Hebrew Bible and Christian Scriptures

Instead of ‘Where’s Wally’ we’ve had a case of ‘Where’s Sue?’

Sorry but I’ve been really busy writing bi-weekly posts on our Teacher Challenge blog.

So I’ve decided that you’d might like to see that types of posts and activities we’ve been doing on Teacher Challenge blog by cross-posting our post on Enhancing posts with images here.

I’ve kept the post as is so you can see exactly how participants are stepped through tasks.

But first I’ll tell you a bit more about the Teacher Challenge!

About the Teacher Challenge

Teacher Challenge blog is where we do free 30 day professional development challenges that step participants through weekly tasks that increase their skills while working together as part of a global community.

The Challenge is open to anyone who wants to increase their skills – blogs are used for reflecting your progress while learning and connecting with each other.

However blogs don’t need to be hosted by Edublogs to participate!*

Participants can complete as many of the tasks as they like and in any order.  And if you missed out, it is never too late to work through the challenges at your own pace!

Our first Challenge was 30 Days to Kick Start Your Blogging and here’s where you’ll find the Beginners posts:

1. Kick Start Activity 1 – Beginner – Setting Up Your Blog
2. Kick Start Activity 2 – Beginner – Effective and engaging blog posts
3. Kick Start Activity 3 – Beginner – Introduction to working with pages
4. Kick Start Activity 4 – Beginner – Connecting with others
5. Kick Start Activity 5 – Beginner – Enhancing posts with images
6. Kick Start Activity 6 – Beginner – Enhancing posts by embedding media
7. Kick Start Activity 7 – Beginner – Getting more out of widgets
8. Kick Start Activity 8 – Beginner – Building readership and blogrolls

Our current Teacher Challenge is 30 days to get your students blogging

Kick Start Activity 5 – Beginner – Enhancing posts with images

A picture tells a thousand words.

Effective use of images grab your readers attention and encourage them to read your posts.

While a copyrighted image can grab the attention of the person whose copyright you’ve broken — and cause you considerable pain

In this fifth activity you will:

1. Be introduced to copyright
2. Learn about using Creative Commons images in posts
3. Find Creative commons images and add them to a blog post
4. Learn about uploading photos from digital cameras
5. Learn about other way of creating your own images
6. Write a blog post that includes images
7. Visit the Discussion question for activity five
8. Complete the extension activity (if you have time).

Step 1: Introduction to Copyright and using Images in posts

You can’t just use any image you like in a blog post.

Why?  Because unless stated otherwise the law automatically grants full “copyright” over any creative work a person makes.

And if you’re thinking Fair Use Laws.  Forget it!

It’s only really applicable in USA and won’t protect you from the rage that can be unleashed by someone whose copyright has been broken.

So what’s the solution?

1. Use Creative Commons images
2. Use your own photos
3. Create your own images using a range of different tools

Step 2:  Using Creative Commons Images in posts

Creative Commons images are the safest way to source images online for blog posts.

Introduction to Creative Commons

Creative Commons, founded in 2001, is an organization which provides free content license known as a creative commons license that people can apply to their work.

When you license your work with creative commons, you are giving people the permission to use it without having to ask permission, provided they use it in the manner stated in your creative commons license.

The reason people use creative commons licenses is to make it easier for everyone to share and adapt creative work without the concern of copyright infringement.

Creative commons licenses are used for books, websites, blogs, photographs, films, videos, songs and other audio & visual recordings.

And for those that are wondering, unless a blogger includes a Creative Commons license, all content on that blog is automatically the copyright of the blogger.

Creative Commons images and Flickr

One of the most common sources of Creative Commons images used by bloggers is Flickr (an online photo sharing website).

Unfortunately many assume Flickr images are licensed under creative commons and allowed to be used.

This isn’t the case; images marked as “All Rights Reserved” are copyrighted and require permission from their creator.

Images marked as “Some Rights Reserved” means a creative commons license applies.

If you look at images directly on Flickr always check to see which license applies to ensure you only use the image in the manner specified by the license.

Here’s a summary of what the Creative Commons license’s mean on Flickr:

Creative Commons and Image attribution

It’s a requirement of all Creative Commons Licenses that you attribute the original author.  This means you can’t just use a creative commons image without acknowledging the person who originally created it.

Within or at the end your blog post you must attribute the image and you must link the photo back to it’s original photo page.  We’ll show you how to do this soon!

Step 3: Finding Creative commons images and adding them to a blog post

There are several online tools that make searching Creative Commons Flickr photos less time consuming.

Here’s a couple of quick options:

1. Compfight
2. FlickrCC
3. Wylio.com

Other sources of Creative Commons images include:

1. Wikimedia Commons
2. Search by Creative Commons

Here’s how to search and add images to posts using Compfight

1.  Go to Compfight

2.  Change to Creative Commons only, choose whether to search tags or text, add your search term and click Search.

3.  Scan through the search results and click on the Photo you like so that you can view it on its photo page on Flickr.

4.  Scroll down right hand side of photo page to view License.

5.  Hold your Ctrl key and left mouse click on “Some Rights Reserved” to open up the license on a new browser tab to read terms of its license on Creative Commons.

• Only use if license is applicable for your situation.

6.  Now select View All Sizes from the drop down Action list and select the size of the photo you want to use.

7.  Right click on Image and select Copy Image Location or Copy Image URL (depends on what web browser you are using).

8.  Now go to the post you are writing inside your dashboard and click on Add an Image icon

9   In the Add an Image window click on the From URL tab
10.  Add the image URL, image title, select the image alignment, add the URL of its Flickr photo page to the Link Image URL field and then click Insert Into Post

• In this example the URL of its Flickr photo page is http://www.flickr.com/photos/53611153@N00/309709280/
• You link to its Flickr photo page as it is a requirement of Flickr’s conditions of use and so that if any one clicks on the photo they can view the original source of the image.

11.  Add the photo attribution either below the photo or at the end of your blog post.

• It’s a requirement of all Creative Commons Licenses that you attribute the original author.
• This means you can’t just use a creative commons image without acknowledging the person who originally created it.
• The text below this photo is are examples of how you can attribute an image — look closely at what websites the attributions links to!

Example 1:

Photo by Darwin Bell licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

Example 2:

Original image: ‘a piggy in the middle‘

http://www.flickr.com/photos/53611153@N00/309709280/

Released under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License

Please note:

• Some School Districts block Flickr
• In these types of  situations you’ll need to download the photo onto your computer and then upload it to your blog post.

Step 4: Uploading photos from digital cameras

Our digital cameras are designed for printing good quality photos and not for uploading directly into blog posts.

A photo from a digital camera can be as large as 2.4 MB, it’ll unnecessarily use up your blog storage space and take longer to load your image compared to an image that is resized before uploading.

It’s really important to resize them before uploading to your blog post.

The best option is to resize the photo to:

1. 450 pixels wide – if you want it to take up the full width of your post area
2. 150-200 pixels – to left or right align the image with wrapped text

Here’s some tools you can use to resize your photos:

1. InfraView – here’s how you do basic image editing using irfanView
2. Picasa – here’s instructions on resizing your photos using Picasa
3. Picture Manager – here’s detailed instructions on how to use Picture Manager
4. PIXresizer – Here’s instructions for resizing images using PIXresizer.
5. iPhoto

Now your photo is resized uploading into your blog post is as simple as:

1.  Click on Add an Image icon

2.  In the Add an Image window click on the Select Files button

3.  Locate the images on your hard drive (use your Shift or Crtl key to select more than one image).

4.  Click Open to start uploading the images.

5. While your images are uploading you will see a progress bar.

• If you upload more than one image you will need to click on the Show link to edit the image details and insert an image into a post (see below for instructions for inserting a photo gallery).

6.  In the image option screen you need to (see below for more details on each of these option):

• type a title for the image
• choose how you want the image align (None, Left, Center or Right)
• select size of image you want to insert (Thumbnail, Medium, Large or Full Size)
• and then click Insert into Post

7.  Your Add an Image window should be closed and your image should now be inserted in your post.

Step 5:  Other ways of creating your own images

Other options for creating your own images include:

1. Image Generators such as ImageGenerator.org
2. Comic Generators like MakeBeliefsComix.com,  kerpoof, ToonDoo
3. Photo Editors like Befunky, fd’s Flickr Tools
4. Tag Cloud Creators such as Wordle
5. Graph Creators including GraphJam and Crappy Graphs

Mixing up your images using these types of tools can really spice up your posts!

We hope you have fun trying some of them out!

Step 6:  Write a blog post that includes images

Now we’ve talked about images it’s time for you to show us your skills by writing a blog post that includes images.

Here’s some ideas of what you might like to write about:

1. Share what you have learnt about Creative Commons and finding Creative Commons images.  Tell us about your favorite sources of Creative Commons images.
2. Share your tips of creating your own images.
3. Write a review on ways of creating your own images using a range of different types of tools.
4. What you’ve learnt from watching how other bloggers use images in their blog posts.

Don’t forget to include images in your blog post!

And remember to leave a comment with a link to your post so we can drop past to check it out!  We like to include these links to your posts in our weekly reviews!

Step 7:  Visit the Discussion question for activity five

Step 8: Extension Activity  – the WOW! factor

Add a photo of your own to befunky or irfanview, use as many of their editing features as possible to change the look of your image completely and give it the ‘Wow’ factor ie the audience who looks at this image would just say ‘”Wow’! How did you do that?”.

Add it to your post and explain what software and features were used.

Final Thoughts

Some readers have commented that blogging in another location is making it harder for them to find my posts.   Would love to hear your thoughts?

Would you like us to be cross-posting the posts from the Teacher Challenge blog onto The Edublogger?  Would that make it easier?

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free!

Note: This post is cross-posted from the Edublogs News blog. If you like what you read, please consider subscribing here.

Did you know that the fastest and easiest way to add new features to your blog is by embedding widgets into the sidebar of your blog?

To help you out, here is a list of the most popular and most useful widgets that can be added to your blog in no time.

Scroll down to the bottom of this post for more instructions on how to add widgets to your blog. Don’t forget, these widgets can also be embedded using the HTML tab in any page or post as well!

Visitor Statistics

1. ClustrMaps - The most popular widget on Edublogs.  Displays a small map with “dots” for each of your visitors.
2. Flag Counter – Lists the most common countries that your visitors are from and shows the flag from each country.
3. Who’s Among Us – With an account, includes some nice stat collection tools.
4. My Web Counter – Simple and free visitor counters with many custom looks and designs.

Talking Avatars

1. Voki - Add a speaking and highly customizable avatar to your blog.  Record you voice, create a character, and much more!
2. Read The Words – Human avatars that will read text or recorded audio right in your blog.
3. Site Pal – A paid widget that can make scarily realistic avatars using uploaded photos of you or students.

Miscellaneous

1. Clock Link – 100’s of different and unique clocks of all types.
2. AccuWeather – The most complete collection of weather widgets to show current conditions and forecasts.
3. Box.net – Create a file dropbox or upload widget for students to submit files for your review.
4. Feed Wind – Display the latest posts from another blog anywhere on the web.
5. Sweet Search – Place a search box for a trusted and safe for students search engine.

Google Apps

*These widgets also will all work with Google Apps for Education users too!

1. Google Calendar – Embed a list of upcoming events or a month view of a public Google calendar.
2. Google Talk Chatback – Put a badge in your sidebar that lets users chat with you live when you are online. Your blog’s visitors don’t even need a gtalk account to chat with you.
3. Google Maps – Embed a Google map – complete with directions, street views, and more.
4. Google Gadgets – Choose from hundreds of different widgets, including games, trivia and more.

Multimedia

1. Flickr Slideshow and Badges - Easily add photos from your flickr account to your sidebar.
2. Facebook Photo Gallery - Show off your public facebook photo galleries right on your blog.
3. SchoolTube MVP - Share popular videos from SchoolTube.com with easy sidebar access.
4. YouTube - Place in YouTube channels or top trending videos.
5. Mixpod – Create a music play list and share it on your blog.
6. RadioTuna – Pick a genre and play music for your visitors.

Languages

1. Google Translate – Instantly translate your blog into many different languages.
2. Transparent.com Word of the Day – Audio and visual word of the day. Customizable in many of the world’s languages such as Spanish, French, German, Chinese and many more.
3. Reverso Translation – Translorts, verb conjugators, and more in many different languages.

Reading

1. Shelfari - Show off your favorite books for others to see.
2. Education Atlas – Free thesaurus and dictionary widget with many features.
3. SitePal Widgetbox – Mentioned above, but this widget will allow readers to type in or copy and paste words to be read out loud.

Science & Math

1. Science Score – A science question of the day. Students can even enter to win prizes.
2. Wolfram Alpha – Quite possibly the best resource on this list – Wolfram Alpha contains hundreds of customizable math and science widgets, including unit converters, weather tools, graphing calculators, problem solvers, and much more. This might be the only resource math and science students and teachers need for their blogs!

History

1. Info Please – Nice looking “this day in history” widget that displays multiple events and updates every day.
2. Timeline Index – 30 different timelines showcasing several different periods of history – including US presidents, world history outline, philosophers, and explorers.

Widget Sites & Collections

1. WidgetBox.com – The definite go-to place to find and build your own widgets. Edublogs uses several widgets from here on our main site!
2. SpringWidgets.com – Another great source for widgets from many of your favorite sites on the web. User reviews and comments help you find the perfect widget for your blog.
3. Widgipedia.com – Like the two sites above, wigipedia is a huge and growing collections of widgets of all types and sizes.

How To Embed

1. Choose the widget of your choice and copy the html code for it.

2.  Go to Appearance > Widgets in your blog dashboard

3.  Click on the desired Sidebar to expand (so you can add the widgets)

4.  Add a text widget to the desired sidebar by dragging it from the Available Widgets into the Sidebar area on the right.

5.  The widget will automatically open — just add the HTML code for your widget, click Save and then Close.

6.  You should now see the widget in your blog sidebar!

Related Links

• Edublogs Curriculum Corner – Embedding and using blogs with other technology
• Edublogs Support – Upgrading up to 50 student blogs to enable embedding

Since there are thousands and thousands of widgets to use, we are certain to have overlooked a few of your favorites.

Leave a comment below with any that we missed so that we can add to the list!

As promised here’s my follow up post on general blogging questions asked during Richard Byrne and my ISTE Unplugged blogging session and in comments on my What Do You Want to KNOW about Blogging? post.

The aim of the post is to help educators and students with their personal blogging.

For my responses to student blogging questions refer to What You Wanted To KNOW About Student Blogging.

Want my blog to be well read and have a great appearance

Here’s my thoughts including recommended widgets:

1. Always put the most important widgets at the top of your blog
2. Search widget – top of blog or top of sidebar
3. RSS feed using Feedburner – here’s how to add it to your blog
4. Subscribe by email using Feedburner – here’s how to add Feeburner email subscription to your blog
5. Effectively use both categories and tags on your post to make it easier to find posts – here’s the difference between categories and tags
6. Place category widget above tag widget in your sidebar
7. Consider all widgets you add very carefully.  Do you really NEED them?  Do they help or distract from your blog appearance and content?
8. AVOID excessive use of bold, italics and colored font in posts
9. Use headings, number listed, bullet lists, short paragraphs to break posts into manageable chunks– here’s my first five tips for writing better blog posts
10. Use images effectively to engage attention –- read these posts:
    • Copyright and Using Images in Blog Posts
    • Finding and Adding Creative Commons Images To Your Blog Posts
    • Uploading Photos From Digital Cameras Into Blog Posts
11. Avoid blog themes with strong colors or text that is too small that distract the reader from content and make them not want to read it
12. Choose a blog title that is immediately meaningful and relevant to first time visitors – this can make or break their decision to become a subscriber.
    • For example, the original name Mobile Technology in TAFE for my personal blog is a classic example of a REALLY bad blog title

Here’s what to consider when choosing a blog theme.

And think about using your own custom image header like I’ve done on my personal blog – here’s how to upload custom image headers

Do a first time reader audit on your blog

A good approach to improving your blog appearance is to “Do a first time reader audit on your blog” by:

1. Following Darren Rowse’s Run a First Time Reader Audit on Your Blog instructions to observe how someone who has never read your blog navigates it
2. Contacting a few experience bloggers and ask them to do a quick audit of your blog to give you advice on what works and what doesn’t

How you see your blog and what you write about is often totally different from how viewed by others

What experienced bloggers spot differ from someone who normally doesn’t read blogs.

Can you tell how many times your blog has been viewed?

Knowing how many times your blog has been view doesn’t give you a true reflection of your readership.

Blog readership is made up of two totally separate components:

1. People who visit your blog site
2. Readers who subscribe to your blog using RSS or email subscription

The number of people who read your blog by visiting your blog site is generally considerably lower than those that subscribe by RSS or email subscription.

To understand your readership and changes you need to:

1. Set up Google Analytics for your blog
2. Set up Feeburner RSS and email subscription

PostRank is also good for monitoring other engagement factors.

How can a blogger attract more readers?

Hard question because it’s a combination of factors including:

1.  Your blog’s appearance

Some bloggers write great content but:

• Their blog theme and sidebar clutter distracts readers from appreciating the great content
• Lay out of their posts makes their posts hard to read -  here’s my first five tips for writing better blog posts

2.  Type of posts and how frequently you publish posts:

Bloggers like Stephen Downes, Larry Ferlazzo and Richard Brynes all have high readership because they all:

• Have high posts frequency (post several posts per day)
• Publish posts that provide great information for their readers

As a general rule high posts frequency combined with great content increases readership faster than low post frequency with great content.

But you don’t always need high posting frequency to have high readership.

For example, some one like Vicki Davis posts less frequently but  has high readership because of her great content and amazing support of the educational community.

It’s worth checking out Post Rank’s Education list even though their list is based on engagement factors (as opposed to readership) — to check out different edublogging approaches.

3.  Connecting with others

Being a blogger isn’t just about publishing posts.

It’s also about reading others posts, taking time to comment on their posts (in meaningful ways), engaging with your readers by commenting back when they leave comments — being a good blog citizen.

A natural part of connecting with others means that more people are likely to become aware of your work.

Don’t forget that linking to someone else’s post is an important part of blogging.  Why?

Because reading posts that talks about other bloggers or their posts but doesn’t include links to them is really frustrating for readers. Readers like to follow the links and check out the information in more detail but without the links they can’t!

And when you include links to another bloggers post it sends a pingback to that blogger.  Most bloggers check out pingback to their blogs.

Here’s more information on What’s A Pingback? And How To Write Links

But please note — I can’t stress meaningful ways enough when connecting with others, writing comments or using pingbacks.

4.  How you make people aware of your posts

I know other bloggers feel uncomfortable about this as myself.

But nowadays increasingly readers are reading blog posts by links shared on twitter rather than RSS.   So it is now a good idea to tweet when you’ve written a new post.

If you’re not currently using twitter – here’s how to get started.

Bloggers are also using Facebook to connect with more readers – here’s how you do it.

How do you get more people to read your blog and comment?

Increasing readership doesn’t necessarily lead to more comments.

As a general rule if you publish several post per day readers are less likely to comment on posts than if you publish posts two or three times per week.

Scheduling posts several days apart gives readers time to process your posts and means they are more likely to write comments.

However, it does all depend on how you’ve written your post.  Has your post invited a response?

There are skills to writing posts that make readers want to comment — my Comment Count post should give you some ideas.

What are your best practices to ensure uninterrupted publishing posts?

We’re all always busy — so time can be a challenge.

The key is work out what routine works best you and set up a system that helps you.

For example, decide how often you want to publish posts?  Several times daily, once daily or a few times a week?

As a general rule writing a post 2-3 times a week is more achievable for most educators.   So how you do it is decide that Tuesdays and Thursdays are the days your posts will publish.

And to make life easier you can write the posts at the same time and then schedule to post on those days.

Some bloggers also find using a calendar where you plan the topic of your posts helps.  While I’ll also use Google Document which I update with new post ideas.

How do you determine “worthy” topics to attract readers

Really gets back to the reason why you blog.

For many edubloggers blogging is a bit about their readers and a lot about their own personal needs to reflect on what they are learning or what they want to share.

One of the commonest mistakes I see made by new blogggers is focusing on what they think their readers want to read.

My advice is forget about your readers and focus on your own needs.  You’ll be more passionate and it’ll come through in your posts.

And never assume that someone’s already written what you’re saying.

Have bloggers block.  How do I get going again, post length, finding my voice etc

Don’t feel alone — we all suffer from it at some stage.

Some find having a break helps.

Whereas breaks don’t help me and the best solution is to force myself to write the post (any post) to get back into my blogging routine.

Post length

Post length is an interesting topic.  As a general rule shorter posts are more likely to get comments while longer posts are more likely to be bookmarked.

It’s really about what works for both you and your readers.

For example, this post is definitely too long but I didn’t want to break into a series of posts because I normally post twice weekly.  Would it have been better as separate posts for each question?  Probably!

Finding your voice

Each blogger has their own distinct writing style which we often call their voice.

Once you’ve got your blogging routine back I’m sure you’ll find your voice comes back with it.

Final thoughts

Thanks to everyone who submitted questions.

Would love to hear your thoughts!

1. What did I miss in my responses?
2. Do you have any other questions on blogging you would like answered?

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Can you help?

I’ve promised to follow up What You Wanted To KNOW About Student Blogging with a post that  focuses on responses to more general blogging questions.

The aim of the post will be to help educators and students with their personal blogging.

But first I really love to know what you really want to know about blogging or have always wanted to ask.

Please leave a comment to tell me the questions you would like answered about blogging such as:

1. What would you like to know more about?
2. What have you always wondered or been trying to work out?
3. What have you been struggling with?

And to make sure I don’t miss any really important topics

– please feel free to also share your most important tips for new bloggers.

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Our Edublogger, Sue Waters, and Richard Byrne from FreeTech4Teachers.com will be co-hosting an ISTE Unplugged session on Wednesday June 30 from ISTE 2010 in Denver!

Anyone can tune in and participate in this live event which will start at 12:30pm Mountain Time.

If you have questions for Richard or Sue Waters about blogging, please join them in the Elluminate session.

If you like, you can submit your questions ahead of time through the Google form embedded below.

To listen in to the live stream, visit isteunplugged.com and scroll down to near the bottom of the page for the Elluminate link (which isn’t published yet, but will be before the event).

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We hope that you can make it!

Final thoughts

This post was adapted from Richard Bryne’s post by Ronnie and posted with permission from Richard.  Thanks Richard!

We already have questions coming in.

So far the questions are mainly about student blogging, which is great.

We’re also more than willing to answer questions about general blogging issues such as comment moderation, post length, finding your voice, etc.

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Spam commenters driving you currently crazy?

You’re not alone — and lots of people have been asking me for advice lately.

So let’s first talk a little on the WHAT and then on ‘the how to deal with them’.

What Are Spam Commenters?

The main reason why people write spam comments is to provide links to promote their web site(s).

Common spamming techniques include:

1.  Creating pingbacks to blog post

2.  Adding links to their web site in the comment and/or the URL

Easiest option is to use Comment Blacklist or Comment Moderation

It’s as simple as:

1.  Go to Settings > Discussion

2.  Add the spammer’s URL, email address, IP address or word(s) commonly used to the Comment Blacklist field or Comment Moderation field

• If you are concerned genuine comments might be blocked you use the Comment Moderation Field

For example, IP address 69.174.246.208, their website and/or car details such as Acura or radiator would work for this comment spam

And it might look like this:

3.  Click Save Changes at bottom of page

Now any pingback that contain any of these words in its content, name, URL, e-mail, or IP is automatically:

1. Held in your moderation queue (if you used comment moderation) – where you can decide if to approve or delete them.
2. Marked as spam and you won’t receive an email notification (if you used comment blacklist)

Alternatively you could also use Akismet – here’s instructions for setting up and configuring Akismet!

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Recent changes to Facebook may have stopped the import of your blog post feeds.

Which is frustrating as  some readers are more comfortable, and prefer to read posts, and comment on them, in Facebook rather than on blogs.

Facebook normally checks your feed every few hours and automatically adds any new blog posts to your Facebook notes.

If your blog feed is no longer being imported into Facebook the solution is to cancel your current blog import and then reimport it.

Not currently feeding your posts into Facebook?

Here’s our instructions on How To Import Your Blog Posts Into Facebook

Here’s how to restart your blog import:

1.  Log into your Facebook Account

2.  Click on Profile

3.  Click on Notes tab

4.   Click on the title of one of your posts or notes

5.  Now click on My Notes

6.  Click on ‘Edit import settings’

7.  Click on Stop Importing

8.  Now add back in your Feed URL, agree to their conditions to import feed and then click Start Importing

9.  On the preview of your imported blog page click Confirm Import if you are happy with the Preview.

Final Thoughts

Not currently feeding your posts into Facebook?

Here’s our instructions on How To Import Your Blog Posts Into Facebook

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Nathan Toft’s response “this must be one of the top ten things to figure out about blogging” to my How To NOT Have Problems Uploading Photos And Using Up Storage Space post has me thinking.

What would my “top ten things to figure out about blogging” list be for new bloggers? And how would my tips compare to others?

Can you help us create a list of “top things to figure out about blogging” for new bloggers?

Please leave a comment to tell us:

1. What are your 3 (or more) most important things a new bloggger needs to know?
2. Alternatively, tell us what you don’t understand or want to know more about in terms of blogging?  So we can help you!

Thanks to Nathan Toft for inspiring this post!

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This is probably one of those posts where not everyone is going to agree with what I say or why I say it

But it’s one of the most common traps for new people — so we do need to discuss our views!

Here’s what I say:

It’s really great to love someone else work!

But you can’t copy and paste large sections or complete articles from other bloggers posts directly into posts on your blog or website.

You don’t do it for a few reasons.

Firstly if a blogger doesn’t include a Creative Commons license it means every thing that is written on their blog or website is automatically copyright.  Direct copying  of large sections or their complete article is only allowed with permission from that blogger.

Secondly most people consider it breaking blogging etiquette and a form of plagiarism.

Yes, publishing content online is about sharing and collaborating but it’s important to remember it can take considerable time for the original person to create that content.  Copy and pasting their content takes you seconds.

It might be harsh words but think of it as no different than copy and pasting a school assignment.

The whole idea of sharing is you build on their original work and input your own ideas/thoughts.

Attributing Another Person’s Content

Appropriate blogging etiquette is you can use a few paragraphs of their work and attribute them as the original source by including a link to their post.

Ideally you would also write a few of your own paragraphs expand on the topic.

For example, I’ve taken a paragraph from Larry Ferlazzo’s post and used it in my own post.

Here’s how I’ve attributed his words:

Please note:

• It’s common practice to indent if you are quoting other people’s content.

Posting Content With Permission

It’s not fine to copy an entire post written by another person, even if they use a Creative commons license, and even if you have attributed them as the original source, unless they have given you permission.

Key aspects when someone gives you permission is to acknowledge the original author, the website, their permission and link to the location where the content is from.

For example, Kathleen McGeady gave me permission to republish her post on Teaching Commenting Skills on this blog.

Here’s how I acknowledged her work:

What To Do If Someone Copy/Paste Your Content

It’s generally a new person that gets caught out copy/pasting content because they aren’t aware that it isn’t appropriate.

Your best approach is to contact them privately, by email if possible,  to request them to remove your content and explain the reasons why.  Remember they are new and they didn’t realise.

Final Thoughts

So there’s my thoughts!

Feel free to leave a comment to share your thoughts:

• Do you agree?
• Disagree?
• What other important advice would you give new people?

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It’s my great pleasure to introduce our guest blogger, Kathleen McGeady, who provides important advice on teaching commenting skills (regardless of the age of your students).

About our Guest Blogger

Kathleen McGeady is in the seventh year of her career and in that short time her approach to teaching has changed greatly.

The opportunity to take Teacher Professional Leave in 2008 provided Kathleen with the time to explore the role that ICT and Web2.0 tools can play in the classroom.

Kathleen loves to find new and creative ways to use blogs, the IWB, Web2.0 tools, iPod Touches and global projects and in her classroom to enhance the learning experience of each of her students.

Kathleen is currently teaching Grade Two at Leopold Primary School in Victoria, Australia. She writes about technology integration on her blog and in Education Technology Solutions magazine.

Blogging: Teaching Commenting Skills

This was originally posted on Integrating Technology in the Primary Classroom and has been cross posted with permission from Kathleen McGeady.

I am currently in the process of introducing my Grade Two students to blogging.

Our 2KM class blog is proving to be very popular with students and families.

As I have previously blogged about, I like to follow these steps when introducing blogging to students.

This is my third year of blogging with young students and I am still learning all the time.

In previous years I believe I progressed much too quickly from having students comment on the class blog to writing posts. My students never really learned how to compose a quality comment and I believe I didn’t set my expectations of the students high enough! I was happy for them just to be commenting.

This year I am taking a different approach. Inspired by the amazing commenting skills of Mrs Yollis’ Third Grade students, I am putting a lot of effort into teaching my students how to write quality comments on posts before we move on to writing posts.

By “quality comments” I mean

• writing the comment like a letter (greeting, body, closing, signature)
• using correct spelling, punctuation and spacing,
• reading over the comment and editing before submitting,
• complimenting the writer in a specific way, asking a question, and/or adding new information to the post,
• writing a relevant comment that is related to the post,
• not revealing personal information in your comment.

I really wanted to limit the “I like your blog!!!” or “2KM is cool” type comments and I am finding this explicit teaching of what a quality comment looks like is really working.

I am teaching students commenting skills through

• modelling and composing comments together  on the IWB,
• teaching students about the “letter” format during writing lessons,
• giving examples of a poor/high quality comments and having students vote whether the comment should be accepted or rejected,
• having students read and comment on a post on our blog as part of a literacy rotation on the computer each week.

I collaborated with my teaching partner, Kelly Jordan on this poster “How Can I Write a Great Blog Comment?” to teach students about blogging skills.

We will also send a copy of this poster (as show below) home with each child.

Linda Yollis has written a fantastic article about how to teach commenting skills. It is well worth a read!

I have “borrowed” many ideas from Linda such as recording a screencast video that shows how to leave a comment on the blog. I recorded my screencast through Jing. I also used Linda’s idea of sending an email out to all parents to encourage them to leave comments.

As Linda says, “commenting is what keeps the blog alive” and “teaching and encouraging good commenting skills makes your blog more interesting for everyone.” I agree!

Final Thoughts

Thanks Kathleen for writing this guest post and for all your great work!

Please leave a comment here or on Kathleen’s post if you have any more ideas about teaching commenting skills to students!

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