Monthly Archives: August 2008

What’s A Pingback? And How To Write Links

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Confused about what’s a pingback? It’s not surprising since the blogging term pingback often mystifies new bloggers.

Thankfully Marie reminded me of how baffling blogging terminology is when she commented “I’ve noticed some comments are entered via ‘pingback’. Can you explain what this is and how to use it?”.

What is a Pingback?

A pingback happens when another blogger writes a post and includes a link to your post in their post. When they publish their post you’ll normally receive an email notification letting you know they have referenced (i.e. linked to) your post. The email notification commonly includes an extract from the post they’ve written, a link to their post and a link to the post you had written.

Marie’s been nice enough to help me demonstrate a pingback by writing a post that links to one of my posts. Below is what the email notification of pingback from Marie’s post looks like.

Image of a pingback email explained

Clicking on the link to their post means you can:

  1. Check out what they’ve written
  2. Leave a comment on their post (if you choose)
  3. Decide whether you want to approve, delete or spam the pingback. Mostly you approve all pingbacks unless it obviously been written by a spam blog (these you delete or spam).

Once you’ve approved the pingback it’s displayed in the comments on your post with just the extract of post showing enclosed in brackets like these [...]. This is so other readers can follow the link and read the post on the other persons blog if they are interested.

Below is what Marie’s pingback looks like in the comments on my post.

Image of Pingback in comments

How To Link To Other Bloggers’ Posts

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

All you have to do is:

  1. Copy the URL of the post you want to link to.Copying a URL
  2. In the post that you are writing highlight the text you want linked to the post, click on Insert/Edit Link button, paste the post URL and then click INSERT.How to add a link

It’s good blogging etiquette to link to:

  1. A person’s blog if you mention a blogger
  2. The post if you are talking about a particular post on a blog

I suggest you take the time to check out when I’ve chosen to link to a person’s blog as opposed to their post by following the links.

Another reason for linking is bloggers like to check out posts that people write about them. But most will never know you’ve written about them, or visit your blog, unless link to their blog.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Please feel free, anytime, to let me know any information you would like explained!

Meanwhile you might find What’s A Pingback? And How To Write Links helpful!

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Share Your Advice on Using Student Photos on Blogs

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Image of using student photosPepper Dellinger asked a really good question “Is it safe to add pictures of students doing class activities to your blog?”.

Since educators have differing views on the use of student images I thought it would be an excellent opportunity for us to discuss the issues while sharing tips and links to resources.

So can you please share with us:

  1. Does your school or district have guidelines or policies relating to the use of student images on the Internet? If so, what procedures are you required to follow?
  2. Your advice or thoughts on using student images on the Internet?
  3. How do you educate your students on what images they are/aren’t allowed to use?

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Ensuring Readers Realise You Have Embedded A Poll In A Post!

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Don’t you love RSS? I do except when an item I’ve embedded into a post is removed so people who read them in feed readers like Google Reader or Bloglines don’t realise it’s there! Definitely a problem if you are embedding an online poll in a post and you need readers to see it so they vote.

So let’s test out this solution while at the same time getting you to help me prioritize your needs. I’ve chosen 8 9 topics and I’d love to hear what you would like to learn more about so I can plan future posts on The Edublogger. Feel free to expand on your choice or add your own topic in comments.

This time I’ve created the poll using PollDaddy — so you can compare the look of a PollDaddy poll with the poll I created using Vizu. Downside with PollDaddy is a free account only allows 100 survey results per month (anyone know the restrictions on free Vizu accounts?).

What Do you Most Want To Learn More About?
( polls)

Here are the choices that you can vote for:

  • How To Start A Blog
  • Blog Design
  • Finding Ideas For Blog Posts
  • Using Blogs with Students
  • Increasing Blog Readership
  • Creating Podcasts
  • Building your blog community
  • Developing Personal Learning Networks
  • Process of Setting Up Blogs Within Your School

Add your vote here! Free to expand on your choice or add your own topic in comments.

FINAL THOUGHTS

HTML tabIf you’re having trouble embedding the polls into Edublogs the trick is:

  1. Write your entire post adding all text, images, categories, tags etc
  2. Preview your post to do any last minute edits
  3. Click on HTML tab and paste the embed code where you want it to be displayed then immediately click Publish (don’t click back to the Visual Tab)

Yes I know when you read the post directly on the blog it is a bit more messy doing it this way but at least it should grab the attention of people who are reading in their feed readers. Every poll I’ve tried so far is being removed from posts in RSS — if you know of any that don’t please let me know!

Remember always a good idea to subscribe to your own blog to pick up issues like these!

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Using Online Polls On Blogs

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Image of VotingDo you use polls on your blog? I’ve never! And yet occasionally I’ll add my vote to an online poll but I’ve never taken the time to consider why bloggers use them on their blogs.

Why Bloggers Use Polls

Darren Rowse is an example of a blogger who regularly uses polls effectively on his blog, Problogger.

He normally runs a poll most months by posting the poll within the body of a post and displaying the poll in his side bar. This way readers who subscribed to his post by RSS are notified of the poll and people visiting his blog can add their vote to the poll in the sidebar.

Darren leaves voting is open for a few weeks after which he follows up with a post that reviews the results of the poll. Do You Most Want to Learn About Blogging? [POLL] is an example of the post he wrote to announce a poll and results are discussed in What You Want to Learn about Blogging [POLL RESULTS].

Polls provide different opportunities for gauging readers opinions compared to just asking questions in blog posts. Not all readers feel comfortable leaving comments in responses to questions. Polls means readers can express their opinion while maintaining their anonymity. They also provide you and visitors to your blog the chance to gain a sense of how your readers feel on topics since most online poll tools display the results once a visitor has voted.

There is a wide range of free online tools that you can use to create polls for your blog. I’ve created the poll below using Vizu to demonstrate how a poll works and to help me prioritize your needs. I’ve chosen 8 topics and I’d love to hear what you would like to learn more about so I can plan future posts on The Edublogger. Feel free to expand on your choice or add your own topic in comments.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Poll creation tools can be used in numerous ways with students. How have you/would you use these tools with your students? Which online poll tools have you used with your students? What were the advantage(s)/disadvantage(s) of the tools you used?

Don’t forget to add your vote to my poll on “What do you most want to learn more about” :)

This series of posts on poll creation tools was inspired by a Web 2.0 Wednesday task — please feel free to join us for Web 2.0 Wednesdays.

Image by Ben+Sam licensed under Creative Commons ShareAlike 2.0.

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Interested In Joining A Student Blogging Competition?

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Image of Student Blogging CompetitionAre you are student blogger wanting to connect with other student bloggers while improving your blogging skills? Or are you teacher looking for an opportunity to guide your students through the process of learning to blog?

Miss Wyatt has set up a blogging competition, starting September 22, for school students of all ages which will involve 10 weeks worth of activities, one challenge each week with some bonuses for those who want to go overboard. She is hoping each each school involved will award a small prize to the best blogger or most improved blogger in their school.

There will be weekly activities for:

  1. Students who have their own blog
  2. Students who don’t have their own blog but want to participate through commenting
  3. Classrooms who want to participate through their classroom blog

If you’re interested in participating you need to:

  1. Discuss with your teacher
  2. Drop past Miss Wyatt’s blog and register your details
  3. If you are participating as part of a classroom blog you will need to get your teacher to register your class
  4. Keep an eye on Miss Wyatt’s blog for the blogging challenge information and your weekly task

Please let me know, by leaving a comment on this post, if you are planning to join the student blogging competition as I would love to drop past your blog to check out your progress.

If you are wondering how I created my image — I used Sign Generators :)

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