| 85288 | nmac 4460.01 | Online | Fall, 2019 |
 | This requirement’s goals:
|
An important part of education is working through problems in a way that will help your community. Often, when we document our process, we can understand both our successes and failures more easily. By sharing our understanding — our insights, discoveries, struggles, and epiphanies — we can help clarify the process for ourselves and help strengthen the community we’re building.
Keep in mind that this requirement has several goals:
- Documenting your ideas;
- Sharing your research;
- Reflecting on your progress;
- Practicing your writing and wiki skills;
- Planning your work; and
- Helping others who might be facing similar challenges.
Posts should be focused on the ideas above — not all will be addressed in every post, but one might consider ideas you had about the essay you read for the week, while a second might share a critical article you found that expands the ideas from a TED talk. Keep the above in mind as you plan and write your entries.
While this journal is not a blog, you might get some additional strategies about how to approach it in “Blogging: Some Considerations.”
 | If this is your first time reading this page, do just that. Your first lesson will have you returning to create your journal and write your first post. |
Location of Your Journal
Since this class uses Wikipedia, this would be the obvious place to house your journal, linked as a sub-page of your Wikipedia user page — but this is against Wikipedia guidelines. Therefore, we will keep them on another MediaWiki server. Keeping it here will give you daily practice on using the wiki, too. So, create your journal by editing your user page (once you made an account, just click on your user name in the upper-right) and adding:
* [[User:Grlucas/NMAC 4460 Journal|G. Lucas' NMAC 4460 Journal]]
Or something similar.[1] The above code produces:
Once you save the page and click on the created red link, you will be able to edit and save your newly created journal page, turning your link blue. Start adding your content in the edit window the same as you would any Wikipedia article. For now, write something like “My journal is coming soon” as a placeholder and save the page. Post a link to your new journal on my Wikipedia talk page in the proper section.
Frequency and Format of Posts
Lessons require you to post at least twice per lesson on the assigned texts and videos.[2] While you have posts assigned, this is the minimum requirement.
 | Tip: Because you’re writing on Wikipedia — i.e., on a web site that is meant to be read on the screen, it’s better to write more posts that are shorter and more focused, rather than those that resemble academic essays meant for paper. See “Writing Top Ten” for strategies about writing for digital media. |
You should aim to Use your journal to post your thoughts on the texts and to share your additional research. Aim to have at least one secondary source per journal post.
Design of your journal will be up to you, but it should be logical and consistent. For example, each new entry could begin with a header and a descriptive title:
==September 10, 2019: Bush and the Memex==
This would create a section for your post, giving it a title and date. Please be sure to date each post that you make. Try out different approaches; you should always preview before you save, and revert back to a previous version if you decide you do not like a change. Use this journal to practice your wiki syntax and coding. Try to learn something new about the wiki each week and incorporate that into your entries — this should be easy as you complete Wikipedia training modules.
Commenting and Responding to Others
In addition to your own posts, you should also comment on your colleagues’ posts and respond to their comments when appropriate and necessary. Try to comment on at least one other person’s journal once per lesson, though more is better. Not only can you learn from what they’re writing, they could gain insights from your comments. Plus, the more you use the wiki software, the more adept you will become. Use the talk page format for commenting and responding — this is very important for keeping journals looking good and giving users a logical and consistent way to have discussions.
Keeping Backups
Since anyone on Wikipedia could edit your journal, it might be a good idea to keep a local, backup copy of your posts. It’s also possible some administrator could decide that this type of journal is inappropriate for Wikipedia, but we should not have any issues.
Final Post
You last post of the semester should be an essay that reflects on your semester’s work — think of it as a self-evaluation that summarizes what you have learned and what you have accomplished. This post should be your longest of the semester, about 1000 words, or so. After you write it, fill out the QEP Experiential Learning Student Self-Evaluation Form and submit it to me.
