Week 1- Setting up the LOOK of Your Blog

July 15, 2009 · Posted in Assignment 

This first week is going to focus on setting up the LOOK of your blog both behind the scenes and using templates. For these assignments, you’re invited to use the personal reflection blog that you set up in Basic Blogging or Intro to Web 2.0. If you’ve already re-purposed that blog, or you’d like to take this opportunity to switch over to Blogger, you can do that as well.

Switching to Blogger is easy. Here are a couple of short video tutorials to get you started.

 Changing Your Blog’s Settings

Comment Moderation   We’ll begin by looking at the comment moderation settings. By default, Blogger is set to “Never review comments before they are published.” This means that anyone can comment on your blog and it will be published as soon as they click they “Publish Your Comment” button. There are pros and cons for this setting. We would recommend “Always moderating your comments before they are published,” but if you’re interested in reading more about it; here are a couple of posts that address comment moderating.

Guest Bloggers – When you first decided to embark on your journey toward blogging, one of the fears expressed to us was not having enough time (and it may still be one of your top concerns.) Utilizing guest bloggers is one way to get back some of that time. Here are a couple of articles that discuss the advantages of having guest bloggers and examples of how guest bloggers can contribute.

Here’s the how-to video if you’re having trouble finding the settings to allow comment moderation or guest authors.

comment_guest

There are a few other things worth exploring in the Settings tab on your blog. This video highlights a few of them but feel free to explore on your own. Pay special attention to the portion that allows you to set up an email address to publish to your blog.

 

additional_settings

Mail-to-Blogger- The Mail-to-Blogger feature turns any email account into a blog-posting application. In Settings | Email you can create a Mail-to-Blogger address which you will use to send posts via email to your blog:

Settings | Email tab

To post to your blog via email, you need to configure your Mail-to-Blogger email address in Settings | Email:

 

mailtobloggerThe format of the email address is username.secretword@blogger.com. Note that this email address must be kept secret. Otherwise, anyone who gets it will be able to post as you.

Also be sure to specify whether or not you prefer your email posts to publish automatically. If this option is not checked, then your posts will be saved on your account but will not appear on your blog until you log in to Blogger.com and publish them yourself.

Once you have saved your Settings, you can send email to your blog. The subjects of your email letters will be the titles of your posts, and the body of the emails will be the posts themselves. To include an image in your post, you can attach an image to you your email.

Notes:

  • Sometimes email programs append text to the bottom of each sent message; to make sure this cruft doesn’t get posted to your blog, put #end at the end of your post.

(2009). How do I post via email?- blogger help. Retrieved July 13, 2009, from Blogger Help Web site: http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=41452

Playing with the Blogger Templates

There are multiple templates available in Blogger under the layout tab (Edublogs calls them themes and they’re available under the design tab.) Each time you change your template in Blogger; you’ll have to edit the html again to remove the “next blog” feature, so you may want to find one that you really like before taking the time to edit the html code.

layout

Assignment 

  1. Comment on the Introduction post with the information about yourself and the web address for the blog you’ll be using for the course.
  2. Read through this week’s blog post and watch the embedded videos.
  3. Adjust the settings on your blog to moderate comments, reflect the correct time zone, and make any other changes you deem appropriate.
  4. Use the Mail-to-Blogger feature. You can either ask a classmate, a friend, or try it out yourself. Set up the secret email address described above and give it to someone you trust to write a post or draft. 
  5. Answer these reflection questions in a blog post on your blog. 
    •  
      • What did you learn?
      • How will you use what you have learned?
      • How did you feel about this information?
      • Do you feel that comment moderation is a benefit or a detriment? Why?
      • Who did you ask to try the Mail-to-Blogger feature? Did it work? Would you use this with your students? colleagues?
      • What do you not want to forget about this week’s information?
      • What questions do you still have about blog settings and templates?
  6. We want to address your needs, so week three will include a topic of your choice. Please comment on this post with an idea or concept that you’d like to see covered in Week 3.

Optional Extension Activity

 

  1. Ask a classmate to be a guest blogger on your blog (You may do this by commenting on their blog or emailing them directly.)
  2. Accept a classmate’s request to guest blog for their blog.

 

Resources to Complete Assignment (Guides & Tutorials):

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Comments

6 Responses to “Week 1- Setting up the LOOK of Your Blog”

  1. John Kaatz on July 21st, 2009 9:00 am

    I’m thinking about a Week 3 topic. Nothing at the moment.

  2. Jennifer Hutchcroft on July 21st, 2009 10:00 am

    This week, I’ve learned how to add nifty games as widgets (and understand what a widget actually is!) I’m using this new talent to add useful links and widgets to my wiki, but still having issues with how I’m going to use the blog. I don’t know if I want to use it with my students (since we have blogging through TeacherWeb) or if I would like to keep it to be used with colleagues. I’m leaning more towards using it professionally. I think to keep up with both the blog and the wiki, I’m going to have to set aside time weekly to work on them.

    I like the comment moderation b/c I think it is important for the author of the blog to check what is being added. This would be especially important if being used with students. However, the kids like to be able to read the posts soon, so I would have the students blog either right before lunch/specials or at the end of the day so that I would have an immediate opprotunity to check their posts and upload them for them to see the next time they log in. Especially for those students who like to check it/comment at home.

    I don’t really understand the need for the mail-to-blogger feature. If I can write an email, then I would be able to log into my blog and just add a post regularly- am I missing something about how this is supposed to help me?

    The only question I have about settings and templates is please give me more! I don’t know what all is out there to be utilized, so the more ideas you have, the better:)

  3. Robin Young on July 21st, 2009 1:15 pm

    Jennifer,

    Good thoughts. We are going to explore widgets more in the next week’s assignment as well. We thought the mail-to-blogger feature was cool when you wanted kids or another person besides yourself, to post to the blog. They could email in the posting and it would be sitting there waiting for you to approve it. Just another way to guest blog and make the website more interactive.
    Keep thinking about your purpose – it will give you a head start on week 3′s assignment!

    Robin

  4. Charlotte Hanna on July 21st, 2009 6:53 pm

    Just thoughts for week 3: explaining to teachers why they would choose this type of blog instead of teacherweb. What does it do that they would need/want to use?

    How to make the my blog page have cool things (widgets, etc.) and be personalized (photos maybe), but not look cluttered?

  5. Will Waghorne on July 22nd, 2009 7:54 am

    @Hutchy – Last year I used edublogs instead of the teacherweb blog by creating a “redirect” page to blog. I may just get rid of teacherweb altogether and replace it with a blog address.

    Ideas for Week 3:

    Ideas for class/school use of the blog. I found it hard to incorporate the blog into the class for a variety of reasons last year. The mail-to-blogger feature is a good idea, but I think some more ideas to get kids posting/commenting would be a good topic.

  6. Irma Bauer on July 22nd, 2009 8:45 am

    I am back from Colorado and I have completed Week 1 assignments. My new blog on blogger is up and running. I included some pictures from my Colorado trip. I used Mail-to-Blogger to send my post on the Colorado tip. Ideas for Week 3:
    I would like to know more about using students as guest bloggers. I would want to make sure that they had meaningful posts and not just comments.
    requirement on setting up a blog?

    http://www.irmab.blogspot.com/

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