January 18, 2007

Blogger Templates: Boundaries?

I have asked my students to limit their Blogger templates to either Minima Stretch or Minima Lefty Stretch. These two extend the horizontal text space and allow for a wider post area, as opposed to the narrow column that one finds in other templates, and are thus more readable and, I think, more professional. In addition, I have proscribed gaudy background colors and ostentatious fonts for the reason that these would detract from the professionalism (not to mention the readability) of the blog. So far there have been no objections, but I wonder how all of you handle these issues with your students. By the way, are any of you familiar with Solution Watch? It is an interesting site. Another site worth visiting is SupportBlogging!, which has some good resources.

3 comments:

Mark C. Marino said...

Geoff,

These sites look great.

I've been leaving the color and font choices up to my students, but I plan to do a critique in the form of workshops as a class and feedback from me. First, however, I am having the students critique other blogs, so they get more of a sense of what's out there (in terms of style and content).

Danielle said...

The SupportBlogging site looks particularly useful for talking to students about how blogging enhances the writing experience. We haven't started blogging in my class yet--this will be a part of their research paper assignment. I think, though, that I will let them know which color/font choices I think are best and let them go from there.

Anonymous said...

Danielle: I believe that SupportBlogging! will be of benefit when you get to the blogging stage of your course. As to templates, my view is that you are wise to set some boundaries.

 
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