Plugins

Step 9 on the Edublogs course is to work with plugins.

I have activated a number of plugins already. They are: AddThis Social Share, Accessibility, Compfight Safe Images, Contact Form, Easy Tables, Lightbox for Images, Menu Icons, Pixabay Images, LaTeX Math Symbols, Print Post and Page, Print, PDF and Email by Print Friendly, Supreme Google Webfonts.

These all allow me to do a range of things to my blog post, such as:

Create a table and show use of the Visual Editor and some other plugins.

Change the font ∅ Use a special character or two Σ

Insert a picture using Comfight

Flickr's formula : 9 - 3 - 6 - 36 Ben via Compfight

Insert a picture using Pixabay

I am going to have to learn how to insert a picture using Comfight better.

What if I do it out of the table:

Better, but still need some more practice.

I have Lightbox activated, but I can’t tell in the editor if it is working.

I think I have too many things at this point. I will keep blogging and decide what I don’t need.

Images, Copyright, and Creative Commons

I’m up to Step 6 of the edublogs free self-paced course to help set up an educator blog. I think this is the step that I am going to struggle with as we have all become used to retweeting, sharing on facebook etc. Most times we don’t give it a second thought when we use images etc in worksheets that we create for students. So I am going to put some reminders for myself here to come back to and check regularly that I am doing the right thing. Am I allowed to copy and paste information from the course on my blog??? I guess I will find out …..

I liked the picture on the edublog course, but at this stage I not sure if I can use it. So I created my own from a picture I took of flowers that a student gave me. I have to work out a better way to put text on an image than in the picture editor. NOTE TO SELF: put on to-do-list.

The safest way to source images for your blog is to either:

  • Use Creative Commons images.
  • Use free (Creative Commons Zero) or public domain images.
  • Use your own photos or use images you’ve created.

Including the source of the image is not enough.

Creative Commons licenses: books, websites, blogs, photographs, films, videos, songs, and other audio and visual recordings. If any of these things don’t include a CC license, or isn’t public domain work or doesn’t indicate that the content is free to use, then don’t use it.

Unless a blogger includes a Creative Commons license, all content on that blog is automatically the copyright of the blogger.

Sources of CC images –

Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/

  • Compfight – easy way to find Flickr Creative Commons images: http://compfight.com/
  • A direct Creative Commons site in Flickr – Explore / Creative commons website: https://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/
  • Multicolr Search Lab: http://labs.tineye.com/multicolr/ (This looks like fun! I looked up purple and pink and found some science related photos, mainly microscope slides)

Free and Public Domain Images

All the images on Pixabay and Unsplash are Creative Commons Zero. They do not require any attribution and can be modified.

 

Learning to Blog – Embedding Content

Link

Learning to Blog – Embedding content

I am producing my blog using the Personal Blogging Course (Edublogs).

Embedding Twitter into a post:

Yeah. Fifth time lucky.

If trying to do this on an iPad, remove the word “mobile” from the copied URL and then click on Link in Format and the link in the Visual Editor and paste. Save draft then preview.

Embedding YouTube into a post:

This worked much better on the iPad. I didn’t have to remove the “m” from the URL.

Further content to embed:

Look at Embedding Content hints for adding more to your posts.