All Henrico teachers have a blog! You can access it by going to blogs.henrico.k12.va.us and logging in with your most recent e-mail username and password. Just getting started with blogs? Check out these Blogging 101 Directions that Tyler Hart created.
Header Image:
Are you using the theme Twenty Ten or Twenty Eleven? If so, you can customize your header! Use this PowerPoint Template to make your header. Save as a JPEG and upload! Click {HERE} to download the template.
Do you want to see how many people are visiting your blog? Try out this site for free blog hit counters. Using the text widget under appearance, you can paste the HTML code to the blog hit counter of your choice. My favorite are the Uno Cards!
Directions for adding a Subscribe Button to your blog. When others subscribe, they will be notified when you have made updates to your blog.
Embed Codes (tutorial by Jim Covais)
Pictures take up a lot of space on your blog. To prevent taking up space, store your photos on another site and link up the HTML code to your post. Check out this post to learn how to store photos in Google Drive and post them to your blog.
Videos also take up a large amount of space on your blogs. I like to store my videos on Vimeo and grab the embed code to share it on my blog.
Embedding your Google Calendar is a quick, easy way to keep your parents up to date on events happening in your classroom. Once the calendar is embedded on your blog, any changes made to your Google Calendar will show on your blog! Check out these directions created my Tyler Hart.
Embedding Google Docs, Forms, and Slides:
Google Drive is not just for creating and sharing documents between you and your teammates. Google Drive documents can be embedded directly into your blog!
– You could start typing your newsletter in Google Drive. Embed this newsletter in your blog or your teammate’s blog. When you make changes to your newsletter it will automatically update on your blog and your teammate’s blog.
– Embed a Google Form onto your blog. You can use this form as a survey for students or parents. You can even make the form as an assignment to check for understanding.
Not sure how to make a form. Check out this video tutorial created by Julie Smith:
– Google Presentation work a lot like Powerpoint. Presentations can be embedded on a blog and set to change slides every few seconds. This would be great to put sight words or math facts on a loop for students to review at home.
Sources for Copyright Free Images:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain_image_resources
http://copyrightfriendly.wikispaces.com/