Using Labels in your Blogs

Using labels is an excellent way for people to find all blog posts about a certain topic or person.  This
can be useful to bring up all posts about a student in order to quickly view their learning for the year.   It is also helpful for linking together posts for professional development or for registration criteria.

When you are writing a post you will see on the right side of the screen the heading 'labels'.  Click on this and type in all the labels that apply to the post you've written.  When you save and publish, the labels will appear at the bottom of the post.  Over time you will create a collection of posts applicable to each label.  By clicking on the label beneath the post you will bring up all posts that had that label applied.

Read this article for further information about the benefit of using labels.

To add a gadget that displays your labels, go to your blogger dashboard and choose 'layout' and then click on 'add a gadget'.

Choose 'labels' from the list of gadgets.  Once you've clicked on this, a window will open up that will give you choices of which labels you'd like displayed, and how you want them displayed.  This is a great way to quickly and easily find posts in your blog of certain students or topics.

      

Sharing Authorship of your Blog

If you wish to have another person be a co-writer of your blog it is easy to do.

Go into the settings for your blog.
Click on Settings > Basic > Permissions > Add author
Type in the person's email address or choose from your contacts.
An email will be sent to them letting them know you've added them.
Once they've accepted, they will be able to post to your blog.  You can also make them an Administrator of the blog if you choose which would give them access to making changes to the blog layout, etc.

The Value of Blogging

I was reminded today of the value of blogging and the importance of sharing your class blog with your parents and reminding them of it often. Keeping the lines of communication open between school and home is valuable and important.  Blog on!

Blog Tips

This has been an exciting time for our school staff!   We currently have 13 new class blogs up and running!  People are trying out the smartphone blog app and seeing how incredibly easy it is to blog using it.  Others are looking into the deeper functions of blogging and looking at adding gadgets and other features.

GADGETS:
If you have a blog and you would like to add a gadget or two, this is how it is done.

Go to your blogger dashboard.
Click on 'layout'

Click on 'Add a Gadget' - a selection will come up for you to choose from.

 A couple of good ones are 'Link List' and 'Follow by Email'.  Link list allows you to make a 'blog roll' down the side of your blog.  You can add the other blogs from our school like I've done on my class blog.  See here:  

Follow by Email allows parents to receive an email when you update your blog.

You can arrange the gadgets however best suits the layout of your blog.  Just click and drag them where you want them.

COMMENTS:

Make sure that your comments are enabled for anyone to leave a comment.  Go to your dashboard > Settings > Posts and comments.  Make sure you've clicked 'anyone' beside 'Who can comment?'

DATE and TIME
Make sure your blog is set to the correct time zone.  Go to your dashboard > Settings > Language and formatting.  Find appropriate time zone.

Make sure to save every time you make changes within your dashboard.

We're Blogging!

With the implementation of Google Apps for Education, it has opened the doors for our teachers to begin to blog using blogger.com.  It is very exciting to see staff learning and taking something new on board to implement into their teaching and the sharing of their students' learning.  Some staff attended a workshop to learn the basics and some were miraculously able to follow my written directions!  (Here is the link to the instructions)

We have also discovered the blogger app that is available for ipads, iphones and android phones.  This makes writing a blog post as easy as sending a text.  Make sure you download it and try it out.

For two weeks we are having a Friday Techie Breakie session before school to share ideas and learn some of the extra features of blogging and google sites.  We will also be looking at how to easily put picasaweb  photo albums onto our google sites.

It's exciting to share with each other and to encourage each other to continue to learn.

Here is the link to the list of Web addresses of the staff who have google sites and blogs started.  (It is only viewable by CBS staff.) We are all on a learning journey and everyone is finding their way around the different features, as well as figuring out how and when to build their sites.  Join us on our journey!  If/when you create your own site please be sure to add your url to the doc for CBS staff to share.

Happy Blogging!!!

 

Taking fear out of failure

Define smart failure. It's the first attempt at learning. 

Reward smart failures in addition to successes. 

Make smart risk taking transparent. Share how you made mistakes and how you learned from them.  - Mark Osborne ELN PD

Ambiguity

Ambiguity creates. Order reproduces.

If we don't allow ambiguity to do its work then we might find that the order we establish is incomplete, not well thought out, doomed for failure.

How might we create space for ambiguity in schools?
Mark Osborne - ELN PD