How to Jazz up Your Blog

I'm so inspired by some of the kids in my class. I teach Grade 5 in a Toronto school and my students are 10-11. I've got a teacher blog and the students have a student blog. In addition, about half of my students have personal blogs. Student interest has become so great that I started the Clairlea Blogger Club. We meet once a week to share ideas and blog. A few kids learned how to create slide shows and they shared it with me. I finally got around to trying it out and boy - it's easy. The slide show will be handy when I've got bucketloads of pictures from yard sales, etc. Here's a sample of what it looks like using photos from our trip to Owen Sound last summer.

You can create all kinds of effects, or just keep it simple. One of my students posted a tutorial on how to create a slide show, upload video from YouTube, and upload photos. I was hoping that some of the blogging teachers at my school would read it and try to jazz up their blogs. Oh well. Here's Nick's tutorial for anyone interested:

Today we talked about making a slideshow from Slide. I did it with Mathew. It was fun. Instructions are on this post.


1. Go to http://images.google.com/


2a. Find pics from the site or pics that are uploaded to your computer.


2b. If getting images from Google Images, Right click the pic and click on "Save As". Name the pic and remember it.

3. Go to http://slide.com/

4. On the top of the page, put your cursor over "Create" and click "Create a Slideshow".

5. Look under "UPLOAD your own images" And click "Browse".

6. Find your pic in the computer or find the name. Then click the "Open" button.

7. If you want more pics in the slideshow, click "Browse" again. If you want to delete a pic, go to the bottom of the page, find the pic and then click "X" on the top right corner of the pic.

8. Look on the right of the screen on the page and find "Preset Designs". Click the one you choose.

9. Under that, find "Customize Your Design". Click on the one you choose. Then once your happy with what you've done, click "Save (get code)".

10. The next page will show the preview of the slideshow. If you like it, click "Save slideshow".

11. Look under the slideshow and find the code. Copy it. Then log into your Blogger account and make a new post. Click "Edit Html" and paste it. Click "PUBLISH POST". Click "View Blog" And find you slideshow post. Now you're done!

Also a special request from Ms. Hawkins, Those who don't know how to upload vids from Youtube and who don't know how to upload pics, here we go.

How to upload vids from Youtube:

1. Go to http://youtube.com/

2. Find the vid and under that click "Embed".

3. Copy and paste the code.

4. Log into your Blogger account and make a new post.

5. Click "Edit Html" and paste the code. Make sure that the code isn't over "640" by "385" That's too big. If you want to change the size, look for four numbers. I'll show you. Look for:

1a: object width="640" height="385"

1b: allowfullscreen="true"width="640" height="385"

6. Click "PUBLISH POST". Then click "View Blog".

7. Then look for the post. Now you're done!

How to upload pics:

1. Look for pics on http://images.google.com or if you have pics on your computer already, go to the next step.

2. Log into your Blogger account, then click on "New Post".

3. Under the title, look for the tool bar.

4. If you can see tiny buttons, look for the 13th button from the left (not including the font button).

5. Click on that, then look for your pic. Then click "Open". Then click "Upload Image". It'll take a while for it to upload.

6. Click "PUBLISH POST" and then "View Blog".

7. Look for the post and now you're done!

Hope all this helps make an awesome blog! bm out.

Here's my song of the week. I've lost count of what number I'm up to - 42? It's "Say Hey" by Michael Franti and Spearhead. I dare you not to find yourself humming this.

Erin