Khwal12's Blog

USING WORDPRESS and My School WEB Blog

WORD PRESS USE FOR TEACHERS AND STUDENTS

 Word Press is a blogging software tool. The computer term blog comes from a shortening of the terms WEB Log. It was originally designed as an online journal where people could write and post their opinions and information about their favorite topics. As blogging developed the tool was extended to allow others to either be invited to participate in the journal by adding their comments, or by opening the blog (making it public) to allow anyone who subscribed to the blog to add comments. Subscribing to the blog meant a sign up process and creating a login and password. By subscribing you would receive updates on when content changed in the journal. This was done using another software tool referred to as an RSS reader or RSS Aggregator. RSS stood for Really Simple Syndication. It was a special coding packet that allowed the blog entries to be passed along to the reader software so that people could read the blog entries and respond to them. Now that the little terminology lesson is over, here is how that applies to our school.

This is where my personal blog site is for use by the teachers and staff at this school   I use this stie to share information regarding the Technology and Library Skills Program at St. Theresa’s school. This is also done using Word Press. Since mine is a private blog intended for the teachers at the school, much of the content there will not permit specific comment. Some areas may, and I will explain those to you at the beginning of the school year. My blog site can be found at https://khwal12.wordpress.com

Here are some general instructions on using Word Press. (See Login Screen Picture below)

After you login, you will be able to go to the Dashboard by clicking on the word Dashboard at the top of the Word Press page. (See Picture Below)

The Dashboard Page will open and then you will look on the left hand side of the Page to find the column where the word Pages Appears. (See Picture Below)

If you click on the word “Pages” it will bring up a list of pages you have already created. Since you will be using your Primary Teacher Page that has already been created in the WEB site, you can simply click on that to open the Page Editor, so you can change the content. If you click on the words “Add New” you will be able to add a new page to your existing teacher page. Please note that like any other WEB site adding a whole lot of new pages discourages users visiting the site. My suggestion is to stick to no more than three pages. Use one for general news about the happenings in your classroom. Use a second for Assignments. These can be daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly (whichever you prefer). Use a third for special WEB links you want parents and students to use. You can create an optional 4th Page for special content that you want to display, such as examples of student work that you feel are exemplary.

The steps for editing and/or creating new pages are listed in the picture below:

My steps below will not be exactly identical to the picture above, but will cover the same content.

1.  Add a Title — Using Capital Letters Works Best

2.  Add Page content into the Text Editing box — Large White Box in Middle of the Page

3.  Choose whether you want to allow comments and/or trackbacks (My suggestion do not allow Trackbacks, but if you want parent input allow for comments — If you don’t want parent feedback then don’t check the Comments box either).  If you want neither make sure both boxes are not checked.

4.  Add other page content, pictures, videos, links, PDF files etc.

5.  Review and Edit all content on your pages.

6.  Set your Page Parent (Your Main Teacher Page) and then set a page order for any additional pages you may want under that page.  You should have no more than 4 additional pages.  You may order those simply by placing the number of their order in the box (1,2,3,4)

7.  Click the PUBLISH button to publish your page(s) to the WEB site.  You must do this for each page individually.

8.  Preview the Page by using the Page Preview Button at the top of your Dashboard Page.  If you find that the page did not come out the way you wanted it, please go back and edit the page again, and then PUBLISH the corrections you made to your page.

I would suggest you type up your text content in a word processor first and save it as a Rich Text Formatted file. You can copy and paste this content into the Word Press editing screen. While word press has some error checking tools, you will find most word processing software has more and you will be more effective in your writing if you write it first in the word processor, make your corrections, and then simply copy and paste to Word Press.

If you are adding picture content to your pages, save your pictures to your flash drive and then you can upload them to the WordPress Page using the picture upload button above the text content box in the Editing page. If you don’t know which icon button it is, simply move your mouse over each of the buttons and it will tell you which button does what function.  Note, wherever possible keep you picture content small.  WordPress has a maximum picture size of 500 pixels by 500 pixels.  Pictures larger than that will be compressed to that size.  I would suggest using the Medium size or the thumbnail if you can to save on page load times.  People don’t like to wait for large pictures to load in their browser and they will become discouraged from using your content if the pages take to long to load.

You can add PDF file content as well such as worksheets you might want to have the students work on at home. You will be creating a link to the worksheet, but the actual worksheet will not be displayed on the page. You can also convert Word Processing documents done in Microsoft Word 2007 or later or Open Office Writer into PDF files from within the word processing software and post your content as PDF files. You will use the Word Press button for “Other content” for this purpose. You will need to save your PDF files to you flash drive so you can upload them to Word Press.

Finally you can add video content to your pages; however you are limited to no more than 10 minutes of video and video formats are limited to those you can create and store on either YouTube, TeacherTube, or Google Videos. Please consult these video WEB sites as to the formats for videos they will accept before you try to upload video. You will need to create, edit and upload your video to one of the three sites above in order to add it to Word Press. Once the Video is stored on one of those three sites it will be given a link address. In Word Press you will be copying and pasting that Link Address into the Video Content Editing Screen when you click the Video Button in the Page Editor. Word Press will use the link to open the viewers default browser video player to play the video for them in their browser software.