1. Click the upper right-hand corner of the page where it says "New Post".
2. Title your post with your first and last name. Do this for every post. This is important, because it will allow me to search for your posts easily when I'm grading, and it will let others know clearly who is posting. Although it is also possible to search for your posts via your login name, I don't want to rely on that since people don't always use their full name for the login.
3. Label your post with the name of the page. Each assignment or other topic will have a page, listed in the bar that runs across the screen below the title "TWU Throwing 2012", and your post won't show up in the right place unless you label it, and labels are case sensitive. To label your post, look for the word "labels" on the right side of the screen on the page where you write your post. When you click there you will get a drop-down box that lets you write the name of the page, but if someone else has already created that label, it will be listed there, and all you have to do is click the label you need. Don't use more than one label unless I tell you to do so later on in the class.
4. Post images rather than just links. When you want to show an image of an artists work as an example, don't just link to their site. That said, it is also good to include links, in case we want to see more. Just don't make it so that we have to use a link to see it at all. When posting images, only JPG, GIF and PNG files will be accepted by this system. I want you to use the high quality images, not small ones where we can't really see the work very well, or that is badly photographed. Make sure you don't accidentally save just the thumbnail version of an image. For instance, on Google images, the first image you see is actually a very small version of the image, when you click on it you get a larger version but not always the largest, and if you look to the right side of the screen there is a link that takes you to the actual image, which is sometimes even larger. Go all the way through to the largest image, unless it is over 1mb in size. Ultimately there is a limit of 1gig of free storage on this site, and I don't want to end up having a problem with that later on. If you know how to resave images with higher compression, ideally I'd like files smaller than 300kb. For those of you with a PC there is a free easy program that lets you do that available here: resizer, but you can also do that in Photoshop if you know how.
--An even better way to post images: After I had posted the above explanation, I discovered a better way to add images that will mean that we never reach a limit on the number of images on the site overall. When you find a quality image, right click on it, and choose "save the location" or whatever lets you save the image location. Then go to the post you are editing, click the icon for adding an image, and choose the option of using a URL link, then paste your link and the image should show up on your post. If you can get this to work for you, I would prefer this method over any other.
5. If a page has instructions, they will be at the bottom. Since Blogger shows the most recent post first, and there is currently no setting to reverse that, the instructions for any assignment page will be at the bottom, since that will be the first post to go up.
6. To edit a Post: click on the icon of a pencil below your post.
7. To find a post that is not showing up: click on "design" in the upper left side of the page, and hopefully you will see a list of options on the left that will include "posts". This should show all your posts, including those in draft form, and those with no label. If you thought you posted, but the post isn't showing up, you might have forgotten to set the "label" to the name of that page. Please let me know if the "design" button isn't there for you -- you probably have a different set of options as "Authors" than I do as an "Administrator" on the blog.
8 Cite Sources: Whenever you get information from anywhere, cite the source after the sentence, or if you cite a series of facts from a single source in a paragraph, then after the last one (this only applies to assignments involving writing or facts drawn from a source). Don't put the full web address, just the briefest identification we can use to find it. For instance, if you found information on Wikipedia, don't cite it like this (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pottery) cite it like this (source: Wikipedia). And reduce the size of the font too, like this: (source: Wikipedia). Or if it is from a book or magazine, use the shortest way to reference it that you can, such as (source: Ceramics Monthly,5/12, p.66)
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