How to Embed a Google Form in Blogger

After you create your Google form, you ned to click the Send Form button on the top, right of the page. Next you will see the link to share, Send form via email or Embed. Choose Embed.

Now you will have the Embed form dialogue box come up. You can copy the HTML code in the box. First notice the size of the form in pixels.

At this point it is a good idea to change the form size to fit your blog. Typically you want your width to be around 500 pixels. The height is something that you have to play with to get right. I prefer to have the whole page of the form showing on the post. This means you will need to change the height of the embedded form to your liking. 

I changed the form height to 400 because the form only has one question. Next you will need to click the HTML button on you blog post page. You will find it on the top, left side of the page.

Notice that I have already placed text and pictures on the post so you will immediately see all the html code on the page. I simply scrolled down to the bottom of the page and pasted the code I copied earlier. 

The '<iframe src=...' is the actual code for the form. 

This is what the page looks like now with the html for the form added. If you don't have anything already put on the post you will not see nearly this much code.

Now you click back on the Compose button and you can see the form is now part of the post. At this point you may want to go back and adjust the width or height of the form html to make it fit right. 

When you are finished, publish your post and it will show up with the form embedded on it. Now all you need is people to come and respond to your form! 

The Ugandan Global Project: A Guest Post by Miriam Gorbatov

This post was written by Miriam Gorbatov, follow her blogging on Miriam's Magical Moments.

In all my years of blogging, I have had many different memories, but this memory was beyond great.  In third grade, my teacher, Mrs. Yollis, got the class involved in blogging.  This was an amazing opportunity to learn about the lives of other children around the world.  The highlight of the year for me was the Uganda Project.  We corresponded with a class in Australia, a class at Chaparral Elementary School, one in China, and one in Connecticut. We all wanted to keep this school in Uganda from losing a piece of land that they used as a playground. This class in Uganda, Africa, was grateful for anything they received.  The children had to walk three miles to school and three miles back just to get a good education. In contrast, the children in America often get driven to school even if the school is within a few minutes’ walking distance. They were also grateful to have any meals they could receive.  I felt heartbroken that we have anything we want, but they had nothing.  I also admired how hard they worked to receive an education.  Our school was determined to help save their playground.  Together, the five different classes organized a three mile walk around the neighborhood to raise money for the school.  

The five classes started the walk at the same time, at 10:00 am.  After walking for only ten minutes everyone was pretty exhausted.  But we all knew that we were going to finish the walk to help the school whether or not we were tired.  When we finally finished walking, we sang a song that we learned from one of the other classes. The song was about saying hello in all different languages. Though everyone was exhausted from the walk, we were still really enthusiastic about helping the class in Uganda.  I had learned a very important lesson that day that one should be grateful for anything one has or has an opportunity to do because these children are struggling even to get meals or a piece of land to play on with no playground.  

Over the next week, we continued to collect donations to help the school in Uganda. Mrs. Yollis taught us about the different types of currency from all of the countries. The teachers then counted up all the donations from all of the other classes that did the walk.  All the schools involved collected a total of $19,592. The teachers sent the money to Uganda, and we got a response saying that they had enough money to purchase the land for the ABC Divine Foundation Primary School, ensuring the children now have somewhere to play. We have also provided enough money for the school to start building a sheltered kitchen and dining hall. Everyone was very cheerful because all our hard work had paid off on our project, and it had been a great success.

This experience has inspired me to continue blogging about my experiences and travels. I hope to one day become an elementary school teacher and share what I have learned with my students.

[For Reference, below is the URL to our walk. http://ugandanglobalproject.blogspot.com/2010/10/california-walks-for-uganda.html]

Calling Student Bloggers: We Want You!

Are you a student blogger? Are you willing to share what you have learned from blogging? If so, we want you!

Blogging4Kids is looking for student bloggers to write posts about blogging. Some of the topics we would love to add to the blog are:

1. Why do you like to blog?
2. What have you learned from blogging?
3. How has your attitude about learning changed since you started blogging?
4. What transformative learning experiences have you had through blogging?
5. Why should other students try blogging?
6. Why should teachers encourage student blogging?

Please leave your contact information here and I will get back to you.

Blogging4Kid Superlative Student Blog: Come Somersault With Sarah!

Sarah is another former student of Linda Yollis, and has a great blog, Come Somersault With Sarah! Sarah has been blogging for four years and does a great job of writing posts that include good text and great pictures. 

When you look through Sarah's posts you will notice that she shares a lot about herself. She is a very talented musician and she shares her talent on the blog. You should also notice the sidebar where Sarah has several visitor counters and a special widget that keeps track of her most popular posts. 

Other Superlative Student Blogs

I'm Ready to Have My Students Blog, What Do I Do First?

The hardest thing to do with any new endeavor is to figure out how to get started. Before I started blogging I spent several months looking through class blogs from Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain. There were a lot more of those than ones in the United States at the time. I spend most of that time trying to make sense of design, options and content.

Before you ask your students to blog, you need the experience that can only come from blogging. You need to create your own. Actually, I think you should create and post on two different blogs.

The first blog you should create is a class blog. You really need to have the experience of creating something that represents your classroom, your students and yourself. You need to think carefully about the types of information you need to share, and just as importantly what you should not share. You need to think about blogging in an education context.

The second blog you should create is a passion blog. You should have the experience of writing about something you are absolutely passionate about. The entire focus of the blog should be about that one thing that makes you happier than anything else. You need to understand how important it is to be able to share something important to you, not just to someone else.

Then, after you have been writing posts for a couple months you should be ready to get your students started. Remember the lessons you have learned and share them liberally with your students. Don't forget the focus you have to make your education posts representative of the learning that happens in your classroom and also don't forget the joy you have when you are writing what you care so much about. Then you will truly understand why you need to have your students balance their blogs with content from your classroom and from their hearts. 

Authenticity and Student Blogging

What does authenticity in blogging mean? Are we talking about an authentic audience or authentic writing? I will look at both in this post.

As the co-creator of the hash tag #Comments4Kids and the guy that runs the blog, I think I have a pretty good idea about audience. When it comes to an authentic audience, the people reading the blog have to want to read it. This means you can't assign someone to read a blog and leave a comment and expect it to be an authentic experience. This does not mean you should not assign students to read and comment, just that it probably won't be authentic.

But, don't students need an authentic audience? I am not sure they need one, but I think we all hope they find one. If your goal is for your students to have authentic audiences, then you need to allow your students the time and opportunity to go and find blogs written about the topics that interest them. Explain to them that they should try to have conversations on those blogs and try to get those bloggers to then return the favor. This is about building tribes more than it is about blogging.

What does authentic blog post creating look like? Just like with an authentic audience, an authentic post has to be one the creator wants to make. Again, this does not mean you should not assign topics for the students to create posts over, just don't expect them to be authentic.

So, how do I get my students to bog authentically? The short answer is, you can't. What you can provide is time and opportunity to allow them to create posts over what they want to share. Don't expect every student to want to create content to share online either, they all won't want to do that (and that is perfectly acceptable!) The important thing is that you give them opportunities to share their stuff too.

What's the Deal With a Creative Commons Copyright License?

What is Creative Commons and why would you want to license your blog? For this post we will assume that the posts you are creating for your blog contain only content created by you. This would include using your own pictures, videos and written words. You may want to peruse the Electronic Frontier Foundations page title Legal Guide for Bloggers as well.

The purpose for licensing your blog with a Creative Commons license is that it makes it much easier for others to share, mix and/or use your content. If you aren't thrilled with that, you probably want to stick with the standard copyright license which gives you complete control over the content you create. If you don't change your license it will automatically be considered under the normal copyright.

The reason I license my work online with a Creative Commons copyright license is that I want my work to be used and shared by others. I love the idea that something I created can be inspirational to another teacher or student and that they can build on my ideas and make them better. Instead of having to ask me permission directly, I can give permission through the license which makes it much easier to be used by another. 

Blogging4Kid Superlative Student Blog: Miriam's Magical Moments

I am starting a new series showcasing outstanding blogs by students. These are student created blogs that I recommend new blogging students read and comment on. Who better for teachers to have model student blogging than actual students? 

The first blog is Miriam's Magical Moments. Miriam is a former student of Linda Yollis, an amazing elementary teacher whose classroom blog, Mrs. Yollis' Classroom Blog, has won many education blogging awards. 

Miriam started her blog in January of 2011 and has been posting ever since. What I enjoy about her blogging is her excellent use of pictures that help her tell her stories. Miriam 'reports' on her life, her travels and what she has learned. I have enjoyed following her exploits for years and am truly impressed by how she has kept blogging even after she left Mrs. Yollis' classroom. 

Blogger: Weather Widget

Adding a weather widget to your blog can be useful. On Blogger I have use the Accuweather weather widget for years. After you create your weather widget on the site, copy the html code. 

Then go in to template: add a gadget: html/javascript. Then paste the code into the box and save. Here is a video that explains the process:

And this is what your widget should look like:

Weather Forecast | Weather Maps

How to Make a Good Blog and Comment

Scott Boylen's students created videos on how to make a successful blog. He graciously agreed to share two videos created and chosen by his students. 

Originally posted on Mr. Boylen's 2014-15 8th Grade LA Class

10 Steps to a Successful Blog

Scott Boylen's students created videos on how to make a successful blog. He graciously agreed to share two videos created and chosen by his students. 

Originally posted on Mr. Boylen's 2014-15 8th Grade LA Class

Is Your Blog Accessible? Here Are Some Widgets That Can Help

Blog accessibility by seeing impaired or language impaired visitors is a very important and yet often overlooked requirement of a good student blog. Here are a few widgets/gadgets you may want to add to your blog to help it be more accessible.


Some good widgets/gadgets you may want to add to increase accessibility:

AnswerTips this widget allows a person to double click any word on your blog and get its definition as well as a clickable pronunciation key.

VozMe this widget/plug-in allows a person to highlight a passage which will then be changed into an mp3.

Google Translate this widget/code allows people to translate the pages into a language they may be more comfortable with reading.

Kidblog: Visitor Stats Widget

As in Blogger, Kidblog has a widget to track visitors. You can find it in the Settings: Widgets section on your dashboard. Simply click the check box next to Stats and you are good to go. As you can see below, the Visitor Stats widget gives you a nice world map and shows both the number of views as well as where the visitors are coming from. 

Blogger: Blog Stats Widget

One of the most valuable widgets on any student blog is the one that tracks visitors. On Blogger it is called Blog Stats which is found in the Add a Gadget on the Layout page. Everybody wants to know that what they are posting is being seen and we all know that very few visitors actually leave a comment. This widget allows students using Blogger to see their work is still being seen.

Count this in the Must Have category. 

Welcome to Blogging4Kids!

This site has been a long time coming. My first foray into encourage student blogging was  Comments4kids started in 2009, and ever since then I have vowed to create a similar site dedicated to student blogging.  And so it begins.

My goal for this space is to bring lots of student blogging information. I will be reviewing blogging platforms, provide information on how students can write excellent posts, and sharing exemplary student posts. I want this to be a one stop resource for teachers or students who want to start blogging, but don't know where to begin.

If you would like a specific topic covered, would like to write a post on student blogging for the site, or would just like to have a conversation feel free to contact me using the information in the margins.