Sign in or 
Share this
COLLABORATION USING BLOGS FOR STUDENT GROUP ASSIGNMENTS
JAMES E. MILLER P. O. Box 1172 Belgrade, MT 59714 Email: jimmiller5417@yahoo.com
03/29/06
Dr. Clifford Montagne montagne@montana.edu
Dear Cliff:
Re: Biodiesel Group, LRES 421; Need for new approach for collaboration of students in LRES 421
One of the elements of the Holistic Management assignment of 2-22-06 is collaboration. Our Biodiesel Study Group initially set 11:30 a.m. for each Tuesday to meet at the sub. That broke down. Email has resulted in a mostly one-way (one to many) which is not collaboration. Since part of our grade will be attributed to how well we use collaboration as a holistic tool, let's try a different tool: A Webspace blog with Really Simple Syndication (RSS).
A blog is simply a mini-website, hosted by a provider, which you can use to post your workproduct or read and comment on the work product of others on their blogs. RSS allows for the automatic posting of your added work product on other selected blogs. Each of the Biodiesel Group will have a personal blog and the group will have a group blog. You can create email, write articles, archive research on your blog. You can also post from your computer/blog to the Biodiesel Group Blog (BGB). You can read work product on the BGB, edit it using the simple word processor, or you can attach a file created in MSWord so that we can have redlining and version control. Our main paper should be formatted in MSWord for this latter reason.
Here is a summary of the main features:
How to create a blog:
Go to bloglines.com,
Click on MyBlog, in the upper, left navigation bar, the click on click here to register. Register and add at least one feed so you can see how RSS works. Answer the bloglines email to complete registration. You should now be at the FEED window. You can include any of the toolsets or other features in your personal blog. Add one or two for practice. I chose Notifier, IE Extension. Some of the features require you first setup you blog. You can always navigate back to FEED and add or delete features. Let's setup your blog.
Click on My Blog in the upper left navigation bar, then move to the right to
And click on Click here.
You should be on the blog settings page. Fill in the blanks. My user name is jimmiller5417 . Dot the keep private button. I used Holistic Biodiesel-Jim for the name of my personal blog. Fill in the other blanks and save.
Now click on Feed Options. You can select the options you want. I selected the default choices. Save.
You are now on My Feeds. I chose: Weather feed, and an email address. Under Subscribe to it, select email addresses, then in the bottom panel, click on profile. The system uses your user name as part of the email address by default. If OK, Save. Check your email to see if bloglines created an email for you blog.
Next, we will create a blogroll. Here's the explaination:
The URL for Holistic Biodiesel Group is: http://www.bloglines.com/blog/holisticdiesel
This URL goes in the above window as the Link Target:
Add content:
This is the fun part. Click on My Blog. A left panel will open up. Click on New Post. A window will open – a blank page on which you can write or simply copy and past from an existing article. When done, then click on Publish to blog. This will cause the content of the window to appear in the blog.
To navigate back to the point where you can edit the posting, delete it or add a new post, click on blogroll in the lower left panel. The upper navigation bar will appear, click on My Blog, Edit, title of your post.
This is a rough draft. If not clear, send me an email to jimmiller5417@yahoo.com.
Jim Miller
03/29/06
Dr. Clifford Montagne montagne@montana.edu
Dear Cliff:
Re: Biodiesel Group, LRES 421; Need for new approach for collaboration of students in LRES 421
One of the elements of the Holistic Management assignment of 2-22-06 is collaboration. Our Biodiesel Study Group initially set 11:30 a.m. for each Tuesday to meet at the sub. That broke down. Email has resulted in a mostly one-way (one to many) which is not collaboration. Since part of our grade will be attributed to how well we use collaboration as a holistic tool, let's try a different tool: A Webspace blog with Really Simple Syndication (RSS).
A blog is simply a mini-website, hosted by a provider, which you can use to post your workproduct or read and comment on the work product of others on their blogs. RSS allows for the automatic posting of your added work product on other selected blogs. Each of the Biodiesel Group will have a personal blog and the group will have a group blog. You can create email, write articles, archive research on your blog. You can also post from your computer/blog to the Biodiesel Group Blog (BGB). You can read work product on the BGB, edit it using the simple word processor, or you can attach a file created in MSWord so that we can have redlining and version control. Our main paper should be formatted in MSWord for this latter reason.
Here is a summary of the main features:
- Assignments, due dates, instructions are posted.
- All assets are available 7/24.
- The Biodiesel Group Blog (and all blogs) have a unique address.
- The hosting by bloglines.com is free.
- Each member can create a blog with any hosting organization. I recommend we keep together on bloglines.com. It is RSS enabled.
- Email can continue to be used; recommend all collaboration be via blogs so we can all be informed and can make comments.
- The BGB is essentially a cyberwhiteboard.
- Because of the visibility of our workproduct, Cliff can reivew the BGB and base his group grade on this review. The better we use the BGB, the better the collaboration and the better the grade.
- We can create an archive of not only our writings, but an archive for Web based information for backup and citation purposes.
- We can provide a list of important links to external websites of interest
- The demographics is many to many.
- Each member should submit his part of the paper so that others can comment on the workproduct.
- Blogs hosted by some companies offer:
- Security
- A word processor.
- Upload of text, audio and video.
- Attachments
- Redlining and version control (via MSWord)
- Descriptor tags
- Persistent presence for as long as you wish
How to create a blog:
Go to bloglines.com,
Click on MyBlog, in the upper, left navigation bar, the click on click here to register. Register and add at least one feed so you can see how RSS works. Answer the bloglines email to complete registration. You should now be at the FEED window. You can include any of the toolsets or other features in your personal blog. Add one or two for practice. I chose Notifier, IE Extension. Some of the features require you first setup you blog. You can always navigate back to FEED and add or delete features. Let's setup your blog.
Click on My Blog in the upper left navigation bar, then move to the right to
| You have not set up a clip blog yet. Click here to do so. |
You should be on the blog settings page. Fill in the blanks. My user name is jimmiller5417 . Dot the keep private button. I used Holistic Biodiesel-Jim for the name of my personal blog. Fill in the other blanks and save.
Now click on Feed Options. You can select the options you want. I selected the default choices. Save.
You are now on My Feeds. I chose: Weather feed, and an email address. Under Subscribe to it, select email addresses, then in the bottom panel, click on profile. The system uses your user name as part of the email address by default. If OK, Save. Check your email to see if bloglines created an email for you blog.
Next, we will create a blogroll. Here's the explaination:
BlogrollsOn many blogs, there are lists of links to other blogs. These lists are called blogrolls. You can incorporate your Bloglines subscriptions into your blog, as a blogroll, by including a small piece of HTML that loads a script from Bloglines. Use the following wizard to generate the HTML for your blog. If you leave the Folder field blank, all of your public subscriptions will be displayed. If you leave the Link Target field blank, links will load in same window as the blogroll. | |||
| Your User Name: | jimmiller | ||
| Folder to Display: | |||
| Link Target: | http://www.bloglines.com/blog/holisticdiesel | ||
| Using CSS, you can customize the appearance of your blogroll. The blogroll has two <div> tags, which let you change the appearance of folder titles and subscriptions. For more information, click here. | |||
The URL for Holistic Biodiesel Group is: http://www.bloglines.com/blog/holisticdiesel
This URL goes in the above window as the Link Target:
Add content:
This is the fun part. Click on My Blog. A left panel will open up. Click on New Post. A window will open – a blank page on which you can write or simply copy and past from an existing article. When done, then click on Publish to blog. This will cause the content of the window to appear in the blog.
To navigate back to the point where you can edit the posting, delete it or add a new post, click on blogroll in the lower left panel. The upper navigation bar will appear, click on My Blog, Edit, title of your post.
This is a rough draft. If not clear, send me an email to jimmiller5417@yahoo.com.
Jim Miller
| Bloglines Internet Explorer context menu I've written an Internet Explorer extension to allow you use Internet Explorer's right-click/context menu to:
If you have questions or find this useful drop me a line at dan-bloglinescontextmenu@unpossible.com |
|
|
Latest page update: made by
Anonymous
, Jul 6 2008, 3:47 PM EDT
(about this update
About This Update
Edited anonymously
1111 words added view changes - complete history) |
|
Keyword tags:
None
More Info: links to this page
|
There are no threads for this page.
Be the first to start a new thread.
