Posts tagged ‘edublogs’
Nominated
I was debating whether to share that I’ve been nominated for a couple of EduBlog Awards or not. I hate bragging and I certainly don’t want it to look like I’m begging for votes. But I finally decided to mention it because ya know what? I’m pretty darn proud of those nominations. I’ve spent a lot of time lately trying to convince teachers that don’t believe they have much of a reason to jump in and contribute to the conversation that they’re actually Rock Stars. I’ve preached that they need to take pride in their accomplishments major or minor and share their experiences with other people. So with that in mind, to heck with being modest!
This year I’ve been nominated for two EduBlog Awards. I’ve never been nominated for an ‘Eddie’ before, and To be completely honest, I’m pretty stoked. Win or lose, I consider it an honor and privileged to be listed with so many people that I consider to be some of the best EduBloggers out there. I’m proud to be able to call many of those people friends and colleagues, and would be absolutely thrilled for them if they won. Of course, I’d prefer to win myself, but that’s the competitive streak I have in me doesn’t even get turned off when I’m playing Candyland with kids!
Regardless, I greatly appreciate everybody that nominated me for the awards. I’ll be proud to add the badges into my sidebar regardless of what happens. If you’ve enjoyed learning with me here at Teach42, then swing by the EduBlog Awards and toss a vote my way in the two categories I’m nominated for: Best Individual Blog and Best EdTech Support Blog. If you look at those lists and find someone more deserving, then vote for them in good conscience. There are no unworthy nominees on that list. And then spend some time on the site exploring the various nominees in the different categories. I’ve often found it to be one of the best ways to discover new blogs for the ol’ aggregator!
Day 27 Thanksgiving Special: With a little help from my friends
Since today happens to be Thanksgiving, I thought that it might be nice to include one of the things I’m thankful for in this post. In particular, I’m thankful to be a part of a community that places such a huge emphasis on sharing, collaborating and assisting each other whenever possible. That’s one of the great things about the EduVerse. If you need some help, access to an expert or are hunting for a specific resource, there’s thousands of people who are willing to help, provided that you ask. As I mentioned on Day 7, I’ve never been very good at asking people to be guest bloggers. However, I’ve never been shy at asking for other people’s opinions, and often base blog posts on them.
The most obvious example of asking friends or colleagues to blog in conjunction or in response to you, is the various memes you’ll find circulating around. Lee Kolbert was curious to see what other people’s RSS feeds would look like as Wordle’s. She wasn’t shy about it, she not only tagged people in her blog post, but she also sent me a direct message on Twitter. The people who ask are the people who get responses, and people have rallied to the cause. As of this reading, ten people have responded by posting up Wordle’s of their RSS feed.
A few days ago, I did something similar. I wanted to get some of the bloggers who inspire me to share their tips for being a better blogger. I sent them an email and nearly every single one of them responded. Of course, being prolific writers with years of experience, many of them couldn’t stop at just one tip! I’d like to share their responses with you today.
Before I do, let me just outline today’s challenge: Collaborate with somebody or several people on a blog post or meme. Invite other people to share their thoughts on a topic of your choosing, create a meme for other people to participate in, or send a request for people to address a specific question on their blog. Details are up to you, the important part is that it’s collaborative in nature! And of course, be sure to share what you do in comments here.
Without further ado, here are how some of my own favorite bloggers responded to the question: What tip would you give to people striving to be a better blogger?
Order based on when they responded
- Always include a picture that frames your idea (visual literacy)
- Always link…..a blog post should never be without links (link names, blogs, ideas, companies)
- Find your voice….it takes time, sometimes 50+ posts, but keep at it and you’ll find your voice. You were never taught about having a voice on a blog, because blogs weren’t around when you were taught to right. Every blogger has a voice, find your, find your style, and be original with it!
Find your voice. As I have my pre-service teachers delve into this medium, it’s easy to see whose blogs get the most action. It’s the ones who let go the reigns everyone in a while and write from their gut. I can read about almost any topic when passion is evident. For new bloggers this is usually a big risk but well worth it. Write about what fires you up.
Link. Link. Link. Hypertext is the glue of the internet. It is the web. Most new bloggers don’t see this. I advice my students to think about a global audience and don’t assume they know what institution you attend or what town you’re from. I can’t think of any blogger who I consider overlinks. Linking is a generous gift you can give your readers.
Think Nike – just do it. They don’t all have to be gems. If you don’t like it, leave it as a draft. Reread your drafts every once in a while and you’ll have new ideas and the inspiration to polish them off.
First tip – Listen to yourself as you experience other’s writing, media, as well as your interactions. Juxtapose your thoughts and reactions with those ideas…explore the differences, challenge why you agree, or don’t, with them. Then, write from that perspective…what you feel and think matters, don’t belittle…treasure it.
Another tip – share what you are learning as you learn it. We learn every minute of our day, but can only share a small fraction of that, and half-remember ourselves from one day to the next what we learn…share what lies at the edge of consciousness, what you have to remember and wish to externalize for easy reference.Then, you can google yourself…and you will find yourself online.
last one – play with your ideas and your writing, like a cat with a ball of yarn that forgets to hold back. When you can do that with what you’ve learned from others as well as yourself of endless abandonment–play–well, then you’re in the Zone.
Invite people to respond. Write a couple of (hopefully) interesting paragraphs and then ask a question at the end that invites readers to chime in, contribute a resource, etc.!
Thanks for thinking of me. What do YOU think is a great blogging tip to share with others?
Write what you know and talk about what you care about. People who write with passion are forgiven small errors and are engaging to read.
Set up your flickr account to publish directly to your blog. You can use your own (or other’s ) photos by using “Blog this” button, which automatically embeds the photo and whatever text you write. I either do this to blog about, say an event in my own photos, or just using the photo as a metaphor for a thought.
1) Take a break when you need it, rather than forcing your posts. While this depends highly one what type of blogger you are (e.g., professional fulltime vs. part time), sometimes a short hiatus may be what you need to renew your perspective and get you writing again. If the break is
relatively short, there is not a great chance that you should not have to worry about losing subscribers. If you’ve followed the other tips here, there’s a good chance you will already have a stable base.2) Let change come naturally. If you started out as a certain type of blogger but after some time you’ve realized that you are passionate about something else, go with it. Change is often good. Change your
theme, your tagline, your focus if necessary; whatever it takes to be passionate about writing. Chances are these changes will not be incredibly dramatic so you will not have to sacrifice your readership.
The most important piece is that you are writing about something that is important to you. Your posts will likely be more coherent, powerful, and personal. Share your enthusiasm with you readers.3) Avoid the echo chamber. There is an inherent danger in an information environment without a critique. Write and comment carefully, and most importantly, critically. Bad ideas quickly become good ones when the mob mentality arrives.
Write about what interests you. That will keep you motivated and will infuse passion and direction into your writing.
Always post the feed URL of your blog someplace permanent on your blog page. This makes it easier for those using a less-popular news reader to aggregate your content.
Don’t be afraid to say something controversial, and, if you want to offer a post that may cause you to be criticized or ridiculed, just shut off commenting on that post. You may be criticized or ridiculed in other places, but at least not on your own blog!
Don’t let content get lost. With many of us microblogging with Twitter and Plurk, I sometimes feel that entire threads of content are being lost in 140 character hunks. If you do have a meaningful, continuing conversation using one of these tools, summarize it afterwards in a blog post so it is more “permanent”.
If you want to make contact with a prominent blogger, mention and link to them in your own blog in some inviting way, since they (we) all have Google Alerts on their (our) own names.
Blog because you are passionate about what you are sharing, not because you feel you have to get a post up for your readers. I would rather read an occasional post that is written with true voice than a slew that were obviously written just to get something up.
Make your blog as personal as possible. I read writing that has a “voice.” If I want dry scholarship, I’ll read a peer-reviewed journal, but I’ll read your blog if you share your personal experiences, ideas, opinions and passions. PLEASE have a good “About Me” page so I can put your writing in context – your job, your location, your years in the profession. Give me a way to contact you off line, please. I could be an e-stalker, but the odds are against it. For many of us, it’s not really educational unless the heart and soul are touched as well as the mind.
I find my best posts come from the heart – I work hard to experience what I am writing and to pretend that someone is sitting right there and that I am talking to them conversationally. Although sometimes, it leaves me exhausted, I think that this conversational/ experiential type of blogging gives me a voice and keeps me focused on my passion: advocating the effective use of technology to reach ALL learning styles in ways that promote academic excellence.
Often, in my blog entries, I find it necessary to include information that is related to the article, but not logically part of the article. A sidebar serves well for quoted explanations, lists of links, and other ancillary info.
There are lots of ways to achieve this, but just a little straight-forward HTML seems to work most consistently for me. Below is some HTML code that I just past into my blog article, at the beginning of the paragraph that should wrap around the sidebar.
<table border="0" width="300"
align="right" bgcolor="#ffdf89"><tbody><tr><td>
YOUR SIDEBAR TEXT GOES HERE
</td></tr></tbody></table>This code will produce a 300 pixel wide sidebar aligned to the right (with text wrapping around to the left) with a tan background color. Good luck!
End with the beginning. This is not necessarily a blogging tip, per se, but a writing technique, a way to bring ideas full circle. Example
I find that most people choose not to blog or to share because they feel like someone else has or will do whatever it is that they’re trying to do better. They’re not good enough, or whatever.
The harsh reality is that’s probably true. But what is also true is that no one else will ever do it the way that you do, and you will learn more in the doing than you will in reading someone else’s account of the same thing, even if it’s a very, very good account or blog post or whatever.
So be brave, and write anyway, knowing that there’s value in sharing your experiences in large part because they’re yours.
1. Use your blog to BUILD others up and not TEAR them down. As Thumper was told in Bambi (slight edit here…) If you can’t write somethin’ nice, don’t write anything at all.
2. Count your “I’s” before you hit submit. Count your “me’s”. Could your “should’s”. And count the times you draw attention to yourself. Your blog might be written BY you………..but it doesn’t need to be written ABOUT you.
3. Sometimes you don’t have to hit SUBMIT!!!
Huge thanks go out to everybody who responded. I truly feel honored to have such inspiring and responsive people in my network!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Day 13: Declutter Your Sidebar Part 2
Well, you knew this was coming. Part one of the challenge was zooming in on the blogroll, assuming that your blogroll was even IN your sidebar of course. Part 2, today’s challenge, is to go through the rest of sidebar with a fine toothed comb and de-clutter it. This is one of the ideas based on ProBlogger’s tips that I knew was going to be included the moment I saw it. One thing to remember here is that de-cluttering does not necessarily mean removing things. It’s a matter of looking at each item you have there, considering whether it belongs in your sidebar or not, whether it is taking up more space than it deserves, whether it’s function is being duplicated elsewhere or could be consolidated, and whether there may be another way to achieve the same goal in a more efficient way.
If you’ve been following this challenge, then you’ve already added a few things to your sidebar. I think having a translate option is important and is going to stay. The Clustrmap is more of a vanity item than anything else, but it does an effective job of demonstrating the reach of your community geographically and I’m choosing to keep. Obviously, that’s a personal choice. I’m not going to preach that you should have a short sidebar or a long one, or what belongs there and what doesn’t. However, I do believe that what’s there should be deliberate and efficient in terms of space and form, especially considering how many options are out there.
For example, in my sidebar right now I have a Facebook badge, I have a ShowYourself badge, a Twitter widget, and a FriendFeed widget. The ShowYourself badge has a link to my Facebook profile and my FriendFeed widget displays my Twitter status updates, which seems kind of ridiculous now that I think about it. I’m going to eliminate them all. No, I’m not going to stop linking to those things and displaying my status, but I’m going to take advantage of a tool that Sue Waters (who is the spiritual co-author of this challenge!) recommended to me called Retaggr. It provides a nice clean badge that will give me almost all the functionality that those four items provided, but in one nice and neat package. It’ll have links to all my social sites, like the ShowYourself badge. It includes my headshot, company, and link to Facebook like the Facebook badge did. It will also display my most recent tweet, which is plenty. If people want to see my last 10 tweets, they can visit Twitter. The only thing I’m losing out on is that the FriendFeed badge displayed when I’ve uploaded photos or videos as well, which is pretty sporadic to be honest. Ideally, I’d love it if Retaggr would display my most recent post on Twitter OR Plurk, but that’s ok. I think the benefit far outweighs the few things it lacks.
There are a few widgets that I have that just don’t make the cut. I have a Now Reading plugin that shows what my ‘reading’ status is. However, it only works as well as my maintenance habits, which are poor when it comes to that. I never remember to update it so I have a choice: Change my habits, or just get rid of it. I don’t feel it’s that important, so it’s going bye-bye.
For the widgets that you’ll be keeping, bear in mind that there may be new versions of them available, or third party options that you could swap them out for. For example, check out all of these different Twitter widgets that are available. And that blog post is from a year ago! Many sites also offer you the opportunity to modify the color schemes for a widget, enabling you to try to blend it in a little closer to your chosen theme. You may find it worthwhile to give a few ‘keeper’ widgets a makeover as part of this challenge.
While we’re at it, let’s talk Archives. Typically there are only three ways somebody visiting your blog can find your posts once they’ve scrolled off the front page: 1) Search 2) Categories 3) Archives. I do think they’re important to keep around, but once you’ve been blogging for a few months, they start to take up a HUGE amount of space. However, that’s an easy one to do something about. Most blogging engines now have an option to shrink your archives down to a drop down list. So instead of it taking half the page, it’ll only take up a line or two. Unfortunately, that option is usually relatively hidden. In WordPress (and EduBlogs), you have to find the archive Widget and click Edit and the option will pop right up. In Blogger, it’s pretty similar. Go to Layout -> Page Elements and choose to edit the Blog Archive gadget. Lots of options there, including changing it to a drop down box. Very very easy thing to do in order to save a lot of real estate in your sidebar.
Finally, there are three things that I think you need to make sure are somewhat obvious in your sidebar: A search bar, a way to contact you and a way to subscribe to your blog. I never understand why some bloggers don’t have a search bar on their blog. It makes me leave their blog and jump through some Google hoops just to find information they’ve written that I know is there! As I mentioned above, there are precious few ways to find your content once it has scrolled off the front page. Don’t make it more difficult for your readers.
Contact information seems like a no-brainer, but I’m always stunned by how many blogs I visit don’t provide any way to make direct contact besides leaving a comment and hoping they see it. Some of you put your contact information in your About Me page. That’s fine, but if you did so, you should also have SOMETHING in your sidebar that clearly states, “This is where you can go to contact me” and then points to the About page. Once again, if somebody reads your blog and wants to communicate with you, you want it to be easy for them to do so.
Same thing goes for subscribing. Now, if you did the Feedburner challenge, then this should be a non-issue. But step back and verify that in your sidebar there is an obvious way for people to subscribe to your blog. Your RSS or Feedburner icon should not be so subtle that people can’t find it. I recently visited a very prominent blogger and was flabbergasted that there was no RSS link available. I had to view his source code in order to find out what his RSS feed. That’s inexcusable on a blog. So double, triple check to make sure that your RSS feed is represented in your sidebar and that it points to the right one if you signed up for Feedburner.
Just for the sake of an example, I’m going to leave my blog’s sidebar as-is for the rest of the day, and then will fix it up as I’ve outlined here tonight. Enjoy the mess for now, it’ll be a leaner, meaner sidebar soon
I have to admit, the comments on these posts have been phenomenal. So don’t be shy here, did I miss anything? Is there anything you consider a ‘must-have’ for your sidebar, or that you think is a faux pas that bloggers often commit? Got a great widget that you think would add value or make people’s sidebar content more efficient? Share some of your favorites as well as the ones you hope to never see again! Also, if you’d like to get some feedback on your sidebar, share a link to your blog and I”m sure people would be willing to take a look.
Day 9: Burn Baby Burn! Your Feed, That Is
One of the more confusing aspects of blogging is RSS, but that’s truly the heart and soul of a blog. Without the RSS feed, you just have a web page. Your RSS feed allows people to subscribe to your content via aggregator or email, or allows you to take your content and republish it in a variety of ways. For example, it’s what allows you to announce your blog posts on Facebook or on FriendFeed and so on. Your feed is an absolutely critical piece of your blog and you always want to make sure it’s functioning, happy and standards compliant.
While just about every blog engine out there supports RSS, most are fairly basic feeds. They do the job, but not much more than that. Of course, that begs the question, what else would you like your RSS feed to do? Wel, for one thing you might want to engage in podcasting. Most people don’t know it, but it’s your RSS feed that takes a link to an MP3 file and turns it into an actual podcast. It realizes that you’ve linked to an MP3 file and then adds in some special code that let’s podcatchers like iTunes know how to get access to the audio file. Interestingly, it doesn’t just do it for audio files. PDF’s, Video files, and documents of all sorts caqn be sent out via a podcast. That is, if your RSS feed handles the data right. And that’s barely the tip of the iceberg.
While most RSS feeds are just adequate, Feedburner is a free service that can take an adequate feed and make it superior. I’ve been using Feedburner to remix my feed for about 4 years now and can’t recommend it more highly. There’s a few reasons that I suggest using Feedburner to upgrade your feed, but the biggest is a very simple practical one. Bloggers move around sometimes. You may start on Blogger, then move to EduBlogs.org and then wind up hosting your own someday. Who knows? Maybe you’ll start off on your own and then move to a school server. You never know what the future is going to bring. Typically, every time you move your blog you’d need to alert all of your readers that your RSS feed is changing. They need to unsubscribe from your old feed, and then subscribe to your new feed. While some people will do so, more than likely you’ll lose readers that way. If you have people subscribing to a Feedburner feed instead, you just change were Feedburner gets it’s information from and your readers are unaffected.
Let me step back just a little bit and ensure you understand what I mean on this one. Typically your blog engine (Blogger, EduBlogs, WordPress, Blogmeister) creates your RSS feed. When you sign up for Feedburner, you supply them the link to your RSS feed and then they give you a shiny new Feedburner feed. Then you hide all instances of the original feed and make sure that everybody is subscribing to your Feedburner feed. The feedburner feed passes along the EXACT same information, but it mixes it and mashes it up to make it more standards compliant, enables all sorts of additional features, allows you to keep a closer eye on your subscriber data and more. So it’s just a shiny new version of your original feed, but with a new address.
I’m not going to take you step by step how you sign up for feedburner, because they already have some great walk thru’s for it, depending on your blog engine. This page has quick start guides for Blogger, WordPress, Typepad and MySpace. Sue Waters has a phenomenal write up of how to add Feedburner to your EduBlogs blog. And for the record, most of her steps will work just fine on other WordPress blogs.
Once you’ve signed up for Feedburner and have your shiny new Feedburner link, there’s two things that you need to do in order to make sure that people find that instead of your old feed. The first is add a Feedburner chicklet to your sidebar. Log into your Feedburner account and go to the Publicize tab. One of your choices is the Chicklet Chooser. Follow the steps there to create a chicklet that appeals to you. Grab the code and paste it somewhere in your sidebar so that people can find it. Then glance through your sidebar to make sure that you don’t see any other references to your old RSS feed. At this point, I would also suggest that you alert your current subscribers to switch over to your new and improved feed. If they don’t, no worries for now. They’ll still receive content via your old feed. It isn’t turned off or anything. But you do want to encourage them to move over to the new one.
The second thing you need to do is fix your auto-discovery options. If you use Firefox 
, Flock, Opera, IE7 or Safari 
, you may notice certain notifications when you’re visiting web pages that have RSS feeds. When that icon appears, that means that there’s subscribable content on that page. Clicking on the RSS icon takes you to a page that gives you a variety of ways to subscribe. However, we want to make sure that it’s providing ways to subscribe to the NEW Feedburner feed. If you use an official redirection service like a WordPress Plugin (same goes for Edublogs) or Blogger’s Feedburner redirection service, then no worries, it should handle it for you. In Typepad, you can connect your Typepad blog to Feedburner and then it’ll handle it for you. If you use anything else, you may need to edit your template yourself to do this part. While it may seem intimidating to do so, it’s not that complicated. Just a matter of tweaking a few lines of code. This blog post will show you how.
So today’s challenge is to upgrade your RSS feed to Feedburner today. It’s one of those things that may seem like a pain the first time you do it, but trust me when I say that you will never regret it. It’s well worth the effort in the long haul. If you’ve already upgraded your blog to Feedburner, then use this as an excuse to browse through the site and see what options have popped up since the last time you visited. Most people set up Feedburner and then promptly forget all about it. Did you know that you can mix in events from your Google Calendar? Or add icons allowing people to forward on your articles, promote them on Digg, or GeoTag them for you? Is your Creative Commons license in your feed on and up to date (not everyone actually VISITS your blog)? Are you allowing readers to subscribe via email? Feedburner is adding features all the time, take a few minutes to flip through the features you may not have seen recently.
If you have any problems with this challenge, let us know via comments below. I’ll do my best to try to point you in the right direction. Also, don’t forget to add yourself to the 30D2BBB Wiki, so people know who you are and where your blog is. That way we can all try to support each other!
30d2bbb image by Jason Robertshaw is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License