I have been messing with WordPress for a a few days now and think that I know a bit more about it than I did at the beginning. I have been prodded(nudged 
) to share what I have done.
WordPress has a very intuitive theme system and a HUGE community theme collection. There are themes with different layouts and colors.
The search options are very helpful for specifying exactly which things you want in a theme. You can specify color, number of columns, and even if it can have a custom header. This feature allowed me to find many themes that were orange in nature (it is my favorite color after all).
Once you have found a theme that you want to have for blog, you can click on the install link below the theme. This will present you with an install window which will allow you to install the theme to you WordPress installation.
After the theme has been installed you will be presented with a installation progress window which shows the different steps to the installation and is the installation was successful. It will then give you options to preview the theme, activate the theme or return to the Theme Installer.
If you want to view all of the themes that you have installed you can click on the Themes link under the Appearance menu along the left side of the Admin Page.
For those of you who like a theme and want to change just a few of the colors or a background image on a theme, you can using the Editor link under the Appearances menu along the left side of the Admin page. This editor also gives you access to many of the other files involved with a theme and allows you to further customize your blog.
This sort of tinkering is a little more difficult to make than the installation of the theme because it require a little knowledge about CSS(Cascading Style Sheets) and HTML(Hyper Text Markup Language). This knowledge is not very hard to come by and with a little willingness to learn and a few good web searches, one can easily tweak any theme to their liking.
WordPress makes theming your blog simple to do and gives you the tools to further the professional look and feel of you site. Enjoy theming you all!
Matthew,
It’s exactly posts like this that got me into instructional technology, and WordPress more specifically. I knew nothing very little about the possibilities of open source applications like WorPress five or six years ago, but when I discovered how easy it is to get a wide range of themes, and then hack them with very littl understanding of code, Iwas sold. The internet truly became my classoom because as you suggest here, a quick web search often eads you to a wide range of other people who are trying to do something similar, if not the same thing.
What’s more, you’re now a part of this process, and a resource in your own right. Both for us, as well as for a number of other folks that may be looking for this information out there. Tutorials/how-tos are very much a kind of storytelling that are by no means unique to the digital world, yet a common genre for sharing and connecting with others to learn as you go. A kind of on-demand classroom.
Anyway, it’s awesome to see you jumping right in, and just wait until you start digging in the plugins.
[...] also nice about week two is that a few students came out of the blog gate running. Matthew Keaton created a tutorial for the class about installing and tweaking themes for WordPress (a form of digital storytelling near and dear to [...]
[...] themes and plugins for your blog. Be sure to check out Matthew Keaton’s tutorial for experimenting with themes. And this tutorial for exploring and installing plugins should also be useful. Finally, be sure to [...]