More+on+Blogs

=Lesson 3: Part 1.2= =Tooting Your Horn in the 21st Century with Blogs=


 * Step 6: Getting in deeper and finding your way around

 **Notice the Blogger toolbar at the top of your blog page. On the upper right, you have buttons for making a new post and for signing out of Blogger as well as a button labeled **Customize**. Clicking on **Customize** gets you to a series of menus that you can easily choose between by clicking on their tabs.

From the Posting tab, clicking on **Create** prompts you to make a new post, while **Edit Posts** is the button to click if you wish to edit or even delete an existing post. Comment moderation is enabled elsewhere, so for now you can ignore the **Moderate Comments** button.

The **Settings** tab opens up a number of important options, and you'll want to do a little exploring here. Blogger does a pretty good job of explaining the different options, but we'll highlight a couple of particularly important ones that have particular bearing on how you might use a blog in an educational setting.

Clicking on the **Permissions** button gives you, among other things, the option to **Add Authors** to your blog. Currently, you are the sole author of your blog, the only person with posting privileges. Others may be able to read and comment (depending on other settings), but they may not initiate new posts. If you are setting up a shared cassroom blog, however, you may want to allow your students the ability to post new topics, not just comment on them. To add authors, click on the **add** button and type in the email addresses of those you wish to invite. Note that any new authors will need their own blogger.com/Google accounts.

The **Permissions** button also allows you to restrict readership of your blog. On its default setting, your blog can be read by anyone in the world who can find it on the web, but you may restrict readership to invited guests only. You may have good reasons for wanting to restrict your audience, but keep in mind that doing so makes your blog less user-friendly, as invited readers will have to log-in every time they want to visit.

While still browsing around under the **Settings** tab, give the **Comments** button a click. In the same way that you can restrict outside readers, you can restrict the ability of readers to comment on blog posts. Alternately, you can enable comment moderation, giving you the power to approve or deny any comment before it reaches the reading public. Working with young people in this medium, you may want this extra degree of control.

Under the **Layout** tab, the **Page Elements** button is the most fun and the most important button to become familiar with. Play around with dragging page elements to new positions, and see what options you have when you click to edit these elements. In particular, explore the different options given when you click **Add a Page Element**; you'll find **Link List** particularly useful for adding links to other resources and other blogs in your blog's sidebar.

 § AdvancedBlog  § Why?  § Example? Howell in New Zealand
 * How to move beyond the BasicBlog **