Category: How to!

Student Blogging Challenge 2021

Another year, another Student Blogging Challenge! Of course, things look a little different this year, so we’re doing things a little different in PLP. In the past, students have participated in the SBC weekly. This year, PLP students are doing two challenges a week, and using the Top 10 Challenges to guide us!

It’s pretty incredible actually because we have 50 grade 8’s! Every single one of them has made a blog, and is sharing their journey to becoming BLOG BOSSES! Huge shout out to the Student Blogging Challenge for guiding us.

Thank you Creative Commons!

Last week students updated their About Me Pages. They took all sorts of different forms. Some kept it short and sweet like Ariane, while others like Fraser gave us lots of insight into his passions and interests! I enjoyed reading Dana‘s About Me list as well!

This week we are practicing Embedding Content into our blogs. We’re using tips from the Blogging Bootcamp to help us out.

The first thing learners will practice is embedding YouTube videos. Videos throughout blogs can split up your text and grab your readers’ attention! Check out this video below!

(easy peasy)

So that is a YouTube Video, what if I have the video that I want to upload. Let’s try that! If the video is your own, you can always link to like this!

If it’s your own video, you can always upload it like this too! Video Test! PLP 9

Links and videos aside, many students use images to amp up their blogs. It’s important to remember though when uploading images, that you cannot just upload any image that you want! It’s important to remember Copyright Rules. Let’s check out this important page by Kathleen Morris. You can upload images and place them throughout your text to split it up! Obviously all the image examples I will use will be of my amazing little cat.

Tillicum

Although photos can enhance posts, they do take up a lot of space. Be sure to manage the alignment and size of the image. I also prefer to allow the image to be wrapped in text to guide your reader down the page.

With a few simple clicks, I can make sure that my image is aligned to the left or the right.

Sometimes you also have to play around the size of an image. Edublog says “Remember it is best to resize your image to 150-300 pixels wide if you want to left or right align the image.” (Edublogs)

 

Something else I wanted to try in this post of content embedding was a slideshow. Slideshows are a bit more difficult because I had to enable a Plugin on my specific blog. I chose “Metaslider”. When I go to create a post now, at the top of my post creation site, I see “Add Slideshow”. Let’s try it!

By toggling on Metaslider, I can create a short slideshow in the Plugin. When I go to add it now, there it is waiting for me!

  • Tillicum on the Table

Alright team, thanks for reading my post about embedding content, as well as a little introduction into what we will be doing over the next few weeks! I’ll be continuing to keep up with this edition of the Student Blogging Challenge and using this space to become a blog boss.

Who knows.. maybe I’ll become a professional blogger after the SBC 2021! Here goes nothing!

P.S. Can anyone guess why I have a category called dog food?

 

Adding Your Comic

Hey y’all!

Today is the day you upload your final COMIC to your blogs! Let’s make sure they are published super nicely as ePUBS so that people can download them as books!

These are the steps I took to create the links that you see below. You want to make sure your Comic is super easy to find so your viewers can enjoy!

#1) Export Your Comic by clicking on the Share-O button!

#2 ) Export your Comic FIRST as an EPub. This means you are publishing your first BOOK! Congrats! I decided for my blog viewers to also export it as a PDF, for those people who don’t want to download my book.

#3) Name your Comic and maybe sure you give it an Author Name!

 #4) Save your Comic to Your FILES – Don’t forget where you saved it. This is how you will access it from your Blog.

 

#5) On your blog – Click ADD Media to your post! When you add any media, it will create a link for it. Check out some of my examples below! You can edit this link too. You can even make an IMAGE a link to your PDF.

 

 

 

CHANGING Text Helps too – and where you put it on your page! 

Crazy Old Lady Comic EPub

To show my comic off even more, and for people who don’t want to completely download my comic. I want to also put it here as a PDF. Maybe this is where I could include some Screenshots of my Comic.

If you click on this link – it will also take you to the PDF version of my COMIC! Which is kind of nice for people who just want to take browse through!

Crazy Old Lady Comic PDF

You can even turn your IMAGE into a link.

Click on this image to scroll through the PDF version of my Comic!

Having a picture to click on makes your viewers see it nice and clearly on your page!

How to Post an Essay

Many of the assignments we complete here in PLP, show off all the awesome recording, research, and final products through Pages. I would like to try to add an essay as an external link on this page.

Let’s see if I can do it!

Critique Form

Whahooo! I did it!

All you have to do is follow the steps below:

1) Save your Essay as a PDF in your files

2) Within your post, Add Media!

3) Through adding media – Add your essay PDF to your media library. Make sure to give it a title so that it shows up nicely like mine did above (Critique Form).

4) Shazam!!! Now your readers can click on the link to see your essay on another tab. Leaving you more room for pictures, videos, and reflection!