Bling Your Blog

1) Remember who your audience is and write for them.


2) Make each blog post a conversation, encourage comments, add comments, keep it going. Give the people visiting your blog a reason to come back.


3) Read a lot of other blogs - seeing what others are doing shows you the possibilities. 

1. Whos.amung.us
This widget allows us to see how many visitors we have had on our blog and where in the world they live.

Or try ClustrMaps and have a historical prospective of visitors to your blog. It is really easy to do, visit the site, pop in your blogs address and your email and it will give you the html. And the best part is, it embeds in a perfect size for the class blogs.

2. Shelfari
The Shelfari widget allows you to showcase favorite books that you are reading in your class. Easy to use and install. The first step is to sign up for Safari and then you start to look for favourite books, simple. Shelfari is added as a widget and you can find the embed code for your shelf on their site. When you sign up you may want to sign up for a class Shelfari so your own personal books don't show up on the shelf.

3. Google Translate
This widget is available right in the blogger platform. You have so many languages to choose from. If you don't want Google Translate, how about looking for another widget in the Blogger platform.

Have a look at all the other Blogger Widgets, there are lots of interesting ones. Getting Other Blogger widgets:

What to do when you find a widget out there that you like? Add it into your blog in one quick step - easy!

* this is how I found and added a Brainpop Joke of the Day Widget!

Take a look here to see some top class and teacher blogs: Edublogs Awards


64 Interesting Ideas for Class Blogging (from Tom Barrett)


Taking Blogging Further (a crowd sourced google doc with great ideas!)

ELFADA Course Blog (E-xtraordinary Learning for a Digital Age) (older students but some really interesting posts)

Australian Grade 4 class blog (teacher has just won an award)

American Grade 6 class blog

American Grade 3 class blog (teacher has won a blogging award)(there is a post on this blog about a ‘family blogging month’ which looks like a good idea!

Kim Cofino from YIS also has some great blog posts

This is why we blog!