Creating a new blog opens a wide scope of possibilities. First you have to choose a blog host and then a template. Of course the posts are the soul of the blog. You wouldn't visit a blog just because you like the template. But a template may say things about you. The shade of colours you choose, the picture in the header, the size of the fonts... I find it hard to read very long posts especially when the font is too small. I pay very special attention to the graphic elements because they help the reader.
But the blog is not just the posts. There's the sidebar and the footer. Those are the areas where you can put elements that can make your blog a richer place. What would you like to offer your readers? There are hundreds of options:
- your favourite links (to share sites your readers might like)
- a chat board (to meet your readers when you are online)
- a map (to know where your readers come from)
- a counter (to know how many people are visiting you)
- a subscription badge (to invite your readers to follow your posts by mail)
- some word games (to entertain and help your readers learn)
- a dictionary box (to help your readers with the language)
- RSS feeds (to share interesting content with your readers)
- a clock or a weather sticker (to inform your readers about the time and weather in your city)
- and the list goes on and on...
The point now is to find the right widgets for you and use them in a pedagogical way.
Steve McCarty, an English teacher living in Japan, has sent us a message where he explains how he uses aggregators to keep track of his students' and colleagues' blogs, and Google maps API (http://www.google.com/apis/maps/) to show his place in the world. He also talks about the drawbacks of stand-alone widgets.
- Visit Steve's podblog: Japancasting (http://stevemc.blogmatrix.com)
- Online library: http://waoe.org/steve/epublist.html
- Send a voice message to Steve: http://odeo.com/sendmeamessage/SteveMcCarty
Mary Hillis (our Mary Hillis), has sent us a comment about her favourite widget:
I love Kaboodle widgets! You know, Kaboodle is a kind of social bookmarking
site, but their main focus is organizing your online shopping, creating registries, and that sort of thing. However, I've been trying to use Kaboodle for educational purposes because I just love that each site you add to Kaboodle has a picture, you can organize the bookmarks thematically on pages, and they offer some great looking widgets. Just see my blog: they
have "help me choose", "slideshow", and "collage".The "help me choose" widget allows you to ask a question and offer three possible answers. So, I asked my blog readers, "Which educational blog host should I choose?" The only drawback there is that you're limited to 3 possible answers, but after people vote, they can leave comments there too.
The next widget is "slideshow" and it will show one of your Kaboodle pages in a slideshow.
The final service Kaboodle offers is a collage ... you can create a custom collage view of one of your Kaboodle page images and post it to a blog or website.
So, please check out Kaboodle http://www.kaboodle.com and their widgets on my blog at http://maryhillis.blogspot.com
As teachers we need to find a teaching purpose for the items we add to our sidebar. We don't want just bells and whistles, do we? Have you added any widgets to your blogs already? What are your favourites? How do you exploit them with your students? Are you a new blogger? Are you planning to add any widgets? How do you think your readers/students will benefit from them?
Eager to hear your comments,
Claudia
