The questions usually begin like this:
- I want a blog, but I have 6 classes (periods). Do I have to have six blogs?
- I have a classroom blog, but I have a different group of students for reading; how do post just for my reading families?
Labels! Each blogger post comes equipped with the ability to give it one or more labels: such as “Period4” or “reading.” The options for adding labels are on the right when you’re composing a new post (the red arrow below). When the post is published, the labels will appear at the bottom of the post. Labels are a great way to sort blog posts into categories.
Also notice that when you’re composing, the labels you’ve used before show up in blue and you can just click on them and they’ll be added to the post (the green arrow above).
Now posting with labels is all well and good, but what if you want a user to easily be able to find a bunch of posts with a particular label? How do those fourth period students easily access only their “Period4” posts?
One way is to scroll through the posts looking for one that is labeled “Period4” (red arrow above). That label will be hyperlinked, and if you click on the label you’ll get a page with only posts containing that label. This will certainly work, but it means asking your users to scroll down your blog posts looking for a specific label. This could be time-consuming. Fortunately, there’s a better way.
From your Blogger Dashboard, navigate to the Layout screen. Along the right sidebar or the top (your choice) you can add a “gadget.” When the select gadget window pops up (pictured below), select the Labels gadget (you’ll have to scroll down to find it).
Once you’ve selected the Labels gadget you’ll be given some options. Do you want to show all your labels, or just some of them? How do you want them sorted? Should they be formatted as a list or as a cloud? Should it show the number of posts per label? Once you’re set, Save it and you’re ready to go.
Now, head back to your live blog and your labels will be there for easy access. And remember, each post can have more that one label. So if you have information for more than one class, give that post multiple labels and it will show up in more than one label category.
Users can now easily click on a specific label and get access to just that content.
