Edgemere Blogs

Here are some songs from the band concert that participants can add to their blogs this week.

Code for “Jolly Old Saint Nick”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Code for “Jingle Bell Jam”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Code for “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Here are some songs from the orchestra concert that participants can add to their blogs this week.

Code for “Rolling Along”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Code for “The Little Drummer Boy”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Code for “Deck the Halls”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

We got a message from “samanthad” in the Edgemere Blogs mailbox yesterday which reads:

I NEED to know how to make a blog. 

Thanks for writing, “samanthad!” I’m happy to hear you’re so interested in having your own blog. It’s a great and easy way to publish your writing and other creations so your friends, relatives and potentially people from all over the world can view them.

If you like to write, I’d be glad to let you have your own blog. There’s three things that have to be done: (1) you have to let me know you’re interested, (2) I’ll need to get something signed from your parents that says they approve of you getting a blog, and (3) you need to decide what your blog is going to be called.  After that, it’s up to you to fill it with interesting things other people will want to read.

I couldn’t hold off anymore, so this evening I installed the newest version of WordPress (2.7) on my Looking Forward blog. You won’t see any changes by going to my blog, but I saw a lot of changes when I logged in to the Site Admin area.

It looks a lot different. Instead of the main navigation going along the top, now it’s on the left side of the window. It’s nice because you can go directly to a lot more things, instead of having to click on one menu item and then click another link. Everything also looks a lot cleaner and more compact.

The Dashboard is been given a huge overhaul. (Click image above for a larger picture.) It’s a lot more useful for one. It’s no longer this annoying place where you have to go through to get to where you really want to go. Now you can get actually accomplish some tasks there. There’s now a “QuickPress” section, where you can immediately start writing a new post! You can also approve and reply to comments right from the Dashboard.

This new version is a bit controversial because this is second big overhaul WordPress has seen in over a year. If it was just change for change’s sake, I would be annoyed to. But I think people are really going to like these new changes.

The final release of WordPress 2.7 is scheduled for the end of November, and the WPMU version usually follows about a month later. So I’m thinking I’ll upgrade the Edgemere blogs over the Christmas holidays.

At Edgemere, we give you a lot of freedom as to what you can do with your blog. You can write on just about any topic, you have over 100 themes to pick from and you’re allowed to embed media that you have rights to.

There are a few restrictions however. One of them is that you need to follow blog conventions.

One of those conventions is that you use the default text when you’re writing a post except when you have a valid reason to do so. One valid reason is if your post is long and you break it apart with sections that have subtitles. You could bold those subtitles. Or when you see the names of books, movies or TV in print, they’ll usually be italicized, so you should do the same in your blog. 

But unless you have a reason, you should stick with the default color and the default text.

There’s a couple other reasons why I insist on that besides that most bloggers do it.

One, a lot of people (fourth graders especially) want to mess around with that kind of stuff instead of writing. I find they get a lot more done if they don’t have that option.

Second, it often doesn’t look very good. If you decide to change themes, it might not even fit with your own theme. Worse yet, you might not even be able to read it. If you leave it as the default, the text will change automatically to fit your new theme.

Third, and most important, it distracts focus from the writing. Adding color and making it two times bigger does not make your writing any more compelling.

If you want to make your writing more readable, here’s a tip that will help much more than changing the size or the color: learn how to put your writing into proper paragraphs. Having your posts in big clumps of text makes in very hard for people to read. Learn how to break it up a little!

In my last post, I wrote about how you can promote your blog. But how do you know if you’re having any success? As I pointed out, comments are a very inexact way of determining how many people are reading your blog. So what’s a better way?

Many people put some type of counter on their website. A favorite among bloggers is ClustrMaps, because it not only counts how many visitors on your site but shows what part of the world they’re visiting from.

I’ve placed a Clustrmap of a handful of Edgemere students’ blogs to see where were getting visitors from. For the most part, we’re just getting visitors from El Paso. The exception so far is Johanna, who’s gotten visitors from Washington state, from someplace on the East Coast and even from England. She’s also gotten more hits than anyone else.

I think part of the reason is that she’s already been following many of the tips I wrote about - she writes frequently, her posts are interesting and cover a variety of topics, she replies to the people that comment on her blog, she comments on a lot of other people’s blogs and, when she does, she remembers to leave her blog’s URL. I also wonder if she’s been telling her relatives in other places about her blog and that’s who else is showing up on her Clustrmap. I should’ve added that one on my list! Or if she hasn’t, I wonder how these people in other places are finding out about her blog.

If you’d like me to put a ClustrMap on your blog, feel free to ask for one in the Help Desk.

Edgemere has provided you with a blog, but it’s largely up to you to promote it. In other words, it’s YOU who will decide how popular it will become. If you work hard enough, you can make it world-famous. If you don’t put any effort into it, it will be ignored.

There’s a lot of bad, dangerous ways to get attention with a blog, but there’s a lot of good, safe ways as well. Follow as many of these suggestions as you can to draw readers to your blog:

1. Make sure your blog has a lot of interesting writing or useful information. If there’s nothing there worth reading, why would anyone go back?

2. Update regularly. If people get hooked on your blog but then there’s nothing new for a long time, they’ll give up and look for something else to read.

3. Try to reply to people who write a comment on your blog. Answer their questions, respond to their reaction, tell them thank you at the very least. It doesn’t even matter if you like them or not, if they took the time to write to you, you should respond in some way. Also, try to go to their blog and write to them.

4. Write comments on other people’s blog. Be as encouraging, smart and positive as possible. That way, they’ll think, “What an intelligent person! I need to find out more about him (or her.)” Don’t forget to paste your blog’s URL in the website box, then they can go right to your blog and read what you’ve written. 

5. Pay attention to the people who reply and comment a lot. They’re much more likely to return the favor than someone who rarely replies or comments on other people’s blogs.

6. If you have an interest in a unique subject, write about it in your blog. Put it in your blog post tags. People who have the same interest will visit your blog and see what you have to say about it. If they agree with you, they might come back and read more.

Don’t get too despondent if things don’t happen right away. It takes time to build an audience. Also, don’t worry too much if you don’t get a lot of comments all the time. Sometimes you’ll write something brilliant and no one will respond, other times you’ll toss something off and you’ll get a big reaction. Remember a lot more people read blogs than respond to them.

Most importantly, write for yourself. Write the best you can about the things you care about. Be proud of your work. That’s the greatest accomplishment of all.

One of our blogging rules is:

Avoid hurting other people’s feelings. A blog is not the place to get even with others. Do not write personal insults in your posts or in comments.

and I’m proud to say that students have been following this 97% of the time.

But the times I’ve noticed when students break this rule is when they’re writing about their younger siblings.

Look, I know how irritating younger brothers and sisters can be. I have two brothers and one sister younger than me, and they drove me crazy when I was growing up.

But you need to be very careful about what information you make public. Imagine how they’re going to feel when they read what you wrote. (And even if they’re not old enough now, they will be someday.) Although it might not seem like it sometimes, they do look up to you. Just imagine if your older brother and sister wrote negative things about you in public.

No, I don’t want you to pretend life is perfect in your blog. But if you’re going to write about people you know - friends, family, teachers, other students - try to give a well-rounded picture of them. Okay, tell how they irritate you, but also explain what’s good about them and why you love them.

photo credit: glassblower

Yesterday I upgraded WPMU, but I don’t think you’ll be able to notice anything different because of that.

What you will notice is the new Help Desk link in your admin section. You can use that to make requests, tell me about a problem, ask a question or if you’d like to change something.

For example, you have a published post and you need to go back in and make some changes. You’ll need to fill out a ticket and ask for me to unpublish your post, so you can edit it.

Here’s what you’d do:

(1) Click on Help Desk when you’re in your Site Admin section.

(2) Click on New Ticket.

(3) Fill out your request. Explain it well enough so I know what you want me to do.

Filling out a New Ticket Request

(4) Click the Submit Ticket button on the bottom of the page.

(5) I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. You can check my response by clicking back on the Help Desk link when you visit your admin section the next time. When a ticket is marked closed, I think I’ve solved the problem.

Eventually I’ll also be adding information in the Knowledgebase section to explain different things about the blogs, but right now it’s not working that well, so I’m holding off on that.

Okay, I got a question that came in the other day. Somebody asked:

hey mr. mattson
how can i change my title page to another title

Thanks for the question! The answer is you can’t. Only I can. And I won’t. Unless you make a very compelling case.

You see, there’s a very good reason why it’s not a good idea to change your blog title and a few not-so-very-good reasons. One of the reasons is that it results in some work on my part. I’ve got you linked on the blogs page and I track when you’re posting new entries with Google Reader. When you change your title, it changes your URL and I have to go and change all of that.

But as you continue blogging regularly over time, you should build up an audience. People will find entries of yours that they like and link to them. People who are fans of those blogs will come visit your blog through those links. When you change your URL, you break all those links.

Okay, maybe that hasn’t happened to you yet, but if you write well enough on interesting subjects, it will. You should think twice and three times before changing your blog title.

But if you still want to go ahead and change your title, go to the Help Desk and make a request. Tell me the title you want to change it to and make me believe it’s the right one for you.