Slick New Blogger Designs for Everyone!

Back in March Google launched a template design tool for Blogger users. The template designer was available only in Blogger in Draft which is the public beta testing ground for new Blogger features. Yesterday, Google added Blogger Template Designer to all blogs. Now anyone with using Blogger can create aesthetically pleasing Blogger blogs without having to hack into the HTML of their blogs.

I gave Blogger Template Designer a try on one of my "dummy" blogs earlier today and found it very easy to create a nice-looking template for my blog. You can easily add or subtract columns from your blog, expand or contract the size of the columns, and quickly change the footer of your blog. One thing that you should be aware of you are currently using a custom Blogger template that you designed by changing the HTML is that some elements may not appear as they should if you try to use the Template Designer before reverting to a standard Blogger template. It is for that reason that I haven't yet changed the look of Free Technology for Teachers.

Learn more about the Blogger Template Designer in the video below and on the Blogger Buzz Blog.


Applications for Education
Last month Google announced that Blogger will be an option to add to Google Apps for Education later this summer or early fall. That announcement along with the option to create custom Blogger themes could make Blogger a fantastic platform for student blogging.

Here are some related items that may be of interest to you:
The Problem With the Blogger Navbar - Fix It
Google Tools Tutorials
Google for Teachers