Part one
What was your role?
My role in this course was to use my resources to help other students meet their goals with their organizations. I provided general troubleshooting for all of the blogs and I tried to spread my knowledge of technology to the rest of the students. I did this by writing tutorials and helping students face-to-face. Troubleshooting was usually done through email.
How was it formed?
Professor Chen decided before the class began that any CSIS majors in the course would be taking the role I did. I believe there we two of us to begin with, but the major besides me got an internship opportunity he couldn't pass up.
Has it changed?
Yes. After the students met with their organizations and created their organizational blogs I started getting a good amount of questions. However, once the blogs were rolling and had a few posts I didn't hear as much from the students. This is partially my fault. I haven't been to the Monday meetings lately and I know that at least one student thought I wasn't available, since I hadn't been present. Yet, since I haven't gotten any questions for several weeks, I have to assume that students have adapted well to Blogger. Students may be using Blogger's support documents. They are very well written, and I often cited them in my own posts. Lately I have spent most of my blog time just reading all of the other blogs.
Was it a good role?
It worked great for me, because I already had past experience with blogging and Blogger. I managed my own personal blog on Blogger for a couple of semesters. Little did I know I would end of using that knowledge. I'd say the role was also beneficial for the class too. Some things involving Blogger are rather complicated, like altering the template. It's part programming, part web design, and that's a lot to expect from non-CSIS students. Since the majority of the class were political science students, it was a good role for someone to have. For the same reason, I didn't really feel that it was my place to comment on the content of the blogs. I tried to play the CSIS role and critique things like design and functionality.
How could it have been better?
I've been scratching my head for a while on this one. It might have been good to have some class time devoted to sitting together in a computer lab and working on the blogs. This would have made us more aware of each other, and the problems that others faced with their blogs. This was an idea we had initially for Fridays, but it never took off. Students have done very well managing their blogs, so I suppose it wasn't necessary.
How did it benefit you?
It gave me some real world experience of being in a support role and working with a group to achieve a collective goal.
How does it apply to your major?
Professor Chen and I both agreed that this course is good CSIS majors, because it requires students to apply the knowledge that they've already learned in a real life situation. Not many other courses offer this.
How well do you feel you've fulfilled your role?
Fairly, I guess. I haven't had much for posts lately and I feel guilty about missing meetings. However, I have helped students tackle most of their issues with ease. I was usually quick to respond and was always available in the evenings in computer labs or via email.
What do you envision for the future of this role for these students?
I imagine more one-to-one interaction with future CSIS students. Most of my contact was through email and Blogger. I did sit down with students occasionally, but not often.
For future offerings of this course?
It would be interesting to see a technology related organization that wanted to participate with this course.
Part Two
Does the organization wish to continue the blog? Why?
Well, sort of. I don't think that new posts will be expected on my blog after this course is over. The next time the course is offered there will be a new CSIS person to start a blog just like I did. I do believe I am expected to continue working with students that maintain contact with their organizations. I guess this just depends on how many organizations choose to keep with the blogs. If students do seek my help after the course, I suppose I might make a new post about it.
What arrangements have been/need to be made to continue the project?
None have been formally made. I talked with Professor Chen about helping students after the course is over. I'm guessing this is something we will talk about in class on Monday.
What is the timeline for this and what role will you play in preparing the organization for continued blogging?
The timeline depends on how long our organizations decide to continue blogging. It also depends on how easily they take over the responsibilities of the blog. They may find that their blog is a great resource to them or they may think it's too much upkeep or that the audience is too small. In regards to my role, the students will be preparing their individual organizations for continued blogging based on what they've done already. I'll be a resource for them when they need help.
Friday, December 01, 2006
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Organizational blogs
It's been quiet lately on the blog front. I haven't gotten too many questions from students for the last couple weeks. I guess that means you guys are getting along well with the Blogger technology and solving problems on your own. Kudos to you all. Still, don't even hesitate to ask me about anything.
Everyone's organizational blogs are coming together really well. When I read them all a couple weeks ago students were still working with their templates and meeting with their organizations. This week I see that there are a lot of new posts, and the content looks great. I'd like to take a moment and make a few critiques about the blogs.
Sometimes it's hard to find a student's organizational blog from their course blog. I have to browse around and figure out which post it's in. A link to the organizational should be put in a very visible place, such as the first link on your sidebar. I previously made a post about editing links, which has some good resources for doing this.
Most blogs have a links section on the sidebar. Regarding the organizational blogs, these links should be related to the organization. They should also be links that the organization would approve of, since you are showing support for them by linking them through the blog.
Make sure you double check posts for typos, since Blogger's spell-checker isn't perfect and will miss certain errors.
I guess those are all the comments I can think of. Those are the things I noticed right away. The new blogs are awesome. I'll have some more posts about technology up soon.
Log:
2 hours reading all the blogs.
1 hour drafting and publishing.
Everyone's organizational blogs are coming together really well. When I read them all a couple weeks ago students were still working with their templates and meeting with their organizations. This week I see that there are a lot of new posts, and the content looks great. I'd like to take a moment and make a few critiques about the blogs.
Sometimes it's hard to find a student's organizational blog from their course blog. I have to browse around and figure out which post it's in. A link to the organizational should be put in a very visible place, such as the first link on your sidebar. I previously made a post about editing links, which has some good resources for doing this.
Most blogs have a links section on the sidebar. Regarding the organizational blogs, these links should be related to the organization. They should also be links that the organization would approve of, since you are showing support for them by linking them through the blog.
Make sure you double check posts for typos, since Blogger's spell-checker isn't perfect and will miss certain errors.
I guess those are all the comments I can think of. Those are the things I noticed right away. The new blogs are awesome. I'll have some more posts about technology up soon.
Log:
2 hours reading all the blogs.
1 hour drafting and publishing.
Monday, October 23, 2006
Changing your links
Professor Chen suggested I make a post about changing the links on your sidebar, so here goes.
I found this page on Blogger Help:
How do I edit my link list?
Read that first. It's only a few paragraphs and it's faily straight-forward and simple.
The code that Blogger provides on that page is already in most of your templates. If you don't have it on yours, you could copy & paste the code in, but make sure you put it in the sidebar section of your template.
I'm going to try and explain a little bit of this code, so you get a feel for html.
All html uses formatting tages that start with <tag> and end with </tag>.
h2: the h stands for header and the 2 describes how bold the text is.
ul: stands for unordered list
li: stands for list item
<a href="http://EDITME">Edit-Me</a> is the actual code for a link.
The "http://EDITME" is the URL of the link.
The "Edit-Me" is the text that you click on.
As an example, here is the code for the links on my page. This way you can see how the code translates into what the page really looks like.
<h2 class="sidebar-title">Other Links</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://newsvine.com/" target="_blank">Newsvine</a></li>
<li><a href="http://digg.com/" target="_blank">digg</a></li>
<li><a href="http://slashdot.org/" target="_blank">Slashdot</a></li>
<li><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/" target="_blank">BBC News</a></li>
<li><a href="http://wired.com/" target="_blank">Wired News</a></li>
<li><a href="http://seedmagazine.com/" target="_blank">Seed</a></li>
<li><a href="http://wikipedia.org/" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a></li>
<li><a href="http://archive.org/" target="_blank">Internet Archive</a></li>
</ul>
I found this page on Blogger Help:
How do I edit my link list?
Read that first. It's only a few paragraphs and it's faily straight-forward and simple.
The code that Blogger provides on that page is already in most of your templates. If you don't have it on yours, you could copy & paste the code in, but make sure you put it in the sidebar section of your template.
I'm going to try and explain a little bit of this code, so you get a feel for html.
All html uses formatting tages that start with <tag> and end with </tag>.
h2: the h stands for header and the 2 describes how bold the text is.
ul: stands for unordered list
li: stands for list item
<a href="http://EDITME">Edit-Me</a> is the actual code for a link.
The "http://EDITME" is the URL of the link.
The "Edit-Me" is the text that you click on.
As an example, here is the code for the links on my page. This way you can see how the code translates into what the page really looks like.
<h2 class="sidebar-title">Other Links</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://newsvine.com/" target="_blank">Newsvine</a></li>
<li><a href="http://digg.com/" target="_blank">digg</a></li>
<li><a href="http://slashdot.org/" target="_blank">Slashdot</a></li>
<li><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/" target="_blank">BBC News</a></li>
<li><a href="http://wired.com/" target="_blank">Wired News</a></li>
<li><a href="http://seedmagazine.com/" target="_blank">Seed</a></li>
<li><a href="http://wikipedia.org/" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a></li>
<li><a href="http://archive.org/" target="_blank">Internet Archive</a></li>
</ul>
Drafts and dates
A while ago Brent had a question about dates on his posts. The example he gave was that he created a draft, worked on it a few days, and then published it. The date the post held was when he initially created the draft, rather than when it was published.
Here's how Blogger implements dates. When a new post is first created, whether it is a draft or it is published right away, it gets time-stamped. After that, the date on the post never changes unless you change it manually.
To change the date, go in to edit the post. Just above the buttons "Save as Draft" and "Publish Post" you'll see "Post and Comment options." Click the little triangle to expand the menu. Here you can change the date to whatever you want. Theoretically you could make a post and change the date to Dec. 12th, 1994, if you really wanted to. Note that this menu also allows you to turn comments on/off for that particular post. This could be useful if you're making a post that doesn't really need comments. Basically, this allows you to keep comments enabled for your blog, but to deal with comments on a post-by-post basis.
Here is a page on Blogger Help that has a screenshot of what I'm talking about:
How do I change the date/time of my post?
Here's how Blogger implements dates. When a new post is first created, whether it is a draft or it is published right away, it gets time-stamped. After that, the date on the post never changes unless you change it manually.
To change the date, go in to edit the post. Just above the buttons "Save as Draft" and "Publish Post" you'll see "Post and Comment options." Click the little triangle to expand the menu. Here you can change the date to whatever you want. Theoretically you could make a post and change the date to Dec. 12th, 1994, if you really wanted to. Note that this menu also allows you to turn comments on/off for that particular post. This could be useful if you're making a post that doesn't really need comments. Basically, this allows you to keep comments enabled for your blog, but to deal with comments on a post-by-post basis.
Here is a page on Blogger Help that has a screenshot of what I'm talking about:
How do I change the date/time of my post?
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Assignment 3
What is the target audience for your organizational blog?
The students in our course.
How does that audience contribute to fulfilling the organization's mission?
The students create and manage the blogs for our organizations, which is the mission of my organization (the course).
What does the organization want of the target audience?
That the students are successful in setting up these organizations with their blogs.
Has the organization targeted this audience in the past?
No, Web Activism and Advocacy is a brand new course this semester.
Given your understanding of the organization and your target audience, what possible things can you imagine writing about for the organizational blog?
So far, I've written about comments. My next post will be aimed at putting pictures in your blog. After that, probably stuff related to changing your template and HTML.
What issues or difficulties in communicating with and motivating the target audience do you anticipate?
One issue is when people post comments on my blog. I post my replies right below them, but I don't really have any verfication that they got my reply. Some students have opted to email me instead, which works great.
To whom in the organization do you report?
The professors and the students both.
Who in the organization approves your postings before they are published?
Nobody. Sometimes I get feedback from my professors, or they'll give me an idea for a new post, but everything I post goes straight to my blog.
Does your organization have a website?
Yes. http://webactivismandadvocacy.blogspot.com/
What is the address of the organization's blog that you created for them?
I'm a special case. This blog is my course blog as well as my organization blog. It wasn't necessary to make a second blog, since the organization (the course) already has it's own blog.
Is it on their website or seperate and linked from their website?
It is seperate and linked.
Which pages on their website links to the organization's blog?
This is all kind of confusing, but their website IS the organization's blog. My blog serves the organization and is linked to from their site.
Does their website support FTP access?
I know that Blogger supports FTP, but to what end I'm not sure. The course blog hasn't really utilized it yet. Note to self: FTP would make a good post in the future.
If you chose to have your organization’s blog separate, was it because of organizational reasons (such as that they wanted it to be distinctly separate from their current website) or technological reasons (such as lack of FTP access or server-side scripting support) or some other reason? Which reasons?
I did not, because the organization already has a blog. My blog is my course blog as well as a supliment to the organization's blog. This structure was based on organizational reasons.
The students in our course.
How does that audience contribute to fulfilling the organization's mission?
The students create and manage the blogs for our organizations, which is the mission of my organization (the course).
What does the organization want of the target audience?
That the students are successful in setting up these organizations with their blogs.
Has the organization targeted this audience in the past?
No, Web Activism and Advocacy is a brand new course this semester.
Given your understanding of the organization and your target audience, what possible things can you imagine writing about for the organizational blog?
So far, I've written about comments. My next post will be aimed at putting pictures in your blog. After that, probably stuff related to changing your template and HTML.
What issues or difficulties in communicating with and motivating the target audience do you anticipate?
One issue is when people post comments on my blog. I post my replies right below them, but I don't really have any verfication that they got my reply. Some students have opted to email me instead, which works great.
To whom in the organization do you report?
The professors and the students both.
Who in the organization approves your postings before they are published?
Nobody. Sometimes I get feedback from my professors, or they'll give me an idea for a new post, but everything I post goes straight to my blog.
Does your organization have a website?
Yes. http://webactivismandadvocacy.blogspot.com/
What is the address of the organization's blog that you created for them?
I'm a special case. This blog is my course blog as well as my organization blog. It wasn't necessary to make a second blog, since the organization (the course) already has it's own blog.
Is it on their website or seperate and linked from their website?
It is seperate and linked.
Which pages on their website links to the organization's blog?
This is all kind of confusing, but their website IS the organization's blog. My blog serves the organization and is linked to from their site.
Does their website support FTP access?
I know that Blogger supports FTP, but to what end I'm not sure. The course blog hasn't really utilized it yet. Note to self: FTP would make a good post in the future.
If you chose to have your organization’s blog separate, was it because of organizational reasons (such as that they wanted it to be distinctly separate from their current website) or technological reasons (such as lack of FTP access or server-side scripting support) or some other reason? Which reasons?
I did not, because the organization already has a blog. My blog is my course blog as well as a supliment to the organization's blog. This structure was based on organizational reasons.
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