All right. Since the switch to the new Blogger went so smoothly, I decide to play around with one of the new features, custom layouts. I was hoping that there would be a few new templates in there to play with, but there aren’t. Despite that I switched to a new, old template. Green again. I seem to have a thing for green templates.
I got brave and included a photo this time. Over the years I’ve enjoyed finally seeing photos of other bloggers, so I decided to include mine. Unfortunately, most photos I have of myself were taken on holidays, and I only seem to travel to really hot, humid places, which don’t make for a portrait you’d want to hang on a blog. This photo is a crop out from a snapshot taken at school, hence the arm growing out of my head. It’s also a bit fuzzy, but it’s the best I have at the moment.
But that is more than enough about me. More important are these new custom layouts. They are pretty slick. You get to build your page in a modular way. You have lots of options of things to add to your sidebar, such as lists of links, photos, logos, feeds from other sites, and HTML code from other sites, such as counters. Once you’ve created these modules, you can drag and drop them to where you want them. It’s all very simple and doesn’t require any special technical knowledge beyond knowing how to cut and paste.You’ve always been able to make these sorts of changes if you knew HTML code. This new system removes the need to know it.
Other changes are a redesigned Dashboard that is easier to use, posts publish much more quickly, and the spell check is less cumbersome and has a larger dictionary. Since Blogger is part of the Google empire, you do need to switch from your old login to a Google login.
The only trouble I’ve had was trying to access comments using Flock. However, our Internet is still a bit dodgy due to the severed cables near Taiwan, so all that may straighten out once we are back to full speed.
All in all, the new Blogger seems to be largely improved. It makes the old Blogger seem slow and outdated. Give it a try if you still haven’t made the move.
If you have a digital camera, and a tripod, you probably can set up a delayed picture and take a good one of yourself. It takes a little trial and error to figure out the best angle you need to set your body to the camera. Also, you will do best to take the picture outside, at least 20 feet or so from a fairly even background and do it on an overcast day of early/late in the day.
Have fun and get the picture you really want.
Marilyn Kircus
Jane Long M S
Houston, TX
Thanks for the suggestion, Marilyn. I’ve tried a bit of that already and the results have been scary, but I’ll keep working at it. Someday I’ll have a good professional image of myself…
Well, I like your layout much better than mine. I just can’t seem to find one that I like.
By the way, I’m a tech coordinator as well at a small international school in Sumbawa. Do you have your students use blogging?
Hey drbruce! Good to hear from you again. Glad to hear steps are underway for your kids’ passports.
I am not currently blogging with any students. I did at my previous two schools, but not here yet. This is such a big school and I had so much to figure out that I haven’t attempted it yet. And being a big school, it may make the most sense to host our own wordpress set up eventually. I’ve also wondered if when FrontPage dies, we shouldn’t move teachers to blogs instead of having them use Dreamweaver. Lots of ideas percolating, but no action at this time. How about you?
I did some blogging last year with kids from 3rd to 8th grade. They really enjoyed it, although I sort of lost track of what the educational purpose was other than them having fun (maybe that’s enough). We’ve been focusing on doing websites and making videos, but our pcs are to old and slow to handle moviemaking, so I went out and bought one of these new cool iMacs. We’re going to try making some videos with the three that we have at school.
What are you having teachers use Dreamweaver for?
The other thing that I’m starting to work with is podcasting. I did a small experiment which was good, but I haven’t followed up on it.