This is the site at which students in sections 19 & 21 of UW20 at the George Washington University will start blogging about issues of networked collaboration, online or off, in the Fall of 2008. We welcome your comments. Feel free also to visit our class wiki at uw20wiki.wikispaces.com.
What follows are instructions for how students can start to contribute entries to this blog.
HOW TO CONTRIBUTE – by Ryan Jerving
- NOTE: For story ideas, visit this page on the class wiki
Unfortunately, contributing to this blog is a little clunkier and more complicated than contributing to the class wiki. Basically, it involves figuring out three things: 1) getting recognized by the site as someone with writing/editing privileges, 2) logging in when you’re ready to contribute, 3) learning how to deal with the interface that allows you to create entries. I’ll take these in turn.
1) Getting recognized by the site. This blog, unlike our wiki, is invitation only – it’s more like a group on Facebook than it is like a page on Wikipedia that anyone could edit. I will invite you to join WordPress and this blog using the gw email address that I was given when you registered for the course – this is the equivalent of being friended on Facebook. After you respond, I will be able to have you listed as an “author” on the blog, which gives you the right to write and edit posts, and to publish those posts (and delete your posts as well). All this will take some time.
2) Logging in. There are two versions of this blog – the one that you, or anyone else, would see in browsing the web; and the one that you and the other site authors will be able to see once you are logged into WordPress. When you want to contribute something, go to WordPress.com and log in. Then click on the name of this blog when it comes up on the screen (“uw20blog”). You’ll be taken to a somewhat confusing looking “Dashboard” page, but with one important button that reads “Write a New Post.”
3) Writing/editing. Once you click on the “Write a New Post” button, a screen will open that looks and words pretty much like the editing screen on our class wiki or, for that matter, like a word processing document. Write and edit your post, create any links you’d like, and when you’re ready to show the world what you’ve written, click the “Publish” button on the right side of the screen. (If you’re not ready, you can “save” the post and come back and finish it later.) The post you write will automatically be the first entry at the top of the home page – at least until someone else writes another one. Now you’re an internationally published author!
