Tips for your citing your sources on your blog or website

Most groups are linking to your Sources Documents in the sidebar of your blog or website. That is an excellent idea. The only problem is that in most cases when I click on the link, it won't let me see the document.

If you want to share a google doc (such as your Sources Document), you need to change the privacy settings so anyone can see it. Go to the google doc, find the blue box in the upper right hand corner that says SHARE, and choose "Anyone who has the link can view." That should change the settings.

Another tip for the Sources Document. No one wants to just see a long bunch of URLs -- even if they are hyperlinks. Sum up each document in some way so that readers can make a decision as to whether or not they want to click on the links. Here, for example, is my sources document for designing this course. In every case, I tried to identify the name of the author and the text that I had consulted.

Website Checklist

Most groups are using a website as a place to gather all their elements, introduce themselves, and provide other information on their topic. Think of your audience as anyone in the world who has just stumbled onto your site: you want to make the website attractive and easy to negotiate.

1. Design: Think about how the page looks when you first click through to it. Do you have a photo or image to draw the reader in? A title? An explanation? Many have commented that they like how the Re-designing the Quad group set up their blog: clear title, photo of the quad, nice explanation.

2. Introduce Yourselves and Your Sources: Somewhere on the website you will want an ABOUT ME section give readers an idea of who you are. You also need to show that you're a credible source. Put in a link to your Sources Document (basically, an annotated bibliograpy) in your sidebar.

3. Tone: You should talk amongst yourselves about what kind of tone you want to project. Your personalities should come across. For example, Project Happy Meal worked hard to come across as objective, reasonable, and professional -- just presenting facts and letting the readers make up their own mind. The Responsible Pet Ownership team tried to come across as friendly, passionate about their topic, willing to be funny, enthusiastic about dogs, and excited about teaching facts to help you care for your pet. Think about what kind of image your website projects.

4. Links: Spelling out URLS like this http://ewp290.blogspot.com will look unprofessional. Besides, readers don't like to have to cut and paste. Instead, use a hyperlink that readers can just click on.

5. Credit: Who took this photo? Where did this information come from? Be sure to give credit for anything that's not original. Be sure readers can tell when something *is* original.

6. Accompany with Original Text: Some of you link to videos, TED talks, or articles already on the internet. Accompany those links with some original text. You can explain why you think this article is worthwhile, explain something about who wrote it, give a context, sum up the main points, and connect it to your over-arching idea. 

7. Sidebar: The nature of a blog is that posts get outdated and scroll out of site. You can keep important posts in the viewer's mind by putting links on a sidebar. Your sidebar can also explain who you are and other information. You can link to a sources page on the blog. Take some time to think about what you want the sidebar to look like. Often it functions as a table of contents.

8. Font: Be consistent with font and font size. Try to use at least 12 point font so that readers over the age of forty (for example, your teacher) won't get frustrated. Fancy fonts can look cool but are hard to read. Most of the time, you will want to stick to black letters on a white background. Anything else can be hard to read if it's more than just a title or caption.

9. Write for your Audience: If you're writing on the internet for a general audience, you will want to keep your paragraphs short. Several short paragraphs will usually be more effective than one long one. Multiple blog posts with catchy titles and photos will draw the reader in.

10. Copy Edit: Proofread all the text on your website to check for grammar, punctuation, spelling errors, and typos. Little mistakes can make you lose credibility.

11. Follow up:  Did you give readers a survey? Make sure you followed up by posting the results. You will want to analyze those results and relate the results to your over-arching question.

12. Re-order:  On-going websites usually have the most recent post at the top. But you might want to re-order the elements so that any reader will see them in the right order.

13. Links: If you've got elements scattered all over the internet, you might want to make sure they all have links that will bring your readers back to your website. That way, someone who stumbles onto your rap video on youtube, for example, will end up reading your website.

Don't be afraid to ask each other for help. 

Twitter Every Wednesday

Twitter is how we will make our ideas public, lure people into our conversation, and enter conversations that are happening elsewhere. Sign up here if you don't already have a twitter account.

Every Wednesday will be Twitter Madness Day. (And by Wednesday, I mean any time after class on Tuesday and before midnight.) You can use our hashtag on other days, but Wednesdays will be the day that you are required to check in several times during the day/evening/night. 

In class every Tuesday, we'll figure out how we want to use twitter that week. In addition, you can link to articles, websites, and sources of info on the web. We can use twitter to extend our classroom discussion. You can retweet stuff that your classmates tweet if you think it’s valuable. Use twitter to add to the larger conversation and to invite input from people outside of our class. 

We can use twitter to get students from other parts of the world to tell us about where they’re from, what environmental issues might be most relevant in their part of the world, and share their perspectives. Our goal is for a conversation that is larger than what we could have in our own classroom.

Remember, all of our tweets will be public so we want to think about our audience and what we are communicating with them. We’re hoping people will want to follow our hashtag.

If you need photos for your blog or website

You can search these photos that are licensed under a Creative Commons license. Photographers who use a Creative Commons license usually give you permission to use the photo as long as you give the photographer credit.

You can read more about a Creative Commons license here.

No more URLs!

Here's something that can make a blog, website, or Google Doc look unprofessional. It's when someone who wants to acknowledge a source merely lists the URL. So I'm reading along and at the bottom of the page I see:

 Source:
 http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6491/

Compare that to this:

Source:
McKibben, Bill. (2011) The Era of Small and Many. Orion Magazine.

Now I can see at a glance who wrote it, when it was published, and where it was published. I can still click through to see the article if I want, but it's MUCH easier for me to see if your list of sources looks credible.

Here's one way to do internal citation on the internet:

According to author and activist Bill McKibben, the number of family farms in the United States has declined over the last 150 years.

Instead of using parenthesis or a footnote, you can add a hyperlink to the text. Not all journals use this -- many will still want the traditional kind of citation, but if it's your blog or Google Doc, you can choose how you want to do it.

I think it's great that every single group is making sure they acknowledge their sources. One way to make sure your blog or Google Doc looks professional is to check to make sure you've created hyperlinks instead of just listing the URL.