Blogging in Class: December 2007

Blogging workshop PowerPoint presentation

PowerPoint presentation used in Blogging workshop December 10th. You'll need PowerPoint installed on your computer to view this.

How to password protect your Word documents on the internet

Sometimes you may want to publish a document such as a worksheet to the internet for your students to access, but you may not want other people to have access to it as well. These are some choices you have to accomplish this:

Require a password to open documents (How to password protect Word documents), and give the password to your students.
Use a more robust method of encryption to provide extremely secure privacy protection. There are open-source and free tools you can use to do this, such as Keepass.
Link to documents hosted inside your college on an intranet. This way, a student will only be able to open the document you link to if they have access to the system (i.e. they are on campus).

As with anything else, be sure you test whichever method you use to ensure it works. Be sure to be logged in as a student when you do this, or better yet, ask a student to test it and see if they can do it.

Blog quizzes, checklists, and help pages

How to add a music player to your blog

note: I believe the first time you go to this website you can do the following steps to search for and embed a playlist, but the second time you have to register to get access.

Go to http://www.imeem.com/
Click on "Playlists" at the top.
Type in a keyword such as "Christmas" and click "find a playlist".
Click on a playlist you like.
Next to "embed", highlight and copy the code.
In your blog, start a new post.
Click on the "edit html" tab.
Paste the code.
Post and test!

Another popular music streaming service that offers the option of embedding your own player in a blog is Last.fm.

Useful add-ons to improve your blog

Music player at Imeem or Last.fm. Allows you to customize a playlist and let visitors to your blog listen.
Slide-show at Picassa. Build a collection of photos and then put an automatic slide-show of them in your blog.
Teacher web page at Pageflakes. Useful website service you might find helpful to supplement your course. Offers easily customizable webpages.
Visitor counters at Easy-hit-counters.com.
Sounds at Freesound.
Millions of royalty-free images at EveryStockPhoto.com. Free for educational use.
Free online banner and logo generator at cooltext.com.
Powerful online photo editor at Cellsea.
Typing practice and tests at Typingtest.com.
Create slideshows at Slide.com

Using legal photos in your blogs

Source of millions of photos you can use free for educational purposes:

http://www.everystockphoto.com/index.php

Tips to remember passwords and addresses

Students often struggle when it comes to remembering passwords and website addresses. Here are some suggestions:

When registering for their blogs, have them use a combination of their name and their student number (I use the last 3 digits of their student number). This way there is a greater chance that url (blog address) is available among the hundreds of thousands of addresses already taken. It also serves to help you identify the student when assessing their work.

Have them use their student number as a password. This way, if they forget, they or you can easily look it up.

Another password solution is to have them use their phone number. Although good, this still has the disadvantage of them forgetting it or getting it confused, and you not being able to help them find out what it is (for example if they used an old phone number or a brother's).

It might help to have them print out two copies of a screenshot of the webpage when they register for the account; one for you and one for them. However, if you ensure they all use the same format suggested in #1 and #2, you shouldn't need this.

Another trick is to have them key in their username and password into their cellphones, or email them to themselves.

Once they sign up, I have them print out a screenshot of their blog so they can see what the URL is and go back to it more easily the next time.
Quiz them! (example quiz in Word format)

Remember: It isn't a good idea to have them post personal information such as their student number on their blogs where other people can see it. A general rule of thumb I use is: if it is posted to the internet once, it may be there forever in some archived form.

Solution to lost editing option in blogger

blogger editing icon

Sometimes when you are editing your blog you can't see the icon . This is due to what seems to be a flaw in Blogger. Here is the solution:

Refresh your page. You may have to do this more than once. The edit icon may return. If that doesn't work,
Come back to your blog at a later time. The option will probably be available then.
Try another browser. I find that sometimes Firefox, which is superior to Microsoft Explorer so many ways, sometimes doesn't show this blogger icon for some reason.

Websense: Viewing blocked content

If your school or business is using a filter to regulate access to websites, this might result in not being able to see images or videos that you have posted in your blogs. this might include websites such as Youtube or Picassa. If you can normally access those websites after you click on an "accept" button, then that means you can still see the content on your blog. This is the quick solution:

Open a second browser and go to any website that you need to "accept" to see, such as Youtube. This will unblock the entire category of similar websites for a given period, such as 10 minutes.
Go back to your blog and refresh the page. You should now be able to access the content.

Wear Your Seatbelt Videos

Why you should wear a seat belt: