Posting images and commenting on blogs

This week my adventurous students have been jumping into the bloggosphere and have begun blogging (as I am) about their experiences using technology. There have been some issues that have emerged as they have done this, so I thought I'd blog in response.

Issue 1: Posting images (especially from Jing)

I haven't yet figured out what might have caused the problem, but some folks have reported not being able to upload a Jing image into their blog. Here's how I do it:

• I take a Jing screen shot (and if I want to put annotations on it, I do)
• When I am done annotating, I click on the  "save" button below the Jing image  so that I save it to my computer (rather than clicking on the button to save it to my screencast account)
• Next, in my blog, I click on the icon to upload an image
• On the upload screen that appears, I click  on the "choose files" button and locate and choose  the image that I just saved onto my computer
• A thumbnail of the image that I want to upload appears in the blog image upload box, and I click on the button that says "add selected"
• The image is upload to my blog -- voila! :)

Issue 2: Allowing others to post comments to your blog

What makes blogs even more meaningful is when others can comment (in appropriate ways) on what you have said, giving encouragement, asking questions, sharing their opinions or suggestion etc to extend and deepen the ideas that you have shared. To enable this to happen, you need to allow them to comment. Here's how to do it:

• Go to your blog dashboard 
• Click on the settings link
• In settings, click on comments
• Set comment options to allow others to comment (you can allow anyone, or just 
• Save
• If you moderate comments, you do need to check your blog and approve comments waiting to be moderated so that others can see them (unless you don't want them to be seen!).

I invite others to jump in here and share your experiences -- where you have had problems doing this and what happened, solutions you may have, or other questions!