Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Blogger's Post Summary

Tammy Worcester recently posted about Blogger's new "post summary" feature. It allows you to just show a small part of a post on your Blogger page, with a link to a "read more" link to allow users to see the rest. The toolbar now includes  a "jump break" button you insert in the text where you want the "read more" break to be.


I am not sure that I will use this function much, since I am not sure that I like to read blogs this way, but it will make it easy to scan a blog page if you are not aggregating it already in a newsreader.

If you do decide to use this function, remember to post the important information at the beginning so users WANT to click on the "read more" link! We should remember to teach students the skill of "hook 'em at the start" if they are using this new feature. Another good way to use this feature is to provide an abstract before the "jump break" and then include the full text after the break.