Have a look at this presentation and if you feel up to it, comment!
Many aspects of the blog can be changed to suit personal preference. This includes a picture in the header. Use Advanced Admin for this.
You can add a new page to your blog by selecting New Page in your admin. This may be useful for a CV, course outline, etc.
Select Comments to effect how they behave on your posts. They can be deselected altogether. Beyond this comments are a tricky issue with class blogs. This help file explains how to set up the discussion level you are comfortable with. You may, for example, want to approve all comments. This is easily done in the advanced admin.
You can select a different look to your blog by selecting the Free Themes tab in your admin page. I like the three columns look of the default theme so I left it.
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The first thing to do is log into your blog and select add new post.
This is a sample post and will show you what type of content you can add. Clearly, text is easy.
A link can be done by typing some text, e.g., business teacher blog, highlighting the text, select the link icon, then paste the url. You can decide in the link window whether to have the link open in a new or same window. I selected new. Here is a link to one of our teacher’s class marks file.
The add media line will allow you to add an image. 
Great looking guy.
You can use the add media video icon to add a video. This one was added by the url icon and pasting the url from youtube.
You can also add audio and other media files. The supported formats include:
jpg jpeg png gif doc pdf mp3 ppt wmv mp4 xls ins isf te xbk notebook m4a ist kmz kes mov flp avi swf wxr xml wav fjsw docx pptx xlsx xml m4v max kmz zip
Embed a video? Easy. Go the video site like youtube.com, and select the video and the embed button. De-select and check marks you don’t want like related videos. Copy the code. Select the HTML button on the right hand side of your post toolbar. Then paste the code into your post. Check this one out:
If you forget how to do it, view the video above. Go back to work in Visual mode.
In the next post we’ll do some more things. You don’t want your posts to be too long.
This would be a sample post by another user, Ridge02. They would add the category Little Al. The post would then show on the blog sidebar as we added the Category Student Blogs to it.
This would be a sample post by the user Ridge01. It isn’t visible until approved by you the administrator.
It’s great that you have created a blog to share with your students. The next step is having the students blog. Writing for an authentic audience, their teacher or other students, can give new meaning to their learning experiences.
There are three steps in this process:
- Students write comments in the class blog
- Students write posts in the class blog
- Students post in their own blog
Before you do anything consider suggesting all students have a gmail accounts. It makes life simpler! There should be some portion of the student’s real name in the email address, e.g., jsmith@gmail.com.
This helpful web page describes in detail how to add users (students) to your class blog. The short version:
Go to your advanced admin page and select Users.
Add new. Create generic names that can be reused later, e.g., ridge01, ridge02, etc. Use your own email to create the user but add the username after a plus in your email address, e.g., ridgelibrary+ridge01@gmail.com.Make the user a contributor. This allows them to comment and create posts. You the teacher are still the administrator. You can’t change their personal info in your dashboard.
Respond to each notification email and log in as each user. This takes some time but is worth it later. In the profile page, change each password to something easy to remember for each user. Also change their display name to indicate who they are, e.g., Big Al.
In your admin create a category called Student Blogs. Create sub categories for each user’s display name. E.g., Big Al, Little Al, etc.. Instruct the students to add the appropriate category to their posts. Ridge01, who is Big Al, would select category Big Al.
In your Links option in the admin, enable the Student Blogs category. All student posts should show in the sidebar.
Your class blog is ready to roll.
