Blog Enhancements

There many different ways you can expand your blog to make it better fit your individual personality. Over the next several days, you will take steps to add more features and enhancements to your blog. These tools will not only enhance the visual image of your blog but will also extend your writing about literature beyond the words you publish in posts and pages. These are the features you will be adding to your blog:

  1. Links, link categories, and link management
  2. Hyperlinks
  3. Images and media management
  4. Comments and digital citizenship
  5. Widget enhancements

Blog Lesson Links:

Some of you have expressed an interest in writing on your blog outside of the classroom. This is permissible as long as you follow these simple guidelines:

  • Your blog is a school sponsored blog, so everything you write must be appropriate for school: language, topic, etc.
  • You may never, ever write about friends or problems with friends. Your blog is not a gossip column.
  • You must avoid writing about very personal topics. Your blog is not meant to reveal private information.
  • Always write for a public audience.
  • Know that your teacher has the right to delete inappropriate posts.
  • Remember that school assignments come first. If you fall behind in your work. your grade will suffer for it.
  • You do not reveal any personal information (last name, address, phone number, etc.)

These optional blog posts are not graded and writing them will not earn extra credit. If you would like to better yourself as a writer, here are some topics to consider writing about:

  • Your participation in sports and clubs.
  • Your learning in other classes.
  • How you have made strides in the goals you set for yourself in your About Me page.
  • Your hobbies and interests.
  • How a teacher, coach, or adviser has recently helped you. How they have helped you change for the better.
  • Review a movie or television show you recently saw.

Learn more about responsible blogging, about what makes a good blog post, and what digital citizenship is all about:

Links

Some links to consider adding to your blog:

  • websites of your favorite authors
  • your favorite CE9 bloggers
  • English resources
    • Falcon’s Skills & Style Handbook
    • Easybib

Themes

  • Click on Theme under Appearance
  • Remember that you should have a Meta widget.
  • Choose a theme that fits your style and personality.
  • If your blog theme displays only an abstract for posts, see if you can change it to display the entire post.

ClustrMap

Cluster Maps is a neat tool that tracks visitors to your blog, both the number of visitors and their location. It’s easy to add. Please follow the steps below.

  1. Go to ClustrMap
  2. Copy your url from your blog and paste it into the space for your url.
  3. You also need to add your email address to get your password in case you want advanced options.
  4. Then click, “Make My Map.”
  5. At the bottom of that page you’ll find your html code. Copy that: highlight and use Control+C.
  6. To add the widget to your site, you will have to drag a text widget to your sidebar. Text widgets allow you to add html code. Drag the widget over and paste in the code (control+V). Then save the text widget and close it. You should see the new Cluster Map on your blog.
  7. The map will only update once each day.

LibraryThing

  1. First, you have to create an account at LibraryThing. It is free, but you will need a user name and an email address. Once you’ve created an account, you’ll need to add books to your digital library.
    1. Add books by author, title or by ISBN (the Library of Congress identification number).
    2. You’ll get a list of choices. Click on the link for the book that most resembles the one you read. If the cover art isn’t perfect, you can change that later using “edit book.”
  2. Widget method: drag the LibraryThing widget already in your blog over to the sidebar. You’ll need to enter your LT user name. Save the widget. View your blog.
  3. Embed method: while logged into LibraryThing, click the Widgets link on the top-right side. Customize the widget to your taste. Copy the information in the Embed box. Log into your blog, click on Widgets. Click and drag a Text widget to one of your sidebars. Paste the information from LibraryThing.

Tag Cloud

Go to the Widgets page under Appearance and drag a tag cloud widget to a sidebar. Nothing will show up, though, if you have no tags.

Tags are like key words that you “attach” to a post. For example, if you write about your experiences with the humane society for your hypertext paragraph, you might add the following tags: humane society, feral cats, animal abuse, etc. The value of tags is this. When someone Googles ‘humane society,’  it is possible that the search will show your blog post. Tags can bring more readers to your blog. Tags in WordPress are to be separated by commas.

Wordle

  • Go to Wordle
  • Click “Create” at the top of the screen
  • Type in words that you would like to appear in your wordle image.  The words you choose need to represent a book you read in class or CyberEnglish in general.  The more times you enter a word the bigger the word will be in your image.
  • After entering all the words click “Go”
  • After the image appears, you can change the Font, Color or Layout using the tabs at the top of the image.
  • When you are satisfied with your image, click save.  Copy and paste the urlthat appears at the bottom of the screen after you save the image.
  • Copy the url into a text widget on your blog.