Blog class #2

Three of my students didn’t show up. I knew about one of them but was disappointed about the other two. They seemed so enthusiastic last week.

I began the class talking about copyright. At least one, and probably several, of my students had no clue. Since I really wanted to talk about image optimization and Picasa during this class I spoke only about violating someone else’s copyright and promised a full explanation about protecting their own work and using links next week. I told them posting someone else’s work on their sites was stealing and I used Napster as an example. Most of them knew something about Napster. I got a few good questions about appropriating stuff, so I’m hoping I got the message across. No one suggested they would do it and probably not get caught. With the use of Google Alerts, I think it will be very easy to catch illegal appropriations. One thing that amazed me: the person whose query originally provoked my thinking about the matter, never bothered to look at the entire presentation she wanted to put on her website; never noticed the copyright statement at the end. That’s an even bigger no-no in my book: I want to know exactly what goes on my blog.

We are using wonderful computers at the University, but they don’t have Picasa on them, and I didn’t think I should download it, even if I were able to do it. I sent simple instructions for downloading, hoping they would all try it before the class. One person tried and failed to download. I have no clue about what happened.

Picasa Download instructions

Open a browser. Go to Google. Click on more and even more in the dropdown menu.

On the next page, click on Picasa.

Click on “Download Picasa.”

An icon “Picasa Setup” will appear on your desktop. Double click on it to install Picasa. You will be asked if you want Picasa to find all of the pictures on your computer. Picasa does not move your pictures; it points to where pictures are saved and creates thumbnails.

I gave a demonstration about using Picasa, both as an image editing tool and for exporting to the web. Then I showed them how to upload photos to their blogs with great success.

Class #1, Come Blog with me

Nine out of the ten people registered showed up for the class. They all seem to have the same degree of computer literacy, except for one person who seems to be ahead of the others. We began by discussing their intentions for their blogs. Then I defined user name, URL and domain name and had them check their blog names by Googling them with quotation marks around the name. After everyone was satisfied with their names they began setting up their blogs. I decided to use WordPress since I am familiar with it, although I did check out Blogger. I find the instructions easy to follow, but it’s not easy for people who are not comfortable with computers.

I was very grateful to have Judy,  one of our administrators, in the class. She helped me keep everyone on the same page. It was not easy to quickly see what everyone was doing. The room is a little tight when it’s fully occupied, and I can’t get around quickly.

The class meets for two hours, and the time went much too fast. I wanted each of them to write their first post, but it didn’t happen. I had them save their posts as drafts then took them to the Themes section and explained custom headers and a little bit about pictures. Next week we will concentrate on pictures.