Finding Blogs and Adding Links

This is a second shot at the tutorial.

Using Google News to find blog material

Google News allows you to search for news stories that match particular keywords and specify how recently they were published.  You can even use your search results to determine a trend in how popular a subject or keyword is over time.

 Steps:

1. Go to news.google.com 

2. In the search bar at the top type in your keywords and click “search news”

3. Start looking at what you get!

This method will expose you to information from newspapers all over the world and some magazines as well.

Advanced Option: Adding news alerts

You can even set up Google News to email you every time that an article with a certain key word is indexed.

1. On your search results page, look near the bottom of the left sidebar.

2. Find the letter icon that says “News Alerts” and click on it.

3. In the form that appears, your search term should already be there, but you can change it at this time if you want to.

4. Under “Type”  you can specify which kinds of information you want.  Pick “News” if you just want newspaper articles or “Comprehensive” if you want to get blog posts, videos, and web pages on this topic delivered to you as well.

5. Under “How Often” select the frequency you want the alerts to come at.  I suggest “once a day” unless you want many separate emails from Google everytime an article with your keyword shows up.

6. Finally, specify the email address you want the alerts to go to and click “Create Alert”

7. After this alert is created you will be sent to the alerts page where you can delete or edit this alert or create a new one with different keywords.

8. Create several alerts and sit back and wait for the information to be delivered to you.

Happy blogging!

Body image study/article

I came across this article that may be interesting to some of you working on media/celebrity influence or body image topics.

Watching rap music videos that are overly sexy and violent can lead to alcohol abuse and promiscuity among young black girls, according to a study into sexual stereotypes in rap music footage.

The research was based on a survey of 522 African-American girls aged 14 to 18 who were asked how often they watched rap videos, questioned about their sex lives and asked to provide a urine sample for a marijuana screening. (LINK to Reuters article)

I’m curious to know what you think about this. Some people might say that rap music in particular is being unfairly targeted when lots of popular culture has the same effects. Still, the study has some pretty alarming results, doesn’t it? I hope to hear some of your opinions on this as comments or see your own blog posts on the issue.

The tutorials that I promised!

I really hope that these are helpful. Just click to download the files, and then click download on the page that comes up. Let me know if you have any problems.

Finding Blogs and Adding Links Tutorial

Tips for Formatting Your Blog Post Tutorial

Something about Spain and Global Warming

I found an interesting article and I really liked it. Then I would say something that has real substance. It would be illuminating and brilliant. Here is what they say:

A large number of presentations was devoted to the THORPEX-project, studying predictability. The use of so-called ‘ensembles’ in forecasting and climatology is still a central topic, but there was also some focus on ‘targeted observations’. Targeted observations means that scientists use the weather models to estimate which sensitive parts of the world we need to know more exactly for more accurate forecasts.

One example is the forecast for tropical cyclones in the US, which routinely employ targeted observations through dropsondes from research planes to get more accurate forecasts of the cyclone trajectory and intensity. Link to the article at RealClimate.org

I could say more about why I liked this. Share my opinion, etc. This would go one for several sentences or several paragraphs.

Here is a list of several topics:

1. thing one
2. thing two
3. thing three

 

Wonderful rant!

I just read a pretty funny commentary on leet speak and its role in the media:

Just the fact that parents wouldn’t be able to decipher “plz” or “brb” seems urgent to me, but for more pressing and more deeply seeded reasons perhaps. YOU PARENTS DON’T NEED TO KNOW EVERYTHING YOUR CHILDREN ARE DOING/SAYING AT ALL TIMES! Thank you. via “Because Your Life Depends On it”

I can certainly relate to this – perhaps this paranoia is just all about being afraid that children will have secret lives.

Blogging Tips

A few of you have started posting about blogs and articles that you have found – that is great. However, please LINK TO whatever you are posting about in your post. You can make a link from WordPress by highlighting the word you want to turn into a hyper-link and then clicking the chain icon at the top of your post box. Above is an example of the way I might write a blog post about another blog that I read.

Notice that I use a block quote to designate the part of the entry that I didn’t write.  I also introduce the quote and then describe why I like it afterwards.  Finally, there is a link directly to the post that I am referencing at the end of the block quote.  You can make a block quote by selecting some text and pressing the icon to the left the justification buttons that shows arrows indenting the text.

About this blog

This blog is intended to guide the students in my sections of ENGL 101 with information and tips about exploring a topic they care about through blogging. I plan to help them locate interesting online resources to read and become engaged with. My hope is that they will share their thoughts on issues of importance to them and enter the discussion of these issues in the online community.

My favorite website is Google.

The Giant Blogging Terms Glossary

This website is a list of blogging terminology that you might come across.  Some of these concepts are more technical than you need to be concerned with but this is a good place to check for information when you see a term you don’t know.