Monthly Archives: January 2009

Embedding A Flickr SlideShow In Your Blog Sidebar

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Have you speculated if it is possible to embed a Flickr Slideshow in a sidebar rather than in a post? Well Betsy asked because she wants to add one to her Merit School of Music blog.

Your options

The size of most embed code can be adjusted by pasting it into a simple text editor like Notepad and changing its width and height.  Really handy to know when you need to make an object smaller to fit the size of your post or sidebar.

However for a Flickr SlideShow there is a simpler option!  FlickrSliDR or Flickr slideshow! These “third party’ website lets you use the flickr URL address of the user, photo set or group and tags or any user/group to customise a Flickr slideshow to the dimensions you desire.

Adding a Slideshow to your blog sidebar

Both FlickrSliDR and Flickr slideshow create exactly the same SlideShow; which of the two websites you use is your choice.  Width of blog sidebars is dependent on your blog theme; however in most cases 180 px wide x 180 px high will work fine.

Image of creating a slideshow

Once you have grabbed the embed code from FlickrSliDR or Flickr slideshow go into your blog dashboard and add it to your sidebar using a text widget (Click on Design > Widgets).

Image of adding to sidebar using a text widget

Examples of Sidebar Slideshows

Below is an example of the size of a Flickrslideshow you would add to a blog sidebar.  I’ve used the fdsflickrtoy tag from images4education.  If you want to learn more about adding images to your in-class and online activities raise student interest I recommend you join images4education (you will be able to catch up with the weekly tasks).

Created with flickr slideshow.

Check out Ms. Kreul’s class blog to see a cool tour of their class created using FlickRSLiDR widget embedded in their side bar.

FINAL THOUGHTS

To learn more about using Flickr check out:

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Edublogs Themes That Allow Comments on Pages!

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Which blog themes allow readers to write comments on pages is a common question asked in the Edublogs forum.

Problem is some themes allow comments on pages and others don’t.  To find the answer you need to try each theme, which is a lengthy process.  It took me hours to Separate the 100 Edublogs themes Into Categories To Make Choosing Your Next Theme Easier.

Thanks to Ginny Paisie from Paisie Perusals we now have the answer because she both road tested all the themes and shared the results in the forum.

UPDATE:

While I was writing this post Paul Beaufait had a similar idea and has written a post:

  1. explaining why being able to write comments on pages is a handy feature for students
  2. and also set up a Google Form for you to leave details if your theme allows comments

We would REALLY love it if you could check the list above and drop past Paul’s post and complete his form to confirm if your theme does/doesn’t allow comments on pages.

Please remember also to take the time to drop past Ginny’s blog to thank her!

You may also want to check out What To Consider When Choosing Your Blog Theme!

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Quick Start Tips For New Flickr Users: Part III

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Quite a few readers have been asking why Flickr not Picasa or Photobucket.  With any luck this last post in our Flickr series will help explain as I demonstrate some of the creative ways Flickr can be used.

Creating Cool Stuff From Your Flickr Photos

One of the best aspects of Flickr is they allow outside (“third party”) applications or websites to communicate and exchange information with Flickr.  This means you use public Flickr data like photos, video, tags in new and different ways plus easily search for creative commons images.

My favorite websites for creating cool stuff from Flickr Photos include:

  1. Dumpr – check out this slideshow or my Dumpr flickr set to see what the images looked like before and after modifying using the different Dumpr tools

  2. Big Huge Labs fd’s Flickr Toys – check out this slideshow or my fd’s flickr toy set to see what the images looked like before and after modifying using a few of the different fd’s flickr toy tools.  Note: Photobucket also links easily to fd’s Flickr Toys

  3. Picnik – photo can be edited directly on Flickr using Picnik
  4. Spell with Flickr – how cool is this writing with Flickr?

C o Marble O (Washington, DC) L16 Graffiti exclamation

Using A Unique Tag To Bring Flickr Photos Together

Image of grabbing the embed code for a slideshowA cool way to bring your photos or photos by a group of people together is to use a unique tag.

For more information on tags and tagging refer back to Quick Start Tips For New Flickr Users: Part I.

For example, by using the unique tag educhristmas08 educators shared photos of how Christmas and the holidays were celebrated in their part of the World which was then embedded as a SlideShow into a blog post.

Please Note:

  1. There is a trick to embedding code into blog post so that it embeds properly and doesn’t cause problems in Internet Explorer.
  2. Follow the same steps outlined for embedding videos when embedding any code into blog posts!

Locating Creative Commons Images

Flickr is a popular source for finding creative commons images due to:

  • the quantity and quality of creative commons images hosted on Flickr
  • “third party” websites that make searching Flickr images fast and easy

Popular tools for searching Flickr creative common images include:

  1. Compfight
  2. Behold
  3. FlickrCC

Copyright and creative commons are important topics that you need to teach your students.  Here are some posts that may help:

  1. Copyright and Using Images in Blog Posts
  2. Finding and Adding Creative Commons Images To Your Blog Posts

FINAL THOUGHTS

Take the time to explore Flickr thoroughly for yourself because it has so many excellent features which I haven’t be able to cover.  If you are an experienced Flickr user – please let me know if I missed any important aspects.

The other posts from this series are:

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Has Feedburner Burnt Out?

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If you’ve logged into Feedburner recently you will see a notice asking you to move your account to Google. Ultimately you have no choice as they want all accounts transferred to Google by 28 February, 2009.

Unfortunately this has been an incredibly uncomfortable process for most users in the last week because the move has resulted in a significant drop of subscriber numbers.  For example, subscriber numbers on The Edublogger dropped 50 % and 70 % on my personal blog.  Larry Ferralzzo experienced similar and asked if I could write a post to explain what’s happening.

You will see on the Feedburner Known Issues and Workarounds for 23 January:

Publishers who have recently moved to Google Accounts may have noticed a significant drop in reported subscriber stats for all feeds. We are actively investigating this issue.  We have identified a likely cause and will hopefully have more information on a resolution shortly. Hang in there, folks.

They were late in reporting this issue as I noticed the problem on 18 January and saw numerous posts in their help forum discussing the issue.

Your subscriber number hasn’t actually dropped, it is just that Feedburner hasn’t been accurately recording your number of readers.  Ironically the problem relates to Google Fetchfeed subscribers not being included in reporting of your subscriber numbers.   How much your subscriber number dropped depends on how many of your subscribers use Google Reader.

Good news is your subscribers didn’t stop receiving your feed from Feedburner.  Better still perhaps Googles fixed the problem as my subscriber numbers returned to normal today.  However a few people are reporting “There was a problem retrieving the feed: Error getting URL: 502 – Bad Gateway” when they’ve tried to move their account.

At present, if you want to monitor how many people subscribe to your blog, Feedburner is still the best option.  Here’s how to:

  1. Adding a RSS Feed From Feedburner To Your Blog
  2. How To Add an Email Subscription to Your Blog
  3. Redirect Your Blog Feed To Feedburner

But as I’ve highlighted before make sure you ALWAYS subscribe to your own posts, ideally in both Google Reader and Bloglines, and by email, so you can spot immediately ANY issues fetching your feed.

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Why You Shouldn’t Write Your Posts Using Word

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What do you see when you look at your blog posts?  The same font and formatting on every post?  Or are they looking real messy with a range of different fonts?

Most likely you weren’t warned of the dangers of copying and pasting text written in Word into blog post!  What happens is the text you paste from Word brings in lots of extra code.  Normally this makes your post’s font and formatting look unattractive plus may add extra words you haven’t written.  In extreme cases it can prevent your blog loading in Internet Explorer.

Example of what text might look like when pasted from Word

Let me show you!

This sentence was written in Microsoft Word then copied and pasted into a blog post.   Right now looks perfectly fine.

Sentence viewed in Visual Mode

Now look what happens when I click on the HTML tab.  See how much code was transferred from Word by just copying and pasting one sentence.

Sentence viewed in HTML mode

Same can happen when you copy and paste text from emails, other word processor applications, websites etc.

Safest solution is always write your posts in your blog dashboard.  However if you do need to copy and paste text into your post then the best method to remove any extra code is using a plain text editor like:

  • NotePad – PC (Programs > Accessories)
  • TextEdit – Macs

Just paste the text into the text editor and then copy the text from the text editor and paste into your post.  This strips out all code and prevents formatting problems.  Please note pasting into a text editor does remove all links to websites.

NOTE: There is a Paste from Word button inside your dashboard which is meant to be used for this purpose.  However I’ve found it doesn’t always remove the extra code.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Please remember to explain the reasons why you shouldn’t copy and paste text directly into blog posts when you are teaching others how to blog.

What tip(s) do you wish someone had told you when you first started blogging?

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