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:

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:

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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About our Guest Blogger

Kathleen McGeady is in the seventh year of her career and in that short time her approach to teaching has changed greatly.

The opportunity to take Teacher Professional Leave in 2008 provided Kathleen with the time to explore the role that ICT and Web2.0 tools can play in the classroom.

Kathleen loves to find new and creative ways to use blogs, the IWB, Web2.0 tools, iPod Touches and global projects and in her classroom to enhance the learning experience of each of her students.

Kathleen is currently teaching Grade Two at Leopold Primary School in Victoria, Australia. She writes about technology integration on her blog and in Education Technology Solutions magazine.

Blogging: Teaching Commenting Skills

This was originally posted on Integrating Technology in the Primary Classroom and has been cross posted with permission from Kathleen McGeady.

I am currently in the process of introducing my Grade Two students to blogging.

Our 2KM class blog is proving to be very popular with students and families.

As I have previously blogged about, I like to follow these steps when introducing blogging to students.

This is my third year of blogging with young students and I am still learning all the time.

In previous years I believe I progressed much too quickly from having students comment on the class blog to writing posts. My students never really learned how to compose a quality comment and I believe I didn’t set my expectations of the students high enough! I was happy for them just to be commenting.

This year I am taking a different approach. Inspired by the amazing commenting skills of Mrs Yollis’ Third Grade students, I am putting a lot of effort into teaching my students how to write quality comments on posts before we move on to writing posts.

By “quality comments” I mean

• writing the comment like a letter (greeting, body, closing, signature)
• using correct spelling, punctuation and spacing,
• reading over the comment and editing before submitting,
• complimenting the writer in a specific way, asking a question, and/or adding new information to the post,
• writing a relevant comment that is related to the post,
• not revealing personal information in your comment.

I really wanted to limit the “I like your blog!!!” or “2KM is cool” type comments and I am finding this explicit teaching of what a quality comment looks like is really working.

I am teaching students commenting skills through

• modelling and composing comments together  on the IWB,
• teaching students about the “letter” format during writing lessons,
• giving examples of a poor/high quality comments and having students vote whether the comment should be accepted or rejected,
• having students read and comment on a post on our blog as part of a literacy rotation on the computer each week.

I collaborated with my teaching partner, Kelly Jordan on this poster “How Can I Write a Great Blog Comment?” to teach students about blogging skills.

We will also send a copy of this poster (as show below) home with each child.

Linda Yollis has written a fantastic article about how to teach commenting skills. It is well worth a read!

I have “borrowed” many ideas from Linda such as recording a screencast video that shows how to leave a comment on the blog. I recorded my screencast through Jing. I also used Linda’s idea of sending an email out to all parents to encourage them to leave comments.

As Linda says, “commenting is what keeps the blog alive” and “teaching and encouraging good commenting skills makes your blog more interesting for everyone.” I agree!

Final Thoughts

Thanks Kathleen for writing this guest post and for all your great work!

Please leave a comment here or on Kathleen’s post if you have any more ideas about teaching commenting skills to students!

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Here’s the previous tasks:

1. Week 1 – Create A Class Blog
2. Week 2: Set Up Your Blogging Rules and Guidelines
3. Week 3 – Add A Visitor Tracking Widget To Your Blog Sidebar

This week’s task is to add your student blogs to your blogroll (if you have student blogs).

Alternatively you can follow these directions to add links to helpful websites.

What is a Blogroll?

A blogroll is a list of links that you display on your blog.

Bloggers commonly use blogrolls to list their favourite blogs.  Blogrolls help readers locate other blogs worth reading — you are saying “these are some blogs I like – which are worth checking out!”

Blogrolls on class blogs are used slightly differently.

Your class blog is the central hub that connects your student blogs together; making it easier to share their learning, interact with each other and a global audience.

The blogroll on your class blog is what links together all the blogs — helping you, your students and others locate the student blogs easily.

Here’s an example of a blogroll on a Huzzah’s class blog:

How to Add Links To Your Blogroll

Every newly created Edublog has the same default widgets in its sidebars — including a blogroll.

You add links to your student blogs as follows:

1.  Go to Links > Add New

2.  Add the first name of your student (and initial of last name if necessary) to the Name Module

Tips:

• Normally only first names of students are used online.
• This is the text that will be clickable and takes you to their blog

3.  Add the student’s blog URL to the Web Address Module

4.  Select Blogroll in the Categories Module and click Add Link

How To Use Link Categories To Organise Your Student Blogs

You can sort students from different classess into separate categories as follows:

1.  Click on Add A New Category in the Categories Module

2.  Add the Class name then click Add

3.  Now instead of selecting blogroll you just choose the correct category for their Class and click Add Link

Check out Huzzah to see how categories can be used to sort links in blogrolls:

• Student blogs are listed using the catgeory Class Blogs
• Class blogs they read are listed using the category Our Blogroll

How To Edit Links

After adding links, you may want to edit them or delete the default links included on the blogroll of newly created Edublog.

1.  Go to Links > Edit

2.   To delete a link, hover over the link name and click the Delete option that appears below it.

3.  To delete multiple links, select several links and then choose Delete from the drop down Bulk Action menu, and click Apply.

4.  To edit a link, hover over the link name and click the Edit option that appears below it.

5.  An edit screen will open — just edit the link details and then click Update Link

Adding your Blogroll to Your Blog Sidebar

The Links Widget  is used to display the links you added to your blogroll in your sidebar.

Every newly created Edublog has the same default widgets in its sidebars — including a blogroll.  However,  when you add any widget to a newly created blog (via Appearance > Widgets) it automatically removes the default Edublogs widgets.

You add your blogroll back into the sidebar as follows:

1.  Go to Appearance > Widgets in your Dashboard

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

3.  Drag the Links Widget from the Available Widgets area into the Sidebar area on the right

FINAL THOUGHTS

These weekly tasks are part of the preparation for the next Student Blogging Challenge which starts in March.

You can read more about the Student blogging challenge here:

1. About the student challenge
2. Student Blogging Challenge FAQs

Please a comment on this post if you need help setting up your class blog just — I’m always happy to help!

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So I’ve decided it’s time to update my ‘how to’ Feedburner info so that:

1. All the required instructions are in one post
2. It is current for the latest version of Edublogs and Feedburner

What is RSS?

The easiest way to receive latest posts from your favorite blogs is to subscribe to RSS using feed readers such as Google Reader, Bloglines, NetVibes.

RSS (means Really Simple Syndication) retrieves the latest content from the sites you are interested and pulls them into your feed reader where you can read them all in one location rather than visiting each site separately.

Watch RSS in Plain English to learn more!

The presence of the orange RSS icon indicates a site has an RSS feed and means you can subscribe to it using a feed reader.

What is FeedBurner?

Most blogs have RSS feed which is detected automatically by commonly used feed readers when the blog URL is added to the reader.

However, if you want to make it more obvious and easier for readers to subscribe using RSS, or want to know exactly how many people subscribe to your blog  then the best option is to add a Feedburner RSS feed and email subscription to your blog.

Feedburner is a free web service which enhances bloggers and podcasters ability to manage their RSS feeds and track usage of their subscribers.

Setting Up Your Feedburner Feed

1.  Go to Feedburner and sign in to Feedburner with your Google Account (create a Google Account first if you don’t have one!).

2.  Add your Blog URL to the Burn a Feed Right This Instant and click Next.

3.  Leave RSS 2.0 source selected and click Next.

4.  On “Welcome” page, make sure you are happy with the title and FeedBurner address (URI) of your new feed and then click Next.

5.  On the Congrats! page click Next

6.  On the stats configuration page select Clickthroughs and I want more! and then click Next.

Adding Your Feedburner Feed To Your Blog

This is used to add the RSS icon and easy subscribe options to your blog side bar using a text widget as explained below:

1.  Click on the Publicize Tab > Chicklet Chooser in your Feedburner account and copy the HTML code.

2.  Go to Appearance > Widgets in your blog dashboard

3.  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

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

5.  The widget will automatically open — just add the HTML code from FeedBurner, click Save and then Close.

Adding a FeedBurner Email Subscription

It’s important to add an email subscription option to your blog sidebar as some readers prefer to receive latest posts from blogs using email subscription.

1.  Click on the Publicize Tab > Email Subscription in your Feedburner account and click on Activate.

2.   Copy the HTML code.

3.  Go to Appearance > Widgets in your blog dashboard

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

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

6.  The widget will automatically open — just add the HTML code for Feedburner email subscription, click Save and then Close.

7.  Now readers simply enter their email address and then click on “Subscribe” and Feedburner emails your entire post to them on the day after it has been published on your blog.

Redirecting All Your Blog Feed To Feedburner

Unless you redirect all your blog feed to Feedburner you won’t get accurate subscriber numbers because some of your readers subscribe using your original blog feed.

If you’re an Edublogs supporter you can redirect your blog feed  as follows:

1.  Go to Settings > Feedburner in your blog dashboard

2.  Add your Feedburner address and click Save Changes.

3.  Now all your feeds is automatically redirected through FeedBurner and you’ll be able to track subscriber numbers accurately.

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Let me show you how easy it is to create a PhotoPeach and add it to a blog post.

About PhotoPeach

PhotoPeach is probably one of the fastest and easiest ways of creating a story or quiz using photos.

It’s as simple as:

1. Uploading your photos
2. Adding music
3. Adding your captions.

Presto!  You’ve created a story that you can embed as a slideshow into your blog post.

Here’s Examples!

1. Look What’s Happening in Room 102! (Grade 2) PhotoPeaches:
   • What we learned about Owls – students researched and designed their owls
   • Working together to do maths – students learning about maths
2. Mrs. Nessman’s class (Grade 1)
   
   • The Mural has arrived – excellent example of using it to increase cultural awareness between collorabive classrooms in different countries

Below is a quick quiz I created with PhotoPeach:

How To Create A Quiz

Creating a PhotoPeach Quiz is really easy.

Here’s how it’s done:

1. Click on Edit once you’ve created your PhotoPeach
2. Then click on Edit Captions and Photos
3. Now click on each photo and then Quiz to add your questions
4. When finished click OK

Disabling Comments

As Linda Yollis points out you can’t moderate comments on PhotoPeach.

You can turn off comments (if your prefer) by:

1. Click on Edit once you’ve created your PhotoPeach
2. Then click on Manage Comments 
3. Change setting to Don’t allow comments 
   

How To Embed A Photo Peach

Embedding a PhotoPeach is the same as any other embed HTML code:

1. Completely write your post including adding title, text, images, tags and categories.
2. Click on Save Draft, previewed your post and make all necessary edits. 
3. Go to your completed PhotoPeach and hover your mouse over the PhotoPeach to bring up the menu items on the left hand side of the PhotoPeach.
4. Click on Embed in Blog.
5. Copy the Embed HTML code.
6. Click on HTML Tab on your blog post. 
7. Paste the embed code for your PhotoPeach into your post where you want it to appear then immediately click Publish
   • Don’t click back to Visual Tab before hitting Publish as it can break the embed code.
   • Immediately close your post once you’ve published.
   • Change back to Visual Editing mode when you write your next post by clicking on the Visual tab.

FINAL THOUGHTS

This is part of a series of spicing up your blog posts using digital media content.

Please share your cool examples of digital media that you’ve used in posts as we’d love to check them out!

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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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It’s an online representation of you that shows up in places such as where you leave comments or forum posts and is part of how others visualize who you are.

Most schools don’t allow students to use pictures of themselves on blogs or websites.  Instead of photos most students create avatars that representative of them.

Uploading your comment avatar to your blog is easy — I’ll show you how in a second.  But first let’s discuss online tools you can use to create your avatars!

For each tool I’ve included an example of the type of avatar they create and how to save the avatars (without creating an account and/or using an email address).

Important tips

Online avatar tools often create rectangular  images while normally avatars are square.

Use an image editing program (such as MS Paint, Picture Manager or iPhoto) to make your image square before uploading.

For best results resize your image to 97 pixels wide by 97 pixels high.

Here’s information to help you:

1. How to crop images using MS Paint
2. How to resize images using MS Paint
3. How to crop and resize using MS Picture Manager

Think carefully of how you want others to visualize you when choosing your avatar – it’s all about creating a positive digital identify!

Bless This Chick

Bless This Chick creates really cute female avatar (and I had lots of fun creating mine).

Once finished it’s best to select jpg image option 130 x 146 pixels and then email to yourself.

Build YourSelf Wild

Build Yourself  Wild can be used to create fairly conservative avatars (like my example below) or you can go totally wild by adding different animal parts to various areas of your avatar’s body.

To save your image:

1. Click on I’m Done
2. Now click on Print Your Wild Self
3. This will display the print version of your avatar in a new tab or window of your web browser
4. Right click on this print version and select ‘Save Image As’ or “Save Picture as’

Image size created is 1024 pixels wide by 768 pixels wide.

Use programs like MS Paint or MS Picture Manager to crop your avatar into a square shape and then resize.

DoppelMe

DoppelMe is relatively easy to use.  Just click on each feature you want to add to your avatar and it is automatically added (or changed).

A few features are only accessible if you create a DoppelMe account and are logged in.  However you can still create cool avatars (and save them) without an account.

Image size created is 100 pixels wide by 200 pixels wide.

To use your avatar’s full body it’s best not to add a background so you can make your image square.

To save your completed avatar:

1. Right click on your avatar
2. Select ‘Save Image As’ or “Save Picture as’

Dream Avatar Creator

Dream Avatar Creator is also relatively easy to use.

Just click on each feature you want to add to your avatar and it is automatically added (or changed).

To save your completed avatar:

1. Right click on your avatar
2. Select ‘Save Image As’ or “Save Picture as’

Image size created is 120 pixels wide by 150 pixels wide.

Face your Manga

A good aspect of Face your Manga is that it creates square shaped avatars so you don’t need to crop or change your image shape.

Unfortunately some of the ads on this site aren’t necessary ideal – check suitability for your student first!

To save your completed avatar:

1. Click on the PrtScn button on your keyboard (this takes a screenshot of your entire desktop) or click on Alt + PrtScrn to take a screenshot of the web browser page
2. Open up MS Paint
3. Hold your Ctrl key and then press V key to paste your screenshot into MS Paint 
4. Now just select the avatar and crop (Image > Crop) — then Save your image

On a Mac:  use Apple (Command) Key + Shift + 4 to take a screenshot of your avatar only.

Hero Factory

The Hero Factory creates action hero avatars.

Be warned the bodies of  most females hero’s may be a bit too voluptuous (my avatar covered up ).

Once you’ve completed save your avatar using the PrtScn method – same as described above for Face your Manga.

The Mini Mixer

The Mini Mixer creates a lego avatar – ideal for your lego loving students

Once you’ve completed save your avatar using the PrtScn method – same as described above for Face your Manga.

Mr. PicassoHead

Mr. PicassoHead creates a more artistic like avatar – ideal for those wanting something a bit different.

Once you’ve completed save your avatar using the PrtScn method – same as described above for Face your Manga.

Definitely fun — but I mightn’t be very artistic!

Simpsons Avatar

The Simpsons Avatar is definitely for those lovers of the Simpsons.

Just create your own Simpson avatar then save it using the PrtScn method – same as described above for Face your Manga.

WeeMee

WeeMee is also relatively easy to use.

Just click on each feature you want to add to your avatar and it is automatically added (or changed). However terms of services are for over 13 years of age.

Once you’ve completed save your avatar using the PrtScn method – same as described above for Face your Manga.

TizMe

TizMe is also excellent fun for creating avatars however terms of services state for over 13 years of age.

Once you’ve completed save your avatar using the PrtScn method – same as described above for Face your Manga.

Uploading your Avatar

Now you’ve created your avatar uploading it to your blog is as simple as:

1. Go to Users > Your Avatar or Profile > Your Avatar inside your blog dashboard
2. Click on Browse, locate your avatar on your computer and click Open
3. Now click Upload
   
4. Once uploaded select the part of the image you want to use as the avatar and then click Crop Image
   
5. Now whenever you leave comment on your blog or (another Edublogs.org blog) your avatar will display with your comment.

Please note:

1. If you have trouble cropping your avatar once uploaded – you need to upload again by click on Browse, locate your avatar and then click on the Alternative Upload button.
2. Your new avatar mightn’t appear immediately on new comments – try holding the Ctrl key and pressing F5 to clear your browser cache
3. For best results resize your image to 97 pixels wide by 97 pixels high before uploading.

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And it’s great to get comments that express concern such as “Sue – you’re back and…not blogging yet?:)”……. only to discover it’s a spam comments.

I’ll tell you how I minimize spam comments below – but first a little on the WHAT.

What are Spam Comments?

The reason why people write spam comments is to provide links to the spammer’s commercial web site; to get you and/or your readers to visit their site.

Common spam commenting techniques include:

1. Adding links to their web site in the comment and their URL
2. Adding the link for their web site in URL
3. Creating pingbacks to blog post

Spammers generally write comments with minimal substance such as:

Thank you for this tips; Good Stuff!; Good job, bro; Very informative and helpful; Yes, it is very helpful; Thanks you for the information and I’ll return here often…….

If it smells like spam it normally is!

Check the URL to confirm— and DELETE!

Refer to Managing, editing and approving comments for more info on deleting comments!

Ways of Minimizing spam comments!

An annoying aspect of spammers is they’ll often target posts with numerous comments.

So while deleting their comments helps it doesn’t prevent emails being sent to commenters who selected ‘Notify me of followup comments via email’.

The key is make it harder for spammers to leave comments so eventually they give up and move on!  And in the process reducing their spamming of your readers!

The two main methods I use are:

1.  Comment moderation

I’ve found comment moderation the most effective method because it allows me to target specific spammers.

It’s as simple as:

1. Go to Settings > Discussion
   
2. Add the spammer’s URL, email address, IP address or word(s) commonly used to the Comment Moderation field
   • Tip: For pingbacks I’ll normally include the word(s) they are using to link to my posts
3. Click Save Changes

Now any comments written that contain any of these words in its content, name, URL, e-mail, or IP will automatically be held in your moderation queue where you can decide if to approve or delete them.

2.  Akismet

Askimet is a spam commenting service designed to reduce comment and pingback spam.

It checks the content of the comment anonymously with an online server, to determine whether it is spam or not.

All comments considered spam automatically placed by Askimet in a spam queue where it is held for a month and then deleted.

Refer to these instructions for setting up and configuring Akismet!

Please Note:

• With Akismet it is important to regularly check your spam screen to make sure Askimet hasn’t captured any legitimate comments or pingbacks.

Final Thoughts

@spammer!  Yes, I’m back from holidays and thanks for inspiring this post

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Yes sounds very vain!  And this is why bloggers normally refer to this as ‘Vanity Alerts.’

I’ll tell you how I do it below — but first let’s talk about why it’s a common blogging practice.

How Vanity Alerts Work

Vanity alerts involve using email alerts and/or RSS feeds to automatically notify you of the use of specific keywords such as your name,  your blog’s name, and your blog URLs in blog posts, news articles, twitter…..

While this seem quite egotistical they are important.

It means you are automatically notified of any conversations relating to yourself, your blog(s) or any posts you’ve written regardless of whether a person has remembered to pingback your post or included you in a @reply on twitter.

My approach is to check all alerts to see what and/or why someone’s written about me, my blogs or a post.  Where appropriate I’ll engage in conversation with the blogger while also using it as an opportunity to build a relationship.

Vanity alerts also useful for:

1. Tracking specific blog posts in terms of how successful they’ve been at generating conversations on other blogs.
2. Monitoring plagiarism and inappropriate use of blog posts.

How To Set Up Vanity Alerts

The easiest way to set up vanity alerts is using RSS feeds in folders in Google Reader.

Here are the tools I use (and why) for my vanity alerts:

#1 Ice Rocket

Ice Rocket is an Internet search engine that specializes in searching blogs.

Other blog search engines commonly used for vanity alerts are Technorati and Google Blog Search. While I use both Technorati and Google Blog Search I prefer Ice Rocket as it’s more reliable.

Setting up Ice Rocket feeds is a simple as:

1. Go to Ice Rocket homepage
2. Add your search term — for your name remember to enclose with quotes
3. Click Search
   
4. Scroll down the search results page to the Subscribe section and copy the Feed URL for the search term 
5. Open up your Google Reader account and click on Add a subscription
6. Paste the Feed URL into the Add a subscription box
7. Click Add
8. And finally to keep all your subscriptions easier to manage – set up a folder in Google Reader for your Alerts

You repeat this process for each search term.  For example I have separate Ice Rocket searches for:

1. “Sue Waters”
2. http://theedublogger.com/
3. http://suewaters.com/

#2 Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a service offered by Google  which provides the option to be notified by email or subcribe by RSS feed.

It offers  six types of alert searches based on what it searches: “News”, “Web”, “Blogs”, “Comprehensive”, “Video” and “Groups”.

I use a ‘Comprehensive’ alert as it includes results from multiple sources (News, Web and Blogs) and subscribe by RSS feed.

Please note, unlike Ice Rocket which immediately returns search results, Google Alerts take time to feed the search results through.

#3 Search Twitter

Search Twitter is a popular tool for monitoring keywords on twitter using RSS.

Using it is simple:

1. Go to Search Twitter
2. Add your search term and click Search
3. Copy the Feed URL for the search term
4. Add the Feed URL to Google Reader same as you did for Ice Rocket

#4 Backlinks

Backtweets is searches links on Twitter (including those that have been shortened) so it really useful for monitoring any tweets that have links to blog or posts (which Search Twitter isn’t very good at).

All you need to do is:

1. Go to Backtweets
2. Add your blog URL and click Search
   
3. Copy the Feed URL for the search term
4. Add the Feed URL to Google Reader same as you did for Ice Rocket

FINAL THOUGHTS

While I’ve shown you how to use these tools for Vanity alerts — you can also use them to monitor any keywords.

For example, you could create an alert on a current news event such as Hurricane Ida so your students can monitor the differences between updates on Web 2.0 compared to traditional media outlets.

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But as a blogger it’s important to know ‘Is the content you’re providing is fulfilling your readers needs?”

Metrics provide you with insights into how your readers are interacting with your content and the type of content that interests them.

Trouble is there’s numerous metrics you can use,  each provides different insight and its meaning depends on what you’re trying to achieve from your posts.

So lets start by seeing how I use one metric, reader bookmarking, to analyze post performance.

My next post will demonstrate how another metric provides different insights.

Types of Posts

As I said the meaning of a metric really depends on what you’re trying to achieve from your posts.

I think of my posts in terms of three main types:

1. Informative - ‘how to’ or information packed posts
2. Conversations – posts that focus on encouraging readers to share their thoughts in comments
3. Sharing – posts that share helpful links

All three types fulfill different readers needs and are an important part of achieving my goal of helping others using technology.

As a general rule informative posts are longer, more likely to be bookmarked and less likely to have a high comment rate.  While conversations posts are normally shorter with more comments but less likely to bookmarked.

Calculating Reader Bookmarking

Reader bookmarking shows the number of readers bookmarking your posts on social bookmarking sites such as Delicious and Diigo.  It provides an indication of how much they value it as a source of information in terms of storing it for later retrieval and sharing with others.

When using this metric I’m looking to determine:

1. What type of posts are being bookmarked?
2. Are specific topics preforming better than others?
3. Are the informative posts achieving my aim?
4. What are characteristics of posts that are highly bookmarked compared to those that are less bookmarked?

I use PostRank because it’s an easy method for determining the number of reader bookmarking per post.

Moving your mouse cursor over a PostRank score displays all their metrics associated with that post including bookmarking on Delicious and Diigo.

Check out how easy this is on The Edublogger’s PostRank page.

Read  my Latest Statistics Say My Blogs Are……? post and comments to learn more about how the PostRank score is calculated.

Top Posts Based on Bookmarking

So here’s the top 20 Edublogger posts based on Delicious bookmarking — the numbers after each post is how many times the post has been bookmarked.

1. 50+ Ways To Create Digital Stories With Students — 117
2. How I Use RSS To Make My Life Easier — 79
3. What Everybody Ought To Know About Podcasting: Part I –77
4. Creating Student Accounts Using One Gmail Account — 73
5. Here’s My First Five Tips For Writing Better Blog Posts — What Are Yours? –73
6. Are You Twittering? Here’s How I Use Twitter — 72
7. Embedding Jing Screencasts Into Blog Posts –71
8. Quick Start Tips For Student Blogging Part I: Setting Up Your Class Blog –59
9. Quick Start Tips For New Skype Users — 59
10. Copyright and Using Images in Blog Posts — 56
11. What Everybody Ought To Know About Podcasting: Part II — 48
12. Here’s My Top Five Mistakes Made By New Bloggers — What Are Yours? — 39
13. Finding and Adding Creative Commons Images To Your Blog Posts — 38
14. Setting Up iGoogle For Your Personal Learning — 37
15. Quick Start Tips For New Flickr Users: Part I — 31
16. Ideas For Student Bloggings From….How Do You Do What You Do! — 29
17. Adding A Voki Speaking Avatar To A Post or Page of Your Blog — 29
18. Managing Comments and Posts On Student Blogs Using Google Reader — 28
19. What Are The Different Roles Of Users? — 27
20. What’s The Difference Between Tags and Categories, You Ask? — 27

Definitely there are posts in the  list that have ranked considerably higher than I’d expect and others that haven’t done as anticipated.

What does it mean?

Not sure but I know my headache is getting worse

So I would love to hear your thoughts on:

1. What topics are readers finding more valuable in terms of bookmarking?
2. What are characteristics of posts that are highly bookmarked compared to those that are less bookmarked?

Meanwhile I feel the headache may continue as I ponder which metric we should look at next?

What is your thoughts?  Page views?  Linking? Comments rate?  And what tool(s) should I use to obtain the metrics?

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