Final Project Presentations and Dates

In the last week of class, final project groups will do brief presentations on their project sites. These presentations should be relatively informal and should take about 15 minutes. All group members must actively participate in the presentation. Presentations should address the following:

• How did you decide on your project idea(s)?
• What were your sources of information? How did you choose sources or find new sources?
• How did you build your community (of sources, readers, etc.)?
• What successes did you have? What challenges did you face?
• What did you learn?
• Discussion…

Presentation dates are as follows:

• Monday 3 December: Taste of Life and Almaty
• Wednesday 5 December: Anihumancolor and We Love Films
• Friday 7 December: Chikas and Be Free

Promoting your group site

Today in class we will have a play day – time to work on your project sites. Our focus today will be on building your community of readers by promoting your site. The internet is a big place and you will need to put some attention into building your profile in order to make it easier for people to find your site.

• From your WordPress dashboard, look at “blog stats” to get an idea of who is using your site.
• Be sure that WordPress makes your blog visible to search engines: From your dashboard, click Options and then Privacy, and then select “I would like my blog to appear in search engines…” and click “update options”.
• Also in WordPress, under Options, Discussion, select all of the first three options under “usual settings for an article”. Under “before a comment appears” be sure that “an administrator must approve” is not checked, then click “update options”.
• Be sure that Google is listing your site. Visit About Google for links to find if your site is listed, how to submit your URL, etc.
• Get in the habit of linking to other sites and of asking people at other sites to link to you. One way search engines rank pages (i.e. decide which sites come first when search results are returned) is to examine the links among sites. Start by asking your colleagues in the class to link to your site from their sites.
• Post frequently; more frequent posting generally raises search ranking results.
• When you post entries, use links to material you refer to and make sure that the text of your link uses a term that actually helps describe the material you are linking to. In other words, if you link to the neweurasia site. Do it this way: neweurasia.net. Don’t do it this way: this site. Google prefers links that are descriptive of what they link to.
• Try to think creatively of how you can boost your site’s popularity, even just a bit. Email friends and family and ask them to look at your site; If any of them have websites or weblogs, ask them to link to your site; As you develop your site, look for sites that address similar issues or topics–link to those sites, and ask the site owners to consider linking to your site as well.

That’s probably enough for today. We will do more of this in coming days.

Final Projects So Far

At this point you should be part of a final project group, have some ideas about what you want to write, and have a group project weblog whose address is posted on our links page. Each person in the group should now also have permission to post entries to the group site.

Remember from here on you (each student) should be posting either two short entries (about two paragraphs) or one longer entry (four paragraphs or more) each week on the group site. As I said, sometimes I will provide you ideas for your entries, otherwise it is up to you to remember to post regularly.

Today in class we will review a bit about Bloglines and I will also discuss each project individually with each group. Those students who are not at this point in project groups should also speak to me today.

As a suggestion, consider posting an entry to your group site discussing some ideas you have for writing on the site.

In Class Today: Setting Up Group Weblogs

In class today we will set up the group weblogs you will use for your final projects.

At this point, you should know:

• The names of the members of your group;
• A title for your publication (this can change, but you should settle on a final title very soon in order to promote your site identity);
• Some ideas for your URL (_____.wordpress.com) (once set this cannot change, so choose carefully–try to pick something that is related to your site idea, is short, and is easy to remember).

Once you have settled on the information, choose one person from the group to create the site. The initial steps of setting up the site will be done by this person only, and are exactly the same as setting up an individual site.

1. Go to wordpress.com and login;
2. From the initial screen, click the “register another blog” link;
3. Follow the menu items to set up your new group weblog;
4. Once the new site is created, navigate to that site’s dashboard and click the “Users” button;
5. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and enter one of your groupmates’ email addresses in the box (this must be the same email he/she used to join wordpress) and, in the dropdown box below, select “administrator,” then click “Add User”
6. Repeat step 5 above for each group member.

As each new member is added, he/she should receive an invitation that makes it possible to contribute to the site.

Once you have permission to contribute to more than one side, you will see upon your initial login to WordPress a box with links allowing you to select which site you work on. Always be careful you are working on the site you intend to work on. Check the top you your dashboard, which will always tell you which site you are logged in to.

Once your site is set up (and no later than 1 pm Friday), provide the name of your project, the names of your group members, and your project URL as a comment on this entry.

Once we have done this, I will give you a chance to post some test entries. If there is time available, we will also look at posting graphics to your wordpress sites.

Project sites from summer term

Check the page of links from summer term to look at what some groups have already done for the final project assignment.

Starting Final Projects

Your final project assignment is to work in small groups (3 to 5 students per group) to produce a group weblog on a topic of your choice. The purpose of the assignment is for you to get the experience of conceiving, writing, and promoting an online publication. This will require that you think creatively about what information to produce, about where and how to gather information, and about how to build an audience. (I will be giving you direction on these tasks as we work.) If you give the project the attention it requires, it will help you develop skills that journalists and communication professionals use constantly.

Although this is called a final project, you will have to begin working on the project now and keep working on it throughout the term. Expect to spend about 90 minutes each week working on the project. In grading for the assignment, I will be taking account not just of the final product, but of how that product evolves over time.

I will give you periodic assignments for the final project, as well as reminding you to keep working on it consistently. At a minimum, I expect each group participant to produce at least two small entries (perhaps two paragraphs) or one larger entry (four or more paragraphs) each week from next Wednesday (when we will set up your weblogs) until the end of the term.

The first step in the project is to begin brainstorming what kinds of topics you might be interested in writing about. Are you interested in art or music? Popular culture? Politics? Community? School life? Any of these topics (and more) could be subjects for your online publication. You can write about things you know about already, or you can write about things you learn about as you go (which is what most journalists do).

Step 1: Your first project assignment is to write an entry on your individual weblog on this topic: “Something (or some things) I would like to write about.” The entry should be at least a couple of paragraphs long and must be posted no later than the beginning of class next Monday 17 September.

In thinking about ideas, think about what kinds of things you like to read (or learn) about, and how the publications you enjoy organize information. Sometimes publications focus on one or a few topics; other times they have a wide range of topics.

Step 2: In class on Monday I will give students time to look at one another’s entries and to talk about project ideas. You will need to decide on groups, and having ideas that seem to fit will be an important part of that decision.

Step 3: Forming groups and setting up weblogs. On Wednesday 19 September you must know 1) who is in your group, 2) some ideas your group members would like to write about, and 3) some ideas for the URL (i.e. _____.wordpress.com) you would like for your site. On Wednesday I will take you through the process of creating your group weblog and allowing group members to post on the weblog.

I will give you more directions as we go, but for now this will get you started on your projects.

NOTE: All material you produce for this project must be your own. Any material you borrow from other sources must be credited. If you use someone else’s exact words, you must put those words in quotation marks (“like this”) and tell us where they come from. Similarly, if you borrow ideas from another source, you must tell us what the source is. If you plagiarize material for this (or any other) course assignment, the minimum penalty will be failure of the assignment.