How to Blog Schoology Lesson I Created

I created a new How to Blog Lesson in Schoology. Schoology is a wonderful site to use to upload lessons because your students can easily add your class by entering the access code in the green box in the left hand side. Your students can then read the links you have posted and then do their assignments. Afterwards you can give your student a grade. Here are the various links and assignments I posted on my lessons page.

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WordPress works well with Schoology because you can create blog posts that you can then password and then give the password to your students. The blog posts I have created guide my students on how to blog. I also have a travel blog called Diligent Traveler that is linked from my How to Blog Simplified Version blog post that shows the students how I created a travel blog.

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Here is the first assignment. It is called Blogging Lesson 1.

1. Read all the links posted on Schoology. They are links to my blog and they cover topics about blogging: https://marielawlorgraphicdesign.wordpress.com/category/how-to-blog/

2. Watch the video tutorial in the blog: https://marielawlorgraphicdesign.wordpress.com/category/how-to-blog/.

3. Create a WordPress account.

4. Write a blog post in your WordPress account about your city.

5. Insert a photo in your blog post.

6. Create a short video about your city in iMovie or any movie editor of your choice.

7. Upload the movie into Youtube.

8. Embed the link into WordPress page.

Rubric:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0QHEa9yQ_WzYk1kUnRONW5hNEU

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Here is another assignment. It is called What did you learn from the How to Blog Links. It is a discussion assignment.

Briefly discuss what you learned from the How To Blog link: https://marielawlorgraphicdesign.wordpress.com/category/how-to-blog/

Reply to each other’s discussion posts.

View this link to see the rubric for the discussion: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0QHEa9yQ_WzSXhLZzZRY1lONmc/view?usp=sharing

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Here is another assignment. It is called Critique a Blog Post.

Critique at least 2 classmates blog post. Talk about whether you thought their blog was successful. Why was it successful? If you did not think their blog was successful, tell us why you did not think it was successful and add some possible improvements they can make.

Here is the link to the discussion rubric: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0QHEa9yQ_WzUkdMaDMxVkhsU3M/view?usp=sharing

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Here are the rubrics. Rubrics are important because they allow you and your students to measure how well a student is doing. The rubric I have created for assignment one allow me to grade my student in a grade scale from zero to 80. For the second and third assignment I have used a grading scale that is less formal and they are a grading scale of unacceptable, good, and excellent.

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Check out my video about Schoology:

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iMovie Tutorial

Here is the outcome of my video project!

Introduction:
Hello my name is Marie Therese Lawlor.  Creating a movie with iMovie is simple if you know the different menus and buttons that are new to the newest iMovie.  I would like to show you how to make a short movie.  I am going to show you how I made my movie about the WaterFront Insular Hotel.  I am going to show you how to add photos, titles, transitions, voice over, music, subtitles, and much more.

1.  The first step to creating my movie is uploading my photos of the WaterFront Insular Hotel into my iPhoto.

2.  Once in iPhoto I must organize my photos into an album.  This will allow me to easily access the photos that I need while in iMovie.

3.  I must then go to the dock located at the bottom of my screen for iMovie or go to the applications folder and select iMovie.

4. To create a new movie I must click on the plus button that say create located on the upper left hand side or go to file then new movie.

5.  I am selecting no theme.

6.  I must then add a title TheWaterFront_InsularHotel.

7.  Once I have entered the title I can click on okay.

8.  After I have created a new movie, I will then have a blank timeline.

9.  Now I must add a title.  The title button is on the lower left hand side.  I can choose from all of the different styles.

10.  I am choosing the style focus because it is simple.

11.  Once I have a title I am ready to start putting in photos.  I’m clicking the iPhoto library icon on the left hand side, then clicking on the albums and locating my Insular_Waterfront_Hotel album.

12.  Once I click on the album, I can see all of the photos in the album.  I can then go ahead and put them on the timeline by dragging them into the timeline.

13.  Now I must choose a transition to put between the title and the first photo.  The transition button is on the lower left hand side.  I am choosing a simple transition called cross dissolve.  I am then going to drag cross dissolve into the middle of the title and the first photo.

14.  I am then going to continue adding the photos from my album and adding transitions in between the photos.

15.  Once I have added all of the photos and transitions, I am now going to put a title in the end that says The End to show that it is the end of the movie and a credit to me By: Marie Therese Lawlor.

16.  Now I am going to go through the movie and make sure all of the photos are showing up correctly.  iMovie adds a ken burns effect to all of the photos automatically, but not all photos show up correctly.  This photo needs the start point and the end point changed because it is a vertical photo and I would like to show the entire photo.

17.  Now that my photos are in order, I would like to do a voice over in the beginning and record a bit of audio advertising the Waterfront Insular Hotel.  I must go to the menu click on window and click record voice over.

18.  I now must them record my short advertisement.

“The WaterFront Insular Hotel is one of my favorite hotels.  They are located right across Paradise Island so you can take a boat from the Insular Hotel.  The hotel also has a beautiful pool and beach, delicious restaurants, comfortable bed, and a bathroom with a bathtub.  It was a wonderful experience.”

19.  Now that I have recorded my voice over I can now add music.  I am going to my iTunes library and finding a song called “Hello.”  I am then dragging the song onto the timeline.  The iTunes button is located on the lower left hand side.

20.  Now I must trim the song to fit my movie by dragging the audio clip to the left.

21.  In the end of your movie you can also fade the song by dragging the button on your audio clip.

22.  Now that my audio is in place, I am going to go through some of my photographs and write a subtitle explaining the photographs.  I am picking the title gradient black and putting them on the bottom of the photos then typing in the explanations.

23.  Now that I am done, I can share it to upload into Youtube.  I can just click Share on the upper left hand side and click file.  Once I click file, I can pick from the different sizes.  I am choosing the smallest size which is SD480P.  Then I am saving it to the desktop.

24.  Now that I am done, I am then going to log onto my Youtube account to share my iMovie movie with my family and friends.  Thanks for watching my tutorial.  Have a great day.

Reviews Make a Great Blog Post

One of the reasons you can start a blog is to share your reviews about something. Reviews make great blogs posts. My favorite blogs, Migrationology.com and iLovetypography.com have many review posts. Migrationology.com reviews places to eat all over the world. What makes this blog great are the videos and photos that go along with it so you can really see what the food is like. You can also see the blogger’s expression of how good the food tastes by watching the videos.

iLovetypography.com has many reviews on fonts. This site has become a go to site for graphic designers looking for type ideas. When you go to this blog you can see all sorts of new, up and coming trends of fonts you have never even heard of. When you go to this site you can look at the fonts you like then you can also click on links so you can purchase the font you like.

If you visit my other blog DiligentTraveler, you will find a blog filled with reviews about hotels and restaurants in Davao City. I was not paid for the posts, but there are ways you can get paid to post reviews. I suggest Googling how to get paid for your reviews if you decide to do reviews. The reason people love to read hotel reviews is because they can get a good idea about a hotel or a restaurant from a blog post.

They can learn about the hotel I am writing about by just reading my blog post, viewing the pictures I have posted and viewing my Youtube videos embedded on my blog posts. Below is a video I made of my stay at Marco Polo Hotel in Davao City.

I hope you enjoyed my How to Blog Lesson for the day, stay tuned for more lessons.

Posting Tutorials on Your Blog

Everyone loves a good tutorial. I’ve posted tutorials on my blog in the past and they have gotten many views. When posting a tutorial, make sure to clearly outline how to do a certain thing. A good example of a written out tutorial is from my blog post called Polaroid Frame Tutorial.

I write about how to create a Polaroid frame effect for photos. I include images so that the viewer can see how I do photo editing. When doing a tutorial blog post, you can also add a video. Videos are better because you can clearly see each step of the process. Here is a video tutorial example that I included in my blog. It’s a video tutorial on how to use iMovie.

I hope you enjoyed this post. Make sure to make a tutorial post on your blog if it calls for it and of course, be sure to add images and video to help your reader understand the tutorial. View this iLoveTypography post on how to create a font. It’s a good example of what a tutorial blog post should look like. It has great pictures and I like how it outlines the different ways to make a font.

What To Blog About?

There are many types of blogs you can create. I have a few blogs that I have made using WordPress. I have this blog that is mainly for posts that are about my graphic design and photography portfolio pieces and how to blog tutorials. I have another blog that is a travel blog called DiligentTraveler and I also created two new blogs that focus on teaching how to speak Cebuano and Tagalog.

If you are just starting out and don’t have a niche you would like to blog about I would suggest you make a list of your most interesting niches and then go with the niche you are most passionate about. For those who live in the Philippines, I suggest a travel blog like DiligentTraveler because the Philippines has many tourist attractions. For those of you who are fanatics about the native language that you speak and have a wide range of audience that might be interested in learning your language I suggest you create a blog that teaches your audience your native language like my learn how to speak Cebuano and Tagalog blogs.

From what I have seen my travel blog DiligentTraveler has more views than my learn how to speak Cebuano and Tagalog blogs. I have observed that many people are interested in learning about travel destinations like Davao City, the accommodations available in the city, and places to eat. I have discovered that more people are interested in the traveling to Davao City aspect, but not really interested in learning the language because many tourists know that English is a widely spoken in Davao City. Tourists also may not have the time to learn Cebuano or Tagalog before they travel to Davao City or they might be finding that Cebuano and Tagalog are complicated dialects.

If you are a cooking enthusiast you may want to create a blog that focuses on teaching how to cook. There are many blogs that teach how to cook that are very popular. I have seen many successful learn how to cook Filipino food blogs like Panlasang Pinoy. Another factor you may also want to consider is whether you would like to make money off of your blog or not. If you are interested in making blogging a living make sure to choose a niche that has a wide range of audience. Blogs focused on cooking do get many views, but I would also contemplate on whether the food recipes you are writing about are popular dishes. For example, there might be a larger audience for Italian foods and French foods recipes than Filipino food recipes. If do you plan to focus on Filipino dishes make sure you are writing about popular Filipino dishes like Caldereta and Chicken Adobo and perhaps not so much the rare foods that many foreigners will not eat like Dinuguan which is a dish that consists of goat meat and the blood of a goat.

I hope this was helpful for you. Let me know what type of blog you are planning to create and message me if you need help.

Check my short video about what to blog about:

The Differences Between Posts and Pages

A blog post is where you put in your story and you update all of the time. You can have many many blog posts. Pages are static and don’t really change often. Pages are for things like contact me information, about me page, and things like that. Pages are reserved for things that you want your reader to be able to access easily and quickly.

Here is what I have in my pages. I have a Contact page that contains my email. I have an about page that contains information about who I am. I have a how to blog page with a link on how to quickly access my blogging lessons.

My contact page is there right on the top bar and so if my reader wants to contact me they can just click on the contact button and low and behold my email.

The about page in blog talks about my past educational experiences and past jobs. My blog was created to be a portfolio blog and was something I would give out to my potential bosses. Having this page allows possible future employers to learn about who I am quickly and my credentials.

This is an example of a blog post. I created a post about a game I wanted to create that would teach my readers how to speak Cebuano. I have creates many posts and so you have to scroll down my page to see all of them or you can access them by the categories that they are listed under. For example, this post is categorized as Education. You can click on the Education category and see other posts like it that are about teaching games.

I hope this post was helpful for you and I will go into more detail about categories in a future post. I have a category called How to Blog which can be accessed via this link: https://marielawlorgraphicdesign.wordpress.com/category/how-to-blog/. You can click on that link to access all the posts on how to blog. Enjoy!

 

How To Blog Simplified Version

Written By: Marie Therese Lawlor

An example of a good blog post.

Visit my blog post on Diligent Traveler to see a good example of a good blog post: https://diligenttraveler.wordpress.com/2016/02/14/my-trip-to-japan/

Topic: First find a topic that you are passionate about.  Make sure that the topic is specific and not too broad.

Length: The length of the blog post will vary.  It depends on what you are writing about.  The important thing is to make sure that it is not too long because the audience might find it tiresome to read your blog post.  It is important to include details, but not too many details.

Voice: When writing a post make sure to have a voice that addresses the reader.  You can write as if you are writing to a friend.  This type of writing is more personal and grabs the reader’s attention.

Images: Photographs are a great addition to your blog post.  It adds interest and information.  Like they say a picture is worth a thousand words.

Check out the images on my blog post.

Video: Videos are even more attention-grabbing than images.  Videos can convey information, make the audience laugh or cry and of course, keeps the audience’s attention.

I posted videos on my blog post.

How to blog example:

Take a look at my blog post titled Traveling Is Not About the Destination

Topic: Travel
Travel is a topic I am passionate about.  I love traveling and afterward sharing the stories about my travels as well as sharing photos and videos. This blog post is about my journey to the Philippines and being stuck in Tokyo, Japan because of a flight delay. It is a specific topic and it is not too broad.

The Length: The length of my blog post is a few paragraphs long and gives information and details, but it is not too long that it tires the reader out.

Voice: When I am writing I imagine I am talking to a friend.  This type of method works because it eases me and keeps me from being too detailed. I never want to bore a friend.

Images: I have posted a few images that apply to my blog post and more specifically the paragraph it is under.  I have also added captions to the images that give the reader extra information.

Video: I have created videos about my trip to Japan.  These videos let the reader see a new side of Japan.

Here are the videos I created about my trip to Japan:

Here is another video I have on my blog post and it is a video of me talking about my trip to Japan on Photobooth: