Monthly Archives: March 2010

How To NOT Have Problems Uploading Photos And Using Up Storage Space

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Digital CameraPhotos from digital cameras should always be resized to optimize their file size before uploading them to your blog.

Why?  Our digital cameras are designed to produce good quality photos for printing but aren’t optimal size for the web.

Reasons To Optimize Photo Size

Optimizing the file size of your photos before uploading to a post does three things:

  1. It means your photos upload quicker (and easier).
  2. Your pages load faster for visitors to your blog.
  3. You can upload more photo — lots of photo uploaded without resizing can quickly use up storage space before you know it!

Making an image smaller once you’ve uploaded it to a post doesn’t make the file size smaller.

If you don’t believe me — right click on both of the photos below and select Properties (for Internet Explorer) or View Image Info (for FireFox) to check their image size.

Here’s the original photo

Around 2.6 MB in size!

Original photo without resizing it

Below is the same photo resized to 450 pixels wide

Now 162 KB!

Photo of crocodile resized to 450 pixels before uploading

There’s no real difference!

But the bottom photo still looks good online and is 16% of the original size.

How To Optimize Image Size

The simplest option is to resize your photo to a width that works well with your theme using either:

1.  On A Mac use Preview and save as a JPEG with quality at or below middle (tip courtesy of Alan Levine).

2.  Picture Manager (PC) – Microsoft Office > Microsoft Office Tools

How to re-size photographs in Picture Manager
View more presentations from Chris Swift.

Ideal image size for common themes is 450 pixels wide.

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Here’s My CHEATS Method For Adding Images to Blog Sidebars

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I’m frequently asked how to add images to blog sidebars — so I thought it would help to share my quick and easy cheats method.

So what do you need to know to do this?

To start with you need to understand that you need to:

  1. Write HTML code which links to the location of your image
  2. Add your HTML code to a text widget in your sidebar

Now that I’ve said blah blah HTML code twice…you’re probably thinking that I’ve made it too hard already.

It’s not but I first need to explain what is HTML code and then show you it’s really easy when you know my trick 8-)

What is HTML?

HTML is short for “Hyper Text Markup Language” which is a language used to tell a browser how to organise the layout of a web page it has downloaded from the Internet.  It influences if text is bold, italics, a heading, bullet points.

When you write a post or page inside your blog dashboard you don’t worry about how to write HTML because the Visual Editor does it for you. If you click on the HTML tab it shows the HTML code in your text.

Here’s the Trick!

As I said you need to use HTML but that doesn’t mean you can’t cheat with writing the HTML code.

Instead use your Visual Editor to do the work for you!

Cheating is as simple as:

1.  Open up a draft post in your blog dashboard
2.  Click on Add an Image to upload your image to the post

  • Ideally resize your image before uploading to 170 pixels wide because this generally the best width for most blog sidebars

Add an image icon

3.  Insert the title for your image (this displays when a reader hovers their mouse over the image)

4.  Change the link URL — if you want to link your image to a website

Uploading the image and adding the required info

5.  Click on Insert into Post

6.  If you want to add any text below your image — just write it!

Adding text below your image

7.  Now click on the HTML tab and copy all the HTML code.

Code the HTML code from the HTML tab

8.  Go to Appearance > Widgets in your blog dashboard

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

Please note: In new blogs sidebars in your dashboard are empty and adding widgets automatically removes the default Edublogs widgets

Expand your sidebar area

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

Adding a text widget to your sidebar

11.  The widget will automatically open — add a title to your widget, paste the HTML code and click Save

  • If you want to insert lines for better text spacing you need to add the HTML code <br/ > (means insert line break)

12.  When you check your blog you should now see it nicely displayed in your sidebar!

Image in blog sidebar

Enjoy!

P.S. Don’t share this tip with Larry Ferlazzo as he pays me in chocolate for each image I add to his blog sidebar 8-)

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Can You Help Us With The Student Blogging Challenge?

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This post was written by Sue Wyatt for the Student Blogging Challenge.

Student Blogging Challenge logo

Well, we are now into Week 4 of the March 2010 Student Blogging Challenge.

Students have been creating their blogs and making it their own by adding widgets and avatars; they have written about their country, state or town and many have visited other class or student blogs.

Many have written about why you should visit their blog and should they use a real photo as opposed to an avatar when they are on the net.

Every time the challenge is on, I try to visit each individual student blog at least 3 times over the period of the challenge.

It’s becoming harder each time we run the Challenge to visit all the student blogs — due to the numbers of students participating!

So I am putting out an URGENT HELP ME PLEASE!

The Problem

We now have about 700 individual student blogs in the following age ranges participating in the challenge:

  • Age 8-10: about 60 blogs
  • Age 11: about 110 blogs
  • Age 12: about 130 blogs
  • Age 13: about 110 blogs
  • Age 14: about 110 blogs
  • Age 15: about 50 blogs
  • Age 16: about 50 blogs
  • Age 17+: about 70 blogs

And this isn’t counting the 60 class blogs participating!

With more and more students taking part with their own blogs, it’s becoming harder for me to visit each of their blogs as often.

But comments on their blogs, especially from others outside their class, are very important for motivating and providing guidance.

How You Can Help

By the end of mid April, I would like each of these blogs to receive at least one, preferably two, comments from:

  1. Teachers, pre-service teachers  or people in the education sector
  2. Students who have blogging at least a year and who have participated in at least one student blogging challenge

So we are looking for volunteers who are willing to leave least one, preferably two, comments on student blogs such as:

  1. A few clues about how to set up their blogs would be great for the newer students who have only had their blogs less than a week or so .
  2. Alternatively choose a post they have written or look at their about page to leave a comment for them.

Preferably we would love it if you would write comments where they need to reply to keep the conversation going on their blog.

Here’s example of the types of comments we are looking for:

  1. Mrs Yollis’s comment on Abbey’s The Wonderful State of Indiana
  2. Great examples of conversation between student and teachers on:

What we would like to do is allocate about 20-30 student blogs to each volunteer.

Benefit of Being a Challenge Helper

This is excellent for teachers and preservice teachers (student teachers) who are:

  • Wanting to increase their understanding of how blogs can be used with students.
  • Unable to participate with their students in our current Challenge but who want to learn more about the Student Blogging Challenge.

Edublogs Pro subscriptionAnd off course, we appreciate how busy everyone is so we’ve decided to give away twenty free Edublogs Pro 12 month subscriptions (formerly known as Edublogs Supporters) to our twenty best helpers!

You can use these free Edublogs Pro 12 month subscriptions on your own blog or give away to a reader.

To Volunteer As a Challenge Helper

Please leave a comment on this post if you would like to volunteer your services.

Can you please include the following information in your comment:

  1. Your name and a bit about your teaching background
  2. Your blog URL or website (if you have one)
  3. What student age you would like to leave comments for.

Once you have done this we will leave a comment on the post telling you which student on our March 2010 Student Blog list page we would like you to start with and where on the list we would like you to work down to.

Make sure that you tick the notify me of followup comments via email before you submit your comments — so you receive our replies 8-)

Subscribing to comments

Please note:

  • We recommend that you work directly from March 2010 Student Blog list to visit your student blogs
  • Our March 2010 Student Blog list is updated everyday and sorted by age, so new students are added at the end of each age list automatically.
  • If you find a link doesn’t go to a blog, could you please copy the line in the student list and email it to Sue Wyatt at tasteach56[at]gmail[dot]com, — so we can fix it
  • If you have any questi0ns contact Sue Wyatt by email at tasteach56[at]gmail[dot]com

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Formal style, proper grammar and good spelling ARE important in student posts and comments! Do you agree?

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We’ve been having  interesting conversations in the comments on Kathleen McGeady’s guest post  Teaching Commenting Skills on ‘is a formal structure or style for writing comments necessary?’

There’s always differing opinions on this type of topic.

So I’d love us to debate it in more detail while expanding the conversation to include blogs posts.

That way we’ll all gain for learning more about why we each take a different approach.

Please leave a comment to share your thoughts on any or all of the following:

  1. Should teachers be correcting grammar and spelling in student posts and comments?  If you are correcting, how are you doing this?
  2. Is a formal structure or style for writing posts and comments necessary? Refer to Kathleen McGeady’s guest post  Teaching Commenting Skills to see what we mean by formal structure.
    • Is student age an important consideration?
    • And, how do you communicate to your students what is required?
  3. How do you balance structure, developing writing skills while empowering student learning and motivating them to want to write?
  4. What other advice would you give educators who have just started to blog with their students?

Perhaps you might like to invite your students to share their thoughts?

  • Would be interesting to know to what extent they do/don’t want structure?
  • How do they feel about their grammar and spelling being corrected in posts and comments?

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How Do You Feel When Someone Copies and Pastes Your 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 8-)

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:

Example of attributing another bloggers content

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:

How you show someone has given your permission to publish their posts

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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