I only have a few minutes to post this — early flight to Arkansas for a regional conference in Hot Springs. More about that later.
You know by now that NECC has its own tags: necc, necc07, and necc2007. Tagging your blogs with these strings will make your blog searchable through Technorati and other blog search engines, and available through Hitchhikr. You also, probably know that each session, at NECC, also has a unique tag, thanks to another NECC innovation. For instance, the tag for my session on Contemporary Literacy will be n07s705.
Actually applying tags can be quirky and dependent on the blogging engine that you use. This is why I made a little tool a couple of years ago to help. It’s called Blog Tag Generator (took me a long time to think that one up). To run BTG, go to the front page of my Landmarks for Schools web site, and then click [Blog Tag Generator] in the blog panel to the right. A small window will popout with three textboxes.
- Type your blog tags in the top single line textbox: necc necc07 necc2007 n07s705
- Click [Submit]
- This will generate some HTML code in the larger multi-line textbox. Highlight and copy this code.
- Go to your blog and switch it to Source or HTML mode. The method for doing this will depend on the blogging engine you are using. There will usually be a link or button either above or beneath the textbox where you type the blog article.
- This will cause your blog article to appear in HTML format, probably with lots of <br />s. Place the cursor at the bottom of your article and paste the code from BTG.
- Switch back to standard view and your tags will appear at the bottom of your article, justified to the right. You can submit your blog now.
- Finally, type the URL of you blog in the bottom textbox in BTG and click the [Ping!] button. This alerts Technorati that your blog has been posted to. It will then check your blog and index your recent article, making it available for searching.
See you at NECC, either in person or through your blog!
2¢ Worth