LastName|password|email|Subscriber
An example of what these could look like after inputting data:
user1|Peter|Pan|Apple|ocbblog+1@gmail.com|Subscriber
user2|Cinderella|Princess|Orange|ocbblog+2@gmail.com|Subscriber
user3|Tinkerbell|Fairy|Peach|ocbblog+3@gmail.com|Subscriber
If you want to add another teacher, do this separately from students so you have no conflicts for Step 4.
4.) Select the role for the user. Make sure that it matches the chosen user type in the User Data field.
5.) Click Import Users. The messages displayed will indicate if the user additions were successful. Note any issues, and if they cannot be fixed, please send them to Peri.
6.) If any editing of users needs to take place after they were added, this will take place in the Users section of the administration dashboard (the section above Tools).
Roles are as follows:
Subscriber – Allows for people to leave moderated comments
Contributor – Allows for people to leave moderated posts and comments
Author – Allows for people to leave unmoderated posts and comments
** A HUGE thank you goes to Kevin Boutelle for his help with these instructions!
As this blog progresses, there will be many, many more resources to pass along. Here is a quick start to a resource list. Some of the resources are items that will help you embed items, some to give background information, and others to give support to you and your blogging project:
General Support
- WordPress
- Support Blogging Wiki
- Legal Guide for Bloggers
- Blogging Basics: Creating Student Journals on the Web
- Dear Parents: Moving to a Classroom Blog
- Web Literacy and Differentiated Teacher Blogs
- Why I started a blog and why maybe you should too
Discussions about Blogging
- 21st C. Literacies – It’s All in Blogging
- Blogs as Web Based Portfolios
- Student Bloggers & History class
- What You Wanted to Know About Student Blogging
- From The Salamander’s Point of View (Idea for Blogging)
- 64 Different Kinds of Blog Posts to Keep Your Writing Fresh
Embedding
There are many different uses for teacher blogs in the blogosphere. Some are informative while others are collaborative. Some are straight text while others embed videos, podcasts, and sound files. How you set up your blog is up to you; however, here are some examples of teacher blogs that may spark some ideas.
- United States History Classes
- English Literature 12 – Class Notes
- Mrs. Baird’s Math Class
- The History Chef
- Hatak’s AP Chemistry Podcast
- Deaf Video TV
- Mathematics and Multimedia
- Math Intervention Blog
- Teaching the Civil War with Technology
- Science Teaching Tips
- Extreme Biology
- Shakespeare Cast
- dy/dan
- Division by Zero
- Intermediate English Class
- Portable Radio
This blog will be for various tutorials and helpful hints for our users with the blogging software.
If you ever have a question, concern, or would like to know how to use something, please leave a comment here, or email me at pnelson@oswegoboces.org.
Spam Comments
This probably will not affect most of you out there…
If you have a blog that accepts comments (and make sure they are moderated!) from anyone out there who fills out the comment form, you may be receiving spam comments.
Kevin B. says:
“Spam comments in blogs should be marked as spam. There is no way to prevent getting them but you can help WordPress determine spammers by specifically marking the comments as spam. This way the commenter and all the details about that commenter are added to a universal spammer pool that WordPress uses to assist WordPress users with preventing spam.”
The graphic below shows where to click to send comments to spam:
