Tuesday, April 19, 2011

How to: Enhance your blog

How to: Enhance your blog
To start off with, it is first important to set up your blog the way you want it before you begin posting.  It sometimes causes confusion to go back and add add-ons.We want to show you how to enhance your blog! It is important in blogging that you feel confident about the blog that you are making available for others to comment on.
Here are some simple things that I found to be somewhat simple but exciting to see on my blog!
Widgets:



Grooveshark widget:

Carly has the Grooveshark widget on her page because she likes to share her music. It was actually easy to install! *Instructions*
First you will need to sign up for Grooveshark. Then you can create your playlist. There will be an option that says "Share playlist"; choose the "widget" option. It will let you customize the


colors of your player and the songs you want it to play. Once you have copied the html code to embed, go to the "design" tab on your Blogger dashboard. Find "Add a gadget" then go to the option that's "HTML/Java Script. Paste the copied embed code in the content box and save and you are ready to go!!





Wibiya toolbar:

Stumble Upon, is so easy to get addicted to! One of the blogs it "stumbled" lately used this feature. I thought it was very cool because it's not just for you, it's convenient for the people viewing your blog. If you post a lot on your blog because you have a lot to say, and someone happened to feel chaotic, they could

join you in live chat to ask any questions they had directly. Say, if you were a teacher, a parent, member of administration, or student could ask you anything they need to momentarily. Also, you can translate the post if you need to, view recent posts, share on twitter, like on facebook, watch their YouTube Videos, and also view their latest twitter updates. This is useful, but especially for a teacher. Being reachable and available at the time that questions arise for help when it is actually needed is vital.
 

Go to www.wibiya.com to get and customize your own for free! You can customize what websites or features you would like to use. If you need any help, you know how and where to reach us!

Shelfari:
Teachers, would you like to add a virtual bookshelf to the margin of your page to let your students and parents know about and keep up with the readings for your class? It's so easy and it looks really cute. It first came up when we were introduced to Mrs. Kathleen Cassidy's blog. This would also be helpful on a student blog because they could embed it on their blog and not have to keep referring to their teacher's blog.
If you would like to preview a shelfari add-on before creating one, you can view Carly's that she created out of sheer nerd-dom. (*Disclaimer:This is the actually webpage for the shelfari, the widget looks much different and should only take up part of the marginal space of your blog page.

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