Important course note May 14, 2009

Please be sure to visit the links organized by chapter in our course Blackboard page. While I will occasionally embed links and videos on the blog for selective blog activities and general course info, I think it will be helpful to get familiar with the Blackboard material as well. Also, I encourage you to post links and clips that you think would be useful or interesting to all of us to your own blogs once you’ve created them. These can be in addition to your chosen artifacts for the final portfolios if you would simply like to share a link. Remember to tag comm33009 if you include items as separate posts rather than in a links sidebar.

Also, please know that you can respond to and/or post questions to anything I’ve included in a post or a page by using the comment feature. Per the welcome post, first register with WordPress using your CNU email address so that you can log in and comment appropriately. You can, of course, email me anytime at danielle.stern@cnu.edu. However, I encourage you to use the blog for questions, as this dialogue might be helpful to other students.

Welcome COMM 330 Students April 15, 2009

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is where we’ll be spending lots of our virtual time together this summer.

To get started, please click on the WordPress.com link and register using your CNU email address. When you’re walking through the registration steps, be sure to check the box allowing you to create your own blog, as that is where you’ll create your final project Web portfolio. By registering you’ll also be able to comment correctly on our course blog (where you are now) once we begin using this space for virtual course discussion.

Once you’ve registered you’ll need to check your CNU email account to activate your blog. Follow the instructions onscreen to begin blogging, including creating a theme (which you select by clicking on the Appearance tab on the left of the Dashboard) after you’ve registered and activated your blog. I strongly, but politely of course, encourage you to create your course blogs now. You’ll want to play around with the publishing and tagging features, as well as learn how to embed media clips and Web site links.

For now, please practice adding the following tag, comm33009 (like I’ve done in this post), as this is the tag you’ll be adding to each of your Web portfolio posts. I would also like each of you to subscribe to that tag in the Tag Surfer menu of your Dashboard so that you can all share your work. For those of you new to blogging, posting and subscribing to tags is a way of aggregating blog subjects to an easy, central location, in this case your WordPress.com Dashboard. I’ve included what I hope are helpful blogging tips. You’ll see them as separate pages on the right of the course home page.

Please don’t be overwhelmed now. Just create your blog, breathe, then begin having fun with it. Oh, and please email me the link to your blog once you’ve created it. Thanks!