We’re half-way through 2013. Like I’ve done in years past, this week I’ll be featuring some of the best new tech tools of 2013 as well as some of the most popular posts of the year.
I’m currently in the process of developing new digital handouts for my blogging workshops.
One of the items that I’m adding to my handouts is a list of
terminology and definitions for terms that I frequently use while
talking about building blogs. My preliminary list is posted below. Are
there terms that you think should be added to the list?
Theme: WordPress and many other blogging platforms use “themes”
to describe the look of a blog. The theme can include the color scheme
and the layout of elements on the blog. Changing the theme does not
change the content of your blog posts.
Template: Blogger and some other blogging platforms use the term
“template” to describe the look of a blog. The template can include the
color scheme and the layout of elements on the blog. Changing your
template does not change the content of your blog posts.
Tag: Tags are applied to WordPress (Kidblog, Edublogs) blog posts
to identify the key ideas or purpose of a post. Tags make it easier for
people to search and find older posts on your blog. For example, if you
write a post about your Revolutionary War lesson, tag it with
“revolution” or “revolutionary war” so that at the end of the school
year when you have 150 posts on your blog your students can quickly
click on the “revolution” tag and jump to the post that have that label.
It’s a lot easier to locate older posts by tag than it is to click
through archives by date.
Label: Labels are applied to Blogger blog posts to identify the
key ideas or purpose of a post. For example, if you write a blog post
about your Revolutionary War lesson plan, label it with “revolution” or
“revolutionary war” so that at the end of the school year when you have
150 posts on your blog your students can quickly click on the
“revolution” label and jump to the posts that have that label. It’s a
lot easier to locate older posts by label than it is to click through
archives by date.
Tag Cloud and Label Cloud: Tag and Label clouds can be added to
your blog’s homepage to make it easy for visitors to see the tags or
labels that you use, click on one of them, and jump to a list of all of
the posts that have that particular label.
Categories: In WordPress-powered blogs you can use categories for broad descriptions of posts in addition to using tags. For example, on iPadApps4School.com
I use the categories “pre-K,” “elementary school,” “middle school,” and
“high school.” I assign each post to a category and use tags for
describing the academic topic of the post. This way if someone visits my
blog looking for math apps appropriate for elementary school he or she
can click on the “math” tag then click on the “elementary school”
category to find all of my posts meeting that search criteria.
Embed: To display a video, slideshow, audio recording, Google
Calendar, Google Map, game, and many other multimedia elements in a blog
post you will use an embed code provided by service hosting that media.
Embedding media into a blog post does not make you the owner of it and
as long as you follow the guidelines set forth by the hosting service
you are not violating copyright by embedding something you didn’t
create. For example, when you find a video on YouTube that you want your
students to watch you can embed it into a blog post and ask students to
comment on the blog post. If the owner of that video decides to take it
offline the video will no longer play through your blog post.
Embed Codes: An embed code is a piece of code, often HTML, that
media hosting services like YouTube provide so that you can easily
display the media that they host in your own blog posts. On some
services like SlideShare.net an
embed code will be clearly labeled as such next to the media you’re
viewing. On other services the embed code will be one of the options
that appears when you click on the “share” option. YouTube, for example,
currently requires you to open the “share” menu before you see the
embed code option.
Widget: A widget is a small application that you can include in
the posts and or pages of your blog. A widget could be a game, a display
of Tweets, a display of RSS feeds, a tag cloud, a calendar, or any
other application that offers an embed code.
Gadget: Gadget is the term that Blogger uses for a widget. A gadget and a widget do the same things.
Plug-in: A plug-in (sometimes plugin) is a small application that
you can add to the software that powers your blog. Unlike widgets and
gadgets plug-ins operate in the background and visitors to your blog
will not see them working. A plug-in can add functions to your blog such
as suggesting related posts to your visitors or detecting the type of
device a visitor is using to view your blog then automatically
displaying the mobile or desktop version of your blog’s layout.
Post: “Post” can refer to an entry on your blog as in “a blog
post.” “Post” can also be used as a verb as in “I am going to post a new
entry on my blog.”
Page: A page on a blog is different than a post because a page is
designed for static content. Pages are good for posting information
that you want visitors to your blog to be able to quickly access. For
example, my classroom blog had pages for curriculum outlines and review
guides.
Permalink: Each blog post is assigned its own separate URL this
is known as a permalink (permanent link). This URL is the one that you
would share if you wanted someone to directly access a post rather than
going to your blog’s homepage then searching for the post.
