Etiquette on WhatsApp Groups

WhatsApp has revolutionized the way we communicate. The ability to convey messages instantly to the class through the Class Group is very convenient to all.

Listed below are my thoughts on the way people post things on WhatsApp. I felt we need to follow some etiquette to put WhatsApp to better use. These are meant mainly for the Class Groups we maintain in our Vidyalaya to connect with our classes during this lockdown.

Create a Quiz in Google Form

Google Form can be used for creating gk quizzes, conducting your class tests, getting feedback from your students and conducting surveys or polls. Creating a quiz or test using Google Form is quite simple. The following video will demonstrate how to create a quiz using Google Forms.

First sign in  to Google Forms.

How to Submit Your Blog to Search Engines

Have you tried searching your blog on Google and not able to find it indexed on Google?
The reason is very simple: Google is not aware of your blog's existence. Wondering why? Normally search engines like Google discover new websites/blogs by crawling the web. They find new links on existing websites and follow them. If your website is a few days/weeks old and is not linked from other websites, most probably it will take some time to search engines to find your blog and index them automatically.
So, it is effective if you submit your blog/website to search engines like Google. We will see how to submit your blog to search engines.

Submit Your Blog to Google

You can submit your blog to Google by logging into Google Search Console. Google Search Console is a web service by Google which allows webmasters to check indexing status and optimize visibility of their websites. This tutorial is for blogs created on Blogger platform. You can also submit sites/blogs created using other platforms, but the site ownership verification process should be completed to get the site/blog to be added to Search Console. WordPress site hosted free may not be able to complete the verification process as you are not allowed to upload the verification file or create meta tags required for site verification.

 Follow these steps to submit your blog to Google Search Console

Go to https://search.google.com/search-console/welcome

In the domain enter the URL of your blog without the http or https prefix (e.g kv-library.blogspot.com)
Click on Continue.. Google will verify ownership. As it is on Blogger domain Google will auto-verify your blog.
You will be taken to Google Search Console.

Next, you will have to submit a sitemap

Sitemap of Your Blog

A sitemap, as the name suggests, is an actual map of your blog. A sitemap is either an XML or HTML file that contains all the URLs of the pages inside your blog. By default your blog will have sitemap that will tell search engines about the latest posts on you blog. Your blogs sitemap will be located at

http://yourblogdomainname.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500

Replace yourblogdomainname with the domain name of your blog.

Now go to Blogger settings->Search preferences and click on Edit against add custom robots.txt option and enable it by selecting Yes option.

Inside the robots.txt box enter the following

User-agent: * Disallow: /search Allow: / Sitemap: http://yourblogdomainname.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500

Don't forget to change give the correct url of your blog instead of yourblogdomainname.blogspot.com
Click on Save changes
If you have more than 500 pages you can add more sitemaps changing the startindex and max-results values.

Submit Your Sitemap to Google Search Console

Go to Google Search Console by clicking Edit option against Google Search Console under Search Preferences. Or you can go to https://search.google.com/search-console/

In Search Console, click on Sitemaps option in the menu on the left and enter your sitemap URL (i.e. http://yourblogdomainname.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500) and click Submit (see the screenshot below)

The sitemap will be added to the Search Console. Now your blog is ready for crawling and indexing. You can find the number of pages crawled and indexed in Google webmaster tools.

That's it. Now you can search your blog URL in Google and you will find it indexed. Your blog will appear in search results depending on the content of your blog. 

You can visit Search Console later to see your blog's search performance statistics and other insights.

Submit and Individual Page to Google

If you have added some new and important content and want to get it indexed by Google quickly, you can submit an individual page to Search Console.

To do this Go to Search Console and click on URL Inspection. If you have multiple blogs entered in Search Console, select the relevant property (blog) from the drop down on top left.

Then copy and paste the complete URL of the page inside the URL Inspection textbox and press Enter key.

Google will retrieve data from its index and will inform you the status. Most probably it will say the URL is not indexed as it is a new page. You can now click on Request Indexing to add it to the Google's indexing queue.

Bing is a web search engine owned and operated by Microsoft and is the third largest search engine globally. You can submit the sitemap of your blog to Bing to get indexed by the search engine.

How to Submit Your Blog to Bing

Go to Bing Webmaster Tools

You can sign in using your Microsoft/Google/Facebook account.

Once logged in to Bing Webmaster Tools you can either add your site using the Add a Site option or you can import your site from Gooogle Search Console if you have already added your site to Search Console.

If you use add a site feature, you can provide further information like the sitemap url and your details.

If you select import from Search Console, you can Sign in to your Google account and import the site information from there. This will not require you to verify the blog ownership again at Bing.

You will have verify ownership of your site by adding a meta tag to your blog. Bing will provide you with a meta tag which will look something like this:

                <meta name="msvalidate.01" content="SOMEVALUEHERE" />

To add meta tag, go to Theme->Edit HTML. When the HTML code editor opens, click inside the box and press Ctrl+F to open a search box. Now type </head> in the search box and press Enter Key. When the </head> tag is found paste the meta tag from Bing just before the </head> tag. Now Click on Save Theme to save changes. Take care not to delete the </head> tag.

Go back to Bing Webmaster Tools and click on Verify button.

Yahoo is powered by Bing’s index, so by submitting to Bing, your site will automatically be submitted to Yahoo.

Create a Horizontal Menu Bar with Sub Menu for Blogger

In this tutorial you will learn how to add a horizontal menu bar with submenu on your blog. Earlier we have used the pages and link list gadgets to create a horizontal menu. But these gadgets do not provide for submenus. Here we will learn how to create a menu using plain HTML and CSS.

Adding A Horizontal Menu With Sub Menus to Blogger

First, let's create the menu using HTML list. We make use the <ul><li> elements to make a list of links for the menu. The basic structure of <ul><li> elements are as follows
<ul>
  <li><a href="default.html">Home</a></li>
  <li><a href="contact.html">Contact</a></li>
  <li><a href="#">Links</a></li>
</ul>
You can see the <a> HTML tag is used for each <li> tag to provide links to the list item. A "#" can be provided where you don't want an item to be clickable.  You can add more links to the list by by copying the line <li>....</li> and changing the link and title for the list item (highlighted in red). These are the menu items. So we have three menu items in the list above. If you need to add submenu to any of the menu items above, you will have to add a list under the menu item. For example, you want to add two submenu items to the Links menu as follows
<ul>
  <li><a href="http://cbse.nic.in">CBSE</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://ncert.nic.in">NCERT</a></li>
</ul>

We will add the submenu as follows:
<ul>
  <li><a href="default.html">Home</a></li>
  <li><a href="contact.html">Contact</a></li>
  <li><a href="#">Links</a>
             <ul>
              <li><a href="http://cbse.nic.in">CBSE</a></li>
              <li><a href="http://ncert.nic.in">NCERT</a></li>
              </ul>
</li>
</ul>

Note that we just placed the new list just before the closing </li> tag for the menu item. We have given "#" instead the URL, as we do not want the menu to be linked to any website as it has submenu. You can copy and paste the lists and make changes to the menu as required. In the box below you can create your menu by modifying the list items. Remember that when you are deleting an item remove the complete line <li>...</li> , else it will not render properly. Only add menus that can be accommodated in a single line.

<!-- start menu --> <ul id='navbartop'> <li><a href='YOUR BLOG URL HERE'>Home</a></li> <li><a href='http://kvsangathan.nic.in'>KVS HQ</a></li> <li><a href='http://ernakulam.kvs.ac.in'>KVS RO</a></li> <li><a href='http://no2palakkad.kvs.ac.in'>KV Kanjikode</a></li> <li><a href='#'>LINKS</a> <ul> <li><a href='http://cbse.nic.in'>CBSE</a></li> <li><a href='http://ncert.nic.in'>NCERT</a></li> </ul> </li> <li><a href='#'>Resources</a> <ul> <li><a href='http://epathshala.nic.in'>E-pathshala</a></li> <li><a href='swayam.gov.in'>Swayam</a></li> <li><a href='http://studentsgkquiz.blogspot.com'>GK Quiz</a></li> <li><a href='http://scholasticworld.blogspot.com'>Competitions</a></li> </ul> </li> <li><a href='URL of the Contact Page here'>Contact</a></li> <!-- ADD MORE CATEGORIES HERE --> </ul> <!-- end menu -->

Copy the content inside the above box to clipboard.
Now go to blogger and login to your account.
Go to your "Layout" and on the "Page Elements" section:

• Click on the "Add a Gadget" link just under your header image (cross-column 1)
• From the Gadget's List, select "HTML/JavaScript" option.
• Paste the copied HTML code inside the body. Do not provide any title to this gadget
• Click on Save

If you view your blog now, you can see the menu bar added to the blog. We will have add some CSS styles to get it working.

#navbar { width: 100%; /* change the width of the navigation bar */ height: 35px; /* change the height of the navigation bar */ } #navbartop { margin: 0 auto; padding: 0; width: 100%; /* Set your width to fit your blog */ } #navbartop ul { background: $(tabs.background.color) $(tabs.background.gradient) repeat-x scroll 0 -800px; _background-image: none; /* Template Designer - Change Menu Background */ float: none; list-style: none; margin: 0; padding: 0; overflow: visible; } #navbartop li a, #navbartop li a:link, #navbartop li a:visited { color: #000000; /* change color of the main links */ display: block; margin: 0; padding: 10px 20px; /* change the first number for the top/bottom spacing, and the second number for left/right spacing */ } #navbartop li a:hover, #navbartop li a:active { color: #FF69B4 ; /* change the color of the links when hovered over */ margin: 0; padding: 10px 20px; /* make sure these are the same as the section above! */ } #navbartop li li a, #navbartop li li a:link, #navbartop li li a:visited { background: #ffffff; /* change the background color of the drop down box */ width: 150px; color: #000000; /* change the color of the drop down links */ float: none; margin: 0; padding: 7px 10px; /* similar to above, change for the spacing around the links */ } #navbartop li li a:hover, #navbartop li li a:active { background: #FF69B4 ; /* change the background color of drop down items on hover */ color: #ffffff; /* change the color of drop down links on hover */ padding: 7px 10px; /* keep these the same as the above section */ } #navbartop li { float: none; display: inline-block; list-style: none; margin: 0; padding: 0; } #navbartop li ul { z-index: 9999; position: absolute; left: -999em; height: auto; width: 150px; margin: 0; padding: 0; } #navbartop li:hover ul, #navbartop li li:hover ul, #navbartop li li li:hover ul, #navbartop li.sfhover ul, #navbartop li li.sfhover ul, #navbartop li li li.sfhover ul { left: auto; }

Copy the complete CSS style text from the box above.

• In Blogger, click on Theme and then click Customise button.
• Click on Advanced tab on the left and then click on Add CSS option at the bottom
• Paste the copied CSS Style inside the box.
• Click on Apply to Blog

Now view the blog to see the menu working.
You can change the color of the background, link text, hover effects etc by making changes to the CSS Style. I have created a CSS Maker for your convenience where you can select the colors for your  menu and the generated CSS Style can be copied and pasted to get the desired effect.
Click here for the CSS Maker (The CSS Maker is only useful for this menu)

Google Classroom: Adding Classworks

 Google Classroom gives you the ability to create and assign work and conduct online tests to your students. To create new assignments, tests, or add materials and resources to your class, you'll have to use the Classwork tab.

Here adding classworks is demonstrated in two video tutorials.

Classwork Tutorial 1

 

Click here to learn how to create a class on Google Classroom
Classwork Tutorial 2