Blogger Basics
Blogger has a few basic screens that you should be familiar with. The most important screen is the Posting screen. When you begin posting you will see a screen that looks like this.
There are three areas to the screen. The Title is what will appear as your posts headline. Just as with any title make it catchy and descriptive. The next area is what is known as aWYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor. Basically you can start to simply to add text into the text area just like you would in a word processing program. By using the editor tobold, italicize, and manipulate the text the correct HTML code will be created for your blog.
One thing that makes writing with blogs different from writing on paper or even in a word processing program is your ability to link to supporting documentation within your writing. Linking your sources to your blog is an important concept to show both where you are finding your information, as well as being able to show your thought processes. Giving students the ability to show their ideas and thoughts in a hyperlinked document can change both the activity of writing as well as the way something is read. To add a hyperlinks to your blog post you will want to type our your thoughts and then choose which word you want to hyperlink. Highlight the word that you would like to link to a certain page. Then by clicking on the little icon of the world with a link above it
you will see a pop-up that allows you to add a link to the word. Now you can simply copy and paste the hyperlink into the pop up, creating a hyperlink to your source. One suggestion about this is to make sure that you link after you have typed you thoughts.
There is also a spell check button that allows you to check the spelling of you blog, remember the whole world will be commenting on your grammar!
Once you have finished typing your information you will want to click either the Save as Draftor Post buttons at the bottom of the page. Now if you have posted your thoughts you are officially a blogger!!
Note: There are a few things that you need to be aware of while working with web pages that are being created using a text submissions form. Be careful not to navigate away from the page without either posting, or saving what you have written. If you go to another page without doing this you will end up losing all those great thoughts that need to be shared. Another word of caution, don’t insert your links until after you have finished typing. Sometimes adding the link in the middle of typing leads to some odd actions by the program. Lastly sometimes you might want to think before posting. The same rules that apply to email should apply to blog posts, don’t write something that you don’t want people to see 10 years from now.
Blogger Interface
The following information is about the blogger interface, also called the dashboard. It isn’t really complex, but some guidance never hurt. There are four tabs that you will always see no matter where you go in the dashboard they are;
Posting
Settings
Layout
View Blog.
The Posting tab
The Posting tab gives you the ability to Create, Edit posts, Moderate Comments, and view the Status of your blog. The create link allows you to create a new post bringing you to a blank form to add a title and post your thoughts. The edit posts link allows you to change or modify old posts. You could also create a new post, if you aren’t comfortable formatting the html in your blog posts.
Since all of you posts that are editable you can fix incorrect information on the fly, or if you have a slip of the finger on the keyboard, you can go back and correct a post. A newer feature to Blogger since it was first created is the Moderate Comments link. Since blogging has become popular, and due to spam, Blogger has added this feature so you can eliminate the garbage in your comments. This is also helpful to moderate what students are saying in the comment areas. The status link simply give you the ability to check the status of the last posting you made while you were logged in.
The Setting Tab
This Settings tab contains a lot of information that relates to your blog and the way you have it set up.
Basic
Publishing
Formatting
Comments
Archiving
Site Feed
Email
OpenID
Permission
The Settings tab is important to the way people will be able to interact with your blog. TheBasic menu of items in the settings tab relates to the title, the description, the availability, and editing preferences of your blog. The settings in this tab are really up to you. There is however one setting that you probably won’t want to change, the Compose Mode feature should be left to yes. If you don’t know some basic HTML you won’t ever want to turn this off. Don’t forget to click Save Setting before you move to another link if you have changed anything.
The Publishing tab deals with the address of your blog. Unless you have some knowledge about FTP and web development I wouldn’t bother with this page at all.
The Formatting menu in the settings tab deals with the way your blog will appear in a web browser. Things such as the time stamp and how many post show on a page are things that you may want to change in the future. The main thing that you want to make sure is correct is the time zone that is selected. It may not seem all that important, unless you aren’t suppose to be posting during work and your supervisor sees odd times on your posts. Other than that I would leave the page alone. If you make any changes make sure to click on the Save Settings button at the bottom of the page.
The next menu deals with Comments that others can add to your blog. Just think your students could comment about what you or their classmates are saying. This menu gives you the option of allowing this or not. You need to set rules for students about commenting and working with blogs. By making comments only accessible if commenter’s are registered for a blog, or by making your blog a group blog are two ways to overcome supervision problems.Backlinks are references to pages that link to your web log. This is one way to increase traffic to your blog as well as have other connecting via your blog. The only other part of this that could be helpful is the Comment Notification Address this way you could keep track of people when they post to your blog.
The Archiving menu deals with how often your posts are pushed off the main page. By default setting is monthly, this means that if you posted 30 times in January and on February 1st your posts will be pushed back off the front page. Unless your students really start to populate the blog with comments, or post I wouldn’t change this.
The Site Feed menu is important if you want others to be able to receive a RSS (real simple syndication) feed from your blog. Basically it allows others to quickly check and see what changes if any you have made to your blog recently.
The Email menu allows you to either send posts to an email account, perhaps a friends email, or you can posts to your blog via email.
Layout Tab
The template tab has links to add and modify the design of your blog
Page Elements
Fonts and Colors
Edit HTML
Pick New Template
Page Elements
Here you can Add or Remove or Rearrange your page elements.
Font and Colors
If you want to change font style or color of the text,it is done here.
Edit HTML
This area also allows you to edit the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) that make up the templates. Basically CSS are pretty wrappers that can be put on web pages. If you are interested in learning more about here is a decent place to start.
Pick new Template
So you are a bit sick of the template that you picked. Click on the pick new link and choose from about thirty different templates. [Image:BloggerTemplateNew.jpg|200px] Be cautious some of the changes will affect things you have done previously if you have customized your blog at all.
View Blog
As the tab suggests if you want to view your blog simply click this tab and a new window will open showing your most recent posts. If for some reason the newest post doesn’t show simply refresh the page by selecting View>Refresh.
What is AdSense?
“AdSense is an advertising program run by Google which enables you to place content-relevant advertisements on your blog.” (copied from Google)
So this is probally not something that you want on your educationally centered blog.
