Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Blogging Assignment

Our web assignment this year will be based on blogging. As explained in the analysts report we handed out in class, blogs are the breaking wave in user-generated content, and we want to give students a chance to understand what this trend is all about. Many people consider that blogging only relates to personal diaries on the web. To the contrary, we find that many organizations are using blogging in a number of collaborative ways:

  • As a knowledge management tool. For instance, Sun Microsystems has created an employee blogging system to capture and disseminate information about the various projects employees are involved in. Even Sun's president, Jonathan Schwartz, has a blog that he uses to shape external impressions of goings-on at Sun.
  • As a corporate PR tool. For instance, Robert Scoble is known the A-list Microsoft corporate blogger, and has used his site http://www.scobleizer.com to effectively promote Microsoft's agenda.

What you will do

You will create mini-blogging communities for this assignment in order to try to understand how these might work. Here are the specifics:

  • Form groups of four to five students and a agree on a general topic you will blog about.
  • Create a team blog. See http://bit301megablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/blogging-lab.html for how you need to set the different options. One person will create the blog and then add the others as authors (See Members under Settings after the blog is created for how to do this). On the team blog, make an initial post with links to all of the team member's individual blogs.
  • Each member of the group will be responsible for creating six (6) posts in their own individual blogs (not the team blog) about the topic you have chosen. You should make at least one post per week up from the day of the lab until December 17 when the assignment is due (some weeks you will have to make more than one post to achieve 6). Each post should have a link to at least one external resource such as a newspaper article about your topic or even another team member's posting on the topic (say you want to disagree). These posts should be about one paragraph or longer.
  • Before December 17, each team member needs to make at least one post on the team blog explaining how their blog relates to the team's topic.

Due Dates

There are three due dates:

  • By the usual due date: You need to submit your blog URL (i.e. http://myblogaddress) on coursetools under the Class 8 Assignment. You also need to indicate your group blog URL and team mates.
  • By Friday December 16: You need to complete your individual and team blog postings by 12 midnight.

Failure to meet due dates will result in point reductions from your grade.

Grading

We will grade you on the following:

  • Have you kept your team and individual blogs on topic?
  • Does each individual post have a link to an external resource?
  • Do the individual members' posts link to each other?
  • Are the individual and team blog's attractive to look at? Specifically, have you chosen something other than the default template for displaying your blog?
  • Have you met the due dates?
  • Have you set the individual and team blog options as we directed in the tutorial?

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