Blah blah blah

reflection

Reflection

https://soundcloud.com/user-188208732/tabins-microbiology-podcast

https://soundcloud.com/user-188208732/propaganda-in-nazi-germany-bugs-bunny

Sometimes when writing a blog post, we want to keep readers attention by engaging them through interactivity. Even if our readers choose not to follow the links, they have the option to, and it creates a better blog experience. So how do we do this?

Find your link

Try to link to reputable websites – ones that contain valid information and seem “legit” and suitable for your purpose. For example, linking to Buzzfeed may be appropriate for a personal journal blog, but there are few instances where it would be equally as suitable in an academic context.

Make sure that your link points to where you want your readers to focus. This might be the home page, or a specific blog post. It always worth double checking during your blog creation process that your links go where they are meant to, to save yourself potential embarrassment!

If you have a choice between a “permalink” and a regular link, choose the “permalink” – this is often an option in institutional websites, which may change servers or hosts from time to time. Using a permalink will guarantee that your link always points to where you want to go.

Insert your link in Thinkspace

When you open Thinkspace, your view will look something like this:

The red box highlights the “Insert link” button. Highlight some text and click this button. If you’ve done this successfully, it should pop up with a text box under the highlighted words like this:

Paste your link into this box and you’re set! You now have a contextual hyperlink – or “clickable text”

In your blog posts, you may want to include images to enhance your communication. These are visually engaging, get your readers attention, or clarify your examples. Where you feature these images is going to depend on the content of your blog, but it’s best to connect your image to the ideas that relate to it. Think about a travel blog – often it will lead with an image, to “place” the reader. Consider a recipe blog – often the image of the completed dish is located between the longform description, or “blurb”, and the ingredients list.

Once you have decided on placement within your blog post, you’ll want to know how to embed an image.

Choose your image.

Try to use just the part of the image that is most important. For example, you may want to use part of a screenshot, and the crop tool in paint is helpful here. I’ll take you through an example.

I’ve used the key combination FN/Ctrl-Print Scr to take a screenshot of my Windows computer display. This creates an image like this, saved to the clipboard of my computer:

Perhaps I only want to talk about how Pixabay is a great place to find photos however – so I paste it, using Ctrl-V into the Paint application. This is how it then appears:

This allows me to edit it. I select an area, and hit “Crop”. Now I have the image I want to focus on.

Save your image somewhere you can find it, and move onto your Thinkspace blog.

Embedding your image

When you get there, you’ll see a screen like this.

Notice the Add Media button that’s highlighted? That’s what you’ll want to hit. It will come up with an option to upload your image, which is where you’ll select the image you just cropped.

Hit “Insert into Post” and you’ll have a visually interesting blog post in no time!