Monthly Archives: June 2009

Here’s My Top Five Mistakes Made By New Bloggers — What Are Yours?

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Ever felt like you wished some one had told you about what mistakes NOT to make when blogging before you MADE the mistake?

Well I know I have so here are my five top mistakes made by new bloggers:

#1 Copying and pasting text written in Word into blog post

When you copy and paste text from MS Word, emails, other word processor applications, websites etc into blog posts it transfers extra code which you normally won’t see unless you click on the HTML tab.  Trouble is you mightn’t be seeing this code but your blog might.

This extra code cause problems including changing font size and type, messing up the appearance of your blog sidebars and stopping your blog from loading in Internet Explorer.

Read Why you shouldn’t write your blog posts in Word to learn more!

#2 Using copyright images in blog posts

While a picture is worth a thousand words getting into trouble by using copyrighted images isn’t!  Just because an image is on the Internet doesn’t mean you are allowed to use (even if using it for educational purpose).

Read Copyright and Using Images in Blog Posts to learn more!

#3  Uploading images from digital cameras without resizing

Just because you can upload images directly from your digital camera into a blog post doesn’t mean you should!  Besides taking longer to upload your image, it uses up blog storage space unnecessarily.

To learn more read:

  1. How to resize images before uploading
  2. Image widths in blog posts
  3. Is a picture always worth a thousand words?

#4 Forgetting to Link

Linking is a really important part of being a blogger and linking isn’t hard but for some reason most new bloggers forget to 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
  3. Articles and websites when you write about them

To learn more read:

  1. STOP! Don’t Press Publish! Have You Remembered to Add The LINKS?
  2. What’s A Pingback? And How To Write Links

#5 Copy and pasting other bloggers posts

Sure it is nice to like another bloggers post BUT you can’t copy and paste their entire post into your own blog post!  Besides the fact you might be breaking copyright, this is both plagarism and extremely bad bloggers etiquette.

Would you accept students work that had been copied? NO! So don’t do it to other bloggers.

FINAL THOUGHTS

These were my five top mistakes that new bloggers make!  What have I missed?  What else do we need to warn new bloggers about?

I plan to follow up with a more detailed post on Why you don’t copy and paste other bloggers posts!  What advice would you give new bloggers on this topic?

Image by skoczek licensed under Creative Commons ShareAlike 2.0.

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Is a picture always worth a thousand words?

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What’s wrong with this picture?

Spotted it yet?

Yes, I know we’ve had similar conversations but some conversations NEED to be continuing for new educators starting their online journey.

What are your thoughts on:

  1. Student photos and how much information is appropriate to use with photos?
  2. What else do educators need to consider when starting to blog with their students?

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The Edublogger’s USA Adventure… to NECC and Beyond!

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For those that aren’t aware I’m off on an USA adventure for 3 weeks, from June 21 to July 13, to attend NECC 2009 and network with people.

What these means is:

  1. I would love to catch up with anyone attending NECC that wants to chat or ask questions
    • You’ll find me at NECC unplugged
    • Send me a tweet using twitter @suewaters
    • Leave a comment on this post to coordinate a time
  2. Probably less posts on this blog during July
  3. Less access to provide support in Edublogs Forum
  4. I may not always make sense due to tiredness caused by insomnia, jet lag and traveling
    • Well known for suffering extreme insomnia when I travel
    • Mere 23 hours traveling to USA (due to stop over in Brisbane for 3 days) and 31 hours return from USA to Perth, Western Australia
  5. Chances are I will get lost – there is a reason why my husband says I’m ‘geographically challenged’

Following My Adventures

Unlikely I will blog about my adventures here on The Edublogger unless you and/or your students convince me readers would love to read about them here on this blog!

Instead you can find out what I’m doing (and if I’m lost or not sleeping) by following:

  1. my twitter account
  2. my Flickr account
  3. my Personal Blog

For those wanting to know where in USA I’m going below are all the different airports mapped out!

FINAL THOUGHTS

Thanks James for sending me!

Please feel free to share:

  1. Any traveling advice, NECC tips or ‘how not to get lost’ tips!
  2. Thoughts on topics you think people would like to hear me present on at NECC unplugged!

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Using Scribe Posts on Class Blogs

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Common question asked is “It’s easy to understand how English or social studies teachers use blogs with students. But how would you use blogs for maths, science, art ….?”

Finding Blogging Ideas

Checking the class blog list, categorized by year and subject area, is a good starting point. These two posts also help:

  1. Check Out These Cool Ideas From Class blogs!
  2. Looking for Ideas? Here’s some creative ways teachers are using Class Blogs!

But it’s also good to check out teachers with years of experience using blogs with students. Take for example how Darren Kuropatwa uses scribe posts on his class blogs. Darren’s been using this approach with his maths students since 2005 and it can be adapted for any subject area.

What are Scribe Posts?

How it works is a different student is responsible for posting a summary of what happened in class each day and at the end of their post the scribe nominates the scribe for the next day. Here is an example of a scribe post from his Pre-Cal 40S (Winter 2009) class blog.

Darren says scribe posts:

  • Forces students to reflect on their learning and explain the material so others can understand
  • Allows him to see what aspects of the course content students are struggling with
  • Means students who are absent from class can easily access complete, student generated, online course material
  • Makes students take greater ownership of their learning
  • Encourages him to be a better teacher

Read more about how Darren uses scribe posts here:

  1. The Scribe Post – 2005
  2. Distributed Teaching and Learning – 2006
  3. My Class Blogs: Part 2 – 2009

FINAL THOUGHTS

Scribe posts are just one idea on how you can use blogs with students. What are your ideas for using blogs for maths, science, arts or music? What are some cool approaches you’ve used or you have seen others using with student blogging?

This post was inspired from watching Alec Couros’s keynote presentation “Harnessing the Power of Social Networks in Teaching and Learning” — well worth watching!

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Want to blog from your iPhone or iPod Touch? Here’s How!

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Looking for a blogging app for your iPod touch and iphone? Maybe not yet, but we’ve had quite a few people asking what to use.

UPDATE (10 Aug):

  • Both BlogPress and WordPress for iPhone now work on Edublogs blogs
  • You need to be an Edublogs supporter or have ads disable on your blog (by an Edublogs supporter blog) to be able to use these applications with your Edublogs blogs

Thankfully Mr B. from Teach Me Tekkie blog saved research time by telling me how he has been using BlogPress to post from his iPhone.

All you need to do is:

  1. Install BlogPress from your App Store of your iPod touch or iphone
  2. Launch BlogPress and add your blog details
    NOTE: Edublogs users need to select WordPress as your blog Service Provider)
  3. Click on the Write tab to start writing your post.
  4. With BlogPress you can write text, add one or more photos from your iPhone, edit the images and add categories and tags to your posts before uploading.
  5. To post just click on Save and then Send Now!

WARNING:

If you haven’t adjusted the timezone on your blog dashboard to your current timezone when you upload your post it may be uploaded as scheduled to post and won’t publish until the scheduled date/time.

Change your timezone inside your blog dashboard by clicking on Settings > General and scrolling down page to timezone.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Always looking for new apps to use on my iPhone (as is many of us). Please leave a comment to tell us about your favorite apps and why you to like these applications.

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