This may seem like a silly question, but do you know how to make sure your blog link appears in your profile? I have clicked on lots of bloggers profiles from my Followers link and from comments on others blogs and I've noticed a lot of people do not have blogs linked when I know that they are bloggers. This is just my opinion, but if you don't list your blog in your profile, you are potentially missing out on new followers.

I realize that some people may not want their blogs listed and to be honest, I don't allow all of mine to show up for privacy reasons, but you can pick and choose what you want to show up.

If you aren't sure what I'm talking about, log in to your Blogger account and click on your name or picture to take you to your Blogger profile. From there, if your blog is listed under My Blogs, then it will show up for others. If not, you might consider clicking Edit Profile->Privacy, Show My Blogs, and select the blogs you'd like to display. Be sure to save the settings.

If you are using the older style dashboard, you can click on the following link to take you to a tutorial for how to edit your profile. It's pretty much the same, but I thought some of you might need a visual.
Edit Your Blogger Profile

Feel free to ask if you have any questions and I'll do my best to help you.

Only two comments into using Disqus again yesterday and I've already removed it. See what I mean about my love/hate relationship? I have the right to change my mind constantly though, right? :)

Many people don't have Disqus accounts and I don't really like the generic, no picture, anonymous posts that people tend to leave with Disqus because they aren't registered or don't want to link their other accounts like Facebook to their comments. I'm right there with you! I rarely link my Facebook, Google, or Yahoo! accounts if I can help it.

So....back to regular comments through Blogger for the blog.

However, here's a way you can help if you have a Blogger profile.

1. Go to your Dashboard. 
2. Click on the Edit Profile link next to your picture.
3. Click to put a checkmark in the Show my email address box.
4. (See pictures below if you aren't sure what the pages look like.)

Then, when someone tries to reply to your comment, they can actually do it through email, as opposed to seeing the noreply-blogger@comment.com in the To: part of the address line of an email. It will actually show your email address and I will be able to respond to your comments personally.

If you don't have an email address listed, I try to track you down through your profile or blog first. Otherwise, the best I can do is use an @ sign in front of your name on the post you commented on and hope that you might come back and read it. 

If you have any questions, feel free to ask and I will do my best to answer. Obviously, the choice is yours as to whether or not you are comfortable having your email address on your profile, but if you do, it will be much easier to contact you!

As I've been trying to catch up on everyone's fabulous blogs over the last few days, I've seen an increasing number of teachers posting photos of students with the child's full name included. As a teacher, I completely get how we want to show off our students and how proud we are of each of them. Plus, we do some pretty amazing things with our students. :) However, as a parent, it scares me to think predators could be looking at these photos and have all the information they need to find and lure our kids into a potentially dangerous situation. In the last few years, we quit putting name tags on our students during field trips for this very reason. When an adult knows a child's full name, a child might be more inclined to associate trust with identification.

Our school includes FERPA information in the student handbook and part of the federal law states that we can publish/print directory information without consent of the parent. However, the school has to make the FERPA information available to the families and give them a reasonable amount of time to request not to have their child's information included in directory information (i.e. name, address, grade, parents, etc.).


Many of us include our own names (full, first or last), our school, state, city and the grade we teach somewhere on our blogs. If we add a picture of a child with his/her first and last name and we've basically given someone all the information they need to find the child. I know there can be privacy issues with non-custodial parents, as well. In Kindergarten, we take an insane amount of pictures and include them on newsletters, online, on picture CD's at the end of the year, graduation slide shows, programs, etc. We hand out picture permission slips at Open House for parents to grant or deny permission to use their child's picture in print or other media sources.

I urge everyone to be careful about what you are posting in regards to your students and identifying information. Be sure to follow the policies and procedures set forth by your school district. 


How do you feel about posting pictures online with full student names? Does your school have a policy that you have to follow? Do you agree with it or disagree?

I don’t know about you, but this summer I think I’ve started following 50+ new blogs. I love everyone’s buttons, but honestly haven’t felt like I have enough room on my sidebar to show everyone off without my page being extremely long.

So, I searched for a way to add a slideshow for the buttons. I had to play with the code a little bit to get the buttons to be clickable links and to have them open in a new browser window. For now, this is what works for me. 

Obviously, it’s a little more work than just adding the buttons, but it saves a TON of room on your sidebar.

The code is below. Be sure not to change ANYTHING other than the text in red or it might now work for you.

<marquee direction="up">

<center>
<a href=LINK TO THE BLOG  target="_blank"><img src="LINK TO THE BLOG BUTTON IMAGE SOURCE" /></center>

<br />
<center>
<a href=LINK TO THE BLOG  target="_blank"><img src="LINK TO THE BLOG BUTTON IMAGE SOURCE" /></center></a>

</marquee>

I found all the code I needed by copying and pasting code from everyone’s ‘grab my button’ type boxes.

Check out the slideshow in the left sidebar. What do you think?

{By the way, if you don’t have a blog button, you need one! It’s a wonderful way for others to gain free exposure to your blog.}

I didn't or actually, I had never even thought about it. This is an interesting read. Take a look and tell me what you think?

Is Your Giveaway Legal?

***Oops! The link wasn't working. Thanks for the heads-up Debbie! It should be working now. :)

I know we all like to save time, so I thought I'd share one of my favorite blogging time savers. For the majority of my blog posts, I use Windows Live Writer. It is free to download and it makes blogging so much faster and easier for me. I don't typically get to sit down all at once and write a blog post, so it's great to go back and forth between life as a wife and mommy and life as a teacher & blogger. :)  I highly recommend it!

Some of my favorite features are the ability to watermark photos, change photo colors, crop, add borders/frames and rotate pictures after upload. :)  You can also have multiple blog accounts added. This works nicely for me because I have four blogs that I try to keep up with.

I know there are quite a few of you that have just started blogging, so I thought this might be something that is beneficial for you. There are step by step tutorials for you to get started, too. If you try it, let me know how you like it!

In an effort to reduce spam generated from posting my email address on my blog, I have included a Contact Me form via the Contact Me tab at the top of this blog. What do you think? Feel free to use it to send me comments, questions, suggestions, etc. Unlike comments, this gives readers a little more privacy, too.

So, what are your thoughts? I'd love someone to try it out for me!

Want your own? Visit www.emailmeform.com and sign up for your own free account. It is super easy and did I mention FREE? :) By the way, you can customize it add cute backgrounds, colors, etc. but I change my blog background so frequently that I wanted something simple.

***Update: Thanks so much to everyone who commented and who tried out the form. I have since removed Disqus from commenting. In the process, that deleted all your comments. However, I tried to respond to everyone before the comments were gone. Thank you! 

Check out Ladybug's Teacher Files for a super cute and easy tutorial for adding a little picture in your comments, as well as, a working link to your blog or web site. Be sure to leave a comment here to show me that you tried it. It's fun!