Course Links: Update, June 8, 2011

Students have begun adding another link to the lists of Links (gagdets) in their sidebars. I've followed suit. The green oval in the graphic above highlights a new link in the Writing Studio Blog sidebar. That link is also on the Writing Studio Wiki homepage, in §6.1.

Data on books you review (authors' names, publication dates, cities of publication, and the like) that you glean from the Material Search site work well in conjunction with the Citation Maker, an online tool to help you compose accurate and complete APA-style citations (see: Course Links: Highlights – May 2011). That is, as long as you remember that Citation Maker automatically reduces authors' given names to their initials. For practical purposes, please spell them out (again) completely in reference listings on your book review posts.

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Two gadgets for sidebars

For our writing course, two of the most important gadgets to have in your sidebars are a Recent Comments gadget and a Labels gadget.

Labels gadget

Labels gadgets help visitors find posts of interest on your blogs. If you haven't added a Labels gadget to your blog yet, ask a classmate or peer who has to help you do so. Here's a breadcrumb trail you can follow:

• Dashboard (yours): Design: Page Elements: Add a Gadget (sidebar): Basics: Labels: "+"

Please remember to Save your Labels gadget after you make sure the title is in English ("Labels"), and after you configure it as shown in the first screenshot below. 

You also should note that Labels gadgets will be invisible on your blogs unless they have at least one post that has labels on it (see: Critical Step for Startup Labels posts, April 21, 2011).

Recent Comments gadget

The Recent Comments gadget, as you can see in the next screenshot (below), should be at – or very near – the top of (one of) your sidebar(s). (Some blog templates have more than one.) That will enable all blog visitors to see at a glance what's new (your most recent blog post) and what's hot (most recent comments) whenever they open your blog.

That is, as long as the graphic in your banner (and other elements in your header) aren't so big they force posts and sidebar elements out of sight. If they do, you probably need to rethink your blog layout (;-{))!

The breadcrumb trail leading to Recent Comments gadgets is as follows:

• Dashboard (yours): Design: Page Elements: Add a Gadget (sidebar): More Gadgets ...

From there, however, finding the right gadget gets tricky, unless you know some tricks, yourself. At present, there are over 1000 More Gadgets to choose from. The trick to remember here is to use the search function:

Though we'll be getting more gadgets where those came from, those two should be enough to get your through today!

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Welcome from Voki (2011.02.17)

Please click on the play button to listen to my welcome message.



If you have any questions about any part of the Writing Studio Blog: banner, page tabs, sidebar, or footer; please spell them out in comments on this blog post.

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Additional Course Link

I added another Course Link to the links gadget in the Writing Studio Blog sidebar a few days ago. It provides direct access to a webpage listing class members' blog handles and links to their blogs.

The blog handles may help you recognize your classmates and peers when they leave comments on your blogs. The links will help you find their blogs and comment on their posts.

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Add Startup Labels to Your Blogs

The purpose of this activity is to enable you easily and quickly to label other posts on your blogs with appropriate labels. Labels, in addition to the reverse timelines on your blogs' home pages and archives, give blog visitors quick and easy access to posts of interest. The set of labels below includes those your classmates, peers, and I want you to use help us find and review your writing assignments.

Here's what I'd like you to do first:

1. 
   
   Create a new post entitled Startup Labels;
2. 
   
   Copy and paste the labels below into the body of your post;
3. 
   
   Copy and paste the labels below into the Labels field at the foot of the editing window, with commas between them;
4. 
   
   Preview your post, to make sure you have included all of the startup labels (15); and
5. 
   
   Publish your post with a word count in square brackets at the lower left corner.

Startup labels:

• books, brainstorms, drafts, essay prep., essays, free-writing, graphics, links, media, movies, outlines, quickposts, reviews, [revisions,] typing, websites

Next, you need to go to the blog Dashboard > Settings > Layout > Page Elements view (direct from Customize link in the top right side of the page frame on your blog's home page). In the sidebar area, click Add a Gadget, and select the gadget for Labels. The Configure Labels pop-up window offers several options; if you show All Labels, Alphabetically, they will be easy to find and use. 

Don't forget to save the changes you've made to your sidebar!

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Dreadfully Slow Blog-Loading Syndrome

In case you experience dreadfully slow blog-loading syndrome: DreSloBloLoSyn, for short (try saying that three times quickly;-); there are things you can do other than buy a new computer, or find an ISP that offers greater bandwidth. This Blogger Help page explains several steps you can take:

• How can I make my blog load faster?

With all the bells and whistles that some of you have added to your blogs this year (me, too!), that help page may be a timely read.

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New Sidebar Gadget: Followers

A new Blogger gadget that I've just added to the sidebar opens another avenue of access to Writing Studio Blog updates. It's down to the right, between Local Favorites and Subscribe via gmail (now Get mailed!) gadgets. It's the green starred item in the sidebar Layout screenshot (right).

The first avenue for notification of updates was subscription via mail functionality provided by Feedburner, which I blogged up last January (Subscribe via Gmail Today!, 2008.01.10). You may have missed that, if you failed to read up on previous posts as I suggested at the beginning of Writing III. Some folks prefer mail notifications; others depend upon handy lists of links to favorite sites in their own sidebars, or feed readers there or elsewhere (for example: Google Reader).

Now signing up to follow a blog generates an RSS feed in your own Dashboard, and there are at least two ways to get started. One works for any Blogger blog (though it doesn't seem to work on Edublogs, at least not right away); you just grab the URL of a blog you want to follow, and "ADD" it to your Dashboard Reading List. Here's a snapshot of the list I've started:

The "ADD" button is at the foot of your list.

The other way to follow a Blogger blog is to find one you want to follow that displays a Followers gadget. You can subscribe through the gadget, and updates from that blog will automatically appear in your Dashboard Reading List. For more info. about following, including private or public following options, I recommend these Blogger Help Center posts:

• What is following?
• How do I use the Blogger Reading List?
• How do I add the Following gadget to my blog?

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RSS Feed Displays

RSS feed displays come in widgets of all sizes, shapes, and colors, and can provide you and visitors to your blogs with up-to-date information gathered automatically from all kinds of online sources, including blogs and wikis. There are at least four different RSS feed displays that I'm currently using on the Writing Studio Blog. There will be prizes in class for the first students to spell out in a comment on this post:

• the exact number (total) of RSS feed readers displayed on the top page of this blog, plus
  
• the title and location of only ONE (1) of those RSS feed displays.

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Comment Heads-Ups for You and Blog Visitors

With Recent Comments feed widgets added to your blogs last week (classwork, 2008.04.23, based on the recipe here), you should be almost set to:

1. Keep abreast of what comments you're getting on your blog, and
   
2. Enable your classmates, friends, teachers, peers, and other visitors to do so, too.

The points and settings you should check appear in red in the outlines (lists) below:

• For your posts
  • With visitors' comments

    • Comment Notification: Set in your Dashboard (Settings: Comments)

      • Informs you via gmail.
      
      

      Recent Comments feed that you've built and placed near the top of your sidebar

      • Informs visitors on site.
      
      

      Follow-up comment notification: Visitors select this option before publishing their first comment on one of your posts.

      • Informs previous commentators via gmail.
      
      
      • NOTE: With Comment Notification already ON, you don't need to select this option when you add follow-up comments on your own blog posts.
      
      
      
  • With your follow-ups
    • Recent Comments feed
      • Informs subsequent visitors on site.
      
      
      
    • Follow-up comment notification
      • Informs previous commentators via gmail.

Please make sure to double-check your blog comment settings [Blogger Dashboard: Settings: Comments] to make sure that:

• Comment Moderation is OFF -
  
• Unless you've had problems with comment spam.
• If you have had spam problems, please inform a teacher ASAP.
  

• Word Verification is ON -
  
• To minimize chances of getting machine-generated comment spam.
  

• Comment Notification is ON -
• So you'll be among the first to know when you get new comments!
• If you believe that you've received comment spam, please forward the comment notification message(s) to your teacher's gmail address immediately.

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Library Thing Widget

This quick post announces the addition of a LibraryThing widget to the sidebar. The widget feeds on recent additions to my LibraryThing catalog (above), a long-awaited follow-on to the very first post on this blog last year (An Extensive Reading (ER) Project, March 1, 2007). This post is also the second half-century post (150 of 150, today) on the Writing Studio Blog.

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Subscribe via Gmail Today!

In these final weeks of the semester, you should expect to find numerous new posts on the Writing Studio Blog. As do the past few posts that I've made, new posts will provide important information with regard to your blogs, your portfolios, and final exams for Writing IVc.

If you haven't done so already, I urge you to subscribe to receive automated announcements of new posts on the Writing Studio Blog by entering you exact gmail address in the "Subscribe via Gmail" widget in the blog sidebar, and then pressing the submit button. If you already have subscribed via gmail already, please try it out with your cellphone mail address, too, and pick whichever is more convenient for you.

The gmail subscription widget, which looks like this non-functional graphic (right), actually will work for any kind of email address. The subscription widget is a ways down the sidebar (further right), currently between my "Local Favorites" link list and the Google Talk gadget.

I recommend that you copy and paste your gmail or other email address into the subscription widget to make sure you get it perfectly accurate. Then press the "Subscribe" button.

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