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.
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