Photos 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!

Below is the same photo resized to 450 pixels wide

Now 162 KB!

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

Ideal image size for common themes is 450 pixels wide.

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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

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

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

• In this example, I’ve change the link so it goes to http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2010/01/30/excerpt-from-my-upcoming-book-on-teaching-english-language-learners/ instead of the image URL

5.  Click on Insert into Post

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

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

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

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.

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!

• Belows what it looks like in Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… right sidebar
• If you check it out on his blog you’ll see that hovering over the image displays the image title and clicking on the image takes you to the post on the book

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

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I confess!  I hate default avatars next to my comments on other bloggers posts.

It makes me feel both naked and like a newblie

I’m know I’m not the only one.  The solution is simple — set up a Gravatar account!

About Gravatar

Gravatar is a service that provides globally unique avatars.

Most standard blogging platforms support Gravatar.  So when you go from site to site leaving comments your gravatar image automatically displays –provided the email address associated with your Gravatar’s account is used.

Here’s how simple it is:

1. Go to Gravatar and click on Get your Gravatar today!
2. Enter your email address and click Signup 
3. Go to your email account and click on the link in your gravatar confirmation email to activate your account.
4. Now follow the instructions to set your username and password.
5. Next upload your image by clicking on Add one by clicking here!
6. Choose where you’d like to get the image from – for best results ideal image size for upload is 80 x 80 pixels
7. Once uploaded click on Crop and Finish
8. Click on G Rated as many sites only support displaying avatars with a rating of G.

Presto!

Now whenever you leave a comment on a blog that supports gravatar (such as Edublogs.org, any Edublogs Campus site, WordPress.com, WordPress.org) your avatar image will automatically display next to your comment!

FINAL THOUGHTS

• If you are changing your avatar, it can take a few hours for caches to clear. Try clearing your browser’s cache by holding the Ctrl key and pressing F5, which will help.
• Check out Creating And Uploading Your Comment Avatar – for online tools you can use for creating your avatar image
  

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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 2009 Student Blogging Challenge is now nearly half way through and the students have been working REALLY hard on the weekly challenges!  Currently 52 class blogs and 150 individual students blogs from 13 different countries are participating.

To celebrate the success of the challenge while also creating an opportunity to collect examples of student work we’re giving away twelve Edublogs supporter 12 month subscriptions which you can use on your own blog or give away to a reader.

Just write a post based on any of the topics themes listed below:

1. Your own choice of topic but must include embedded media, created by the student or class, such as a SlideShare, video, comic strip, podcast, quiz, poll.  Here’s the chance to demonstrate how creative you can be!
2. Your story of how blogging has helped you connect to a global audience and what this connection has meant to you.  e.g. the friends you have made, what you have learnt about other cultures, how you are able to share your passions with others, how you are able to use blogging to share your views on topics
3. What difference has blogging made to your life at school and home e.g. how has it changed how you learn, the challenges of blogging and how teachers might make the process easier

Any class or student blogger can enter, including bloggers not currently participating in the 2009 Student Blogging Challenge, but you must:

1. Leave a comment on this post letting me know you have entered, with a link to your post plus your Grade/year level.
2. Explain in your post which topic you are writing about and link back to this post so that we receive a pingback advising us that you have written the post (read this to understand What’s A Pingback? And How To Write Links).

For example you might copy the following into the bottom of your post and just change the topic enclosed in the qutoation marks:

This post has been written on “my story of how blogging has connected me to a global audience” as part of The Edublogger’s Student Competition!

The four best post for each topic will win and you can submit posts for as many topics you like.  And off course all winners will get a badge they can add to their blogs

Remember we’re looking for the best — so here is your chance to demonstrate your blogging and creative skills!  You have until April 30 to enter.

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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.

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).

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:

• Quick Start Tips For New Flickr Users: Part I – setting up your account
  
• Quick Start Tips For New Flickr Users: Part II – using as part of your personal learning network (PLN)
• Quick Start Tips For New Flickr Users: Part III – doing cool stuff with Flickr
  

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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?
   

Using A Unique Tag To Bring Flickr Photos Together

A 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:

• Quick Start Tips For New Flickr Users: Part I – setting up your account
  
• Quick Start Tips For New Flickr Users: Part II – using as part of your personal learning network (PLN)

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Hopefully our Quick Start Tips For New Flickr Users: Part I post helped you set up and start using your Flickr account.  Now its time to learn how you can use Flickr as part of building your your personal learning network (PLN) in this second post of our Flickr series.

Connecting With Others

An important aspect of Flickr that may new users don’t appreciate is it’s a great tool for increasing your relationship with people in your personal learning network (PLN). Experienced Flickr users often check out their friends’ latest photos and leave comments when photos grabs their attention.

It’s really not that much different from blogging except you’re using the visual medium. Still connecting by sharing information and interacting with comments with added benefit of easy tracking of friends’ photos through adding people as contact.

There are several options for finding your friends’ Flickr accounts including:

1. Bloggers often include a Flickr widget on their blog – clicking on the More Photo link opens up their Flickr account
2. Search Flickr members

Another great way of connecting with others is joining Flickr Groups. The 2009/365photo, where members share one photo per day for each day of the year, is an example of a group popular with educators.

Using RSS To Manage Your Flickr Account

The easiest way to check out your friends latest photos, monitor recent activities on your photos such as comments and track responses to comments you’ve left on other people’s photos is using RSS.

If you aren’t already using RSS to make your life easier make time to read this information and set up a Google Reader account! This way RSS brings latest updates from your Flickr account automatically into your Google Reader account.

You subscribe to your recent activities as shown in below. Remember to bring up the drop down arrow you hover your mouse over the icon (i.e. hover over You).

You follow the same process to subscribe to your contacts recent uploads except you click on the drop down arrow on Contacts and select Most Recent Uploads. NOTE: It only displays four uploads per day for each contact.

Organizing Your Photos

Using Sets and Collections is a great way of organizing your photos to make them easier for both you and your contacts to find.

Sets contain photos while Collections are used for grouping sets or collections together. For example, Pest, Predator, Disease Unit in my Flickr account is a collection which holds sets on aquaculture pest, predators and diseases such as this set of predator photos.

Free Flickr accounts have several restrictions including you can only create 3 sets, 100 MB monthly upload limit (10MB per photo) and views of your photos limited to the 200 most recent images. Paying US$24.95 a year to upgrade to a Pro Account is money well spent to get access to features like unlimited sets, storage and video uploads.

You organise your photos by clicking on the drop down arrow on Organize to create and add photos to sets, organise sets into collections, geotag photos, batch tag photos etc.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Are you convinced of the benefits of Flickr yet?  My final post on this Flickr series is about cool stuff you can do with Flickr photos.

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With time you realize taking your own photos to use in your blog posts is often easier, and more fun, than searching for and attributing creative commons images. And sharing these photos online with your friends, using photosharing websites like Flickr, is even more fun!

This post is part of a series to help people started using Flickr or if you’re experienced using Flickr please share your tips for new people, by leaving a comment on this post.

About Flickr

Flickr is an extremely powerful image and video sharing website widely used by bloggers as a photo repository. Reasons for it’s popularity include:

1. It’s amazing range of tools and options for organising, editing and sharing your photos
2. It’s excellent features for connecting with others to create groups and communities
3. The extensive range of third party applications that let you use public Flickr data like photos, video, tags in new and different ways
4. The incredible number of creative commons images hosted on the site

Setting Up Your Flickr Account

To get started you will need to go to Flickr and create an account using your Yahoo ID. Create a Yahoo ID here if you don’t have one.

Once you’ve signed into Flickr with your Yahoo ID it will ask you to choose your screen name i.e. username. I recommend you choose a screen name that makes it easier for others to relate to you as a real person. e.g. Compare spwat3 with suewaters — which is easier?

After creating your account you will be taken to your home page. Make sure you take the time to Create your Buddy Icon, Choose Your Custom Flickr URL and Personalize Your Profile. These make it easier for people from your other social networks to connect with you on Flickr; they are important for building your personal learning network (PLN).

Here is my Flickr profile and bubby icon.

WARNING: Your custom Flickr URL can’t be changed once created so if unsure skip this step and complete later!

You can edit any of this information, except custom Flickr URL, at any time by hovering mouse over your buddy icon, clicking on drop down menu and selecting Your Account.

Tagging and Flickr

Before uploading any photos it’s important to understand tagging as they are very important for finding your photos.

Tagging is an method of categorizing where users choose their own keywords or terms to describe online content such as web sites, pictures and blog posts. The idea is that the user chooses tag terms that are meaningful to them to make it easier for them to find their stored information.

There are no guidelines to choosing tags and it’s common to see the same item tagged using different keywords by different users. To make items more findable in searches it’s worth using a range of terms commonly used to describe the image.

On Flickr, to use more than one word together to describe an image you will need to enclose words with quotation marks. For example, to use the tag candy jar you need to write as “candy jar” or it will be tagged candy and jar.

Uploading Photos

Flickr has a wide range of options for uploading photos including:

1. Upload page
2. Uploader application that you can download and install on your desktop – applications available for PC, Mac and Linx – excellent when uploading lots of photos
3. Email your photos from your phone- configure your email address for Flickr here
4. Upload photos from your iphone using applications such as Flickup or PixUp

Emailing photos from your phone or uploading from an iphone is a fast and quick method of sharing photos when you’re out and about. Applications like Flickup means you can share your photo on Flickr as you are uploading.

Editing Photos

Once your photos have uploaded you can edit:

1. Details like their title or description by clicking on each
2. Photos by clicking on the photo which will take you to it’s photo page where you have options including Add notes (here is an example of a Flickr photo with notes), rotating image, adding more tags and Editing the photo directly on Flickr using Picnik.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Flickr is definitely a site that you need to take the time to explore thoroughly.

If you’re a Flickr user please leave a comment on this post to share:

1. What you like about using Flickr
2. Your tips for new people getting started using Flickr
3. Links to your favorite Flickr photos — bonus points for chocolate photos

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Can you use too many graphs in blog posts?  Like any ideas for using images in blog posts you do need to use a mixture  to keep it interesting for readers.

However I’m sure you would want to know about more online graph creators, especially one that can be used to as an equation editor.  Thanks to Donna B. I’ve now learnt how to use GraphJam.  Like Crappy Graphs, it’s extremely easy to use, but has different features and you can create graphs with white backgrounds.

Here’s a quick Venn diagram to highlight the potential dangers on me multitasking:

Best news is GraphJam also provides an option for writing formulas which I’m sure will be useful for all educators and their students.

Here’s my trouble formula for estimating the degree of trouble multitasking could cause.  Would love those who are good at maths to check it and let me know if I’ve missed part(s) of the formula!  And look you can add pictures to your equations!

Meanwhile I now have more graph envy after seeing Jessica Hagy use of them in blog posts thanks to Gail Poulin’s recommendation.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Thanks to Steve Dembo and Donna B., I may have a graph addiction but at least I’m in good company (looks like Larry Ferlazzo and Jolene Anzalone have joined me).

Based on my formula, and given the fact Donna B. also told me about the WebTools4U2Use wiki, it looks like the only way to keep me out of trouble is for you to leave comments!  Please HELP me out of this TROUBLE.

All comments welcome but would especially love suggestions for blog posts. E.g. What would you like me to write about?  What would you like to learn more about?  What questions would you like me to ask readers?

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