The School Bloggers’ Blog

On your travels across the wonderful world of school blogs, have you noticed that some have a really great little widget which shows where in the world their visitors come from? How would you like one for your own school blog? It’s easy! Just follow these steps:

1. Visit the ClustrMap website
2. Enter your blog’s full address, and your email address, and click the “Make my map” button
3. On the next page, leave the option on “[A] Recommended”, then select and copy all of the code it provides in the Recommended code box
4. Now, in the admin area of your blog, go to Appearance > Widgets
5. Drag and drop a new “Text” widget into your sidebar area
6. Give it a title (e.g. “Visitor Map”), and paste all the code into the box, and click save
7. Check your blog to see it in action! Please note, it make take a few minutes to update with the first batch of stats, after which stats update daily.
8. EXTRA – You can revisit the ClustrMaps website and login with your blog address and password (emailed to you by ClustrMaps). When logged in, you can change some settings such as the style of map, as well as check statistics.

Let us know how you get on, and show us your ClusterMaps in action!

One of the great benefits of school blogs is the ability to invite comments on your blog posts, and so providing a fantastic method of diverse, constructive feedback for your students. When a visitor comments on a piece of uploaded student work, it can give that student a real sense of pride, and a great deal of excitement! Comments can come in from a range of visitors, from fellow students in the school, schools across the country or the world, teachers, parents, experts. A truly great way for students to receive a far broader range of feedback than is normally possible.

One of the hurdles that new school bloggers face early on is how to get some good comments on their blog posts? In this article, we’ll present a number of methods that can help you get some great comments on your blogs.

Read more →