Leadership and Change

I have to present my thoughts on the benefits of WebCT vs. blogging.

I just finished going through all the reflection posts to cull out those comments I felt were especially eye-opening to me and my final thoughts about the course, and I discovered many many more responses to posts that I had no idea existed. Unless one goes back to posts several times throughout the length of the course, great or insightful responses to your own responses will never be read.

The WebCT, on the other hand, provides the opportunity to see a "thread" of posts and find those comments that have not been read yet.

I am all for blogs, but I find WebCT much more beneficial for courses.

xkcd

I would like to submit a vote for posting reflections on weekly reading assignments by Friday at 6:00 pm. This gives us the weekend to place posted thoughts into our word processor minds to come up with how we think, then write and post those thoughts.

Just for this week's class, there have been 18 lengthy blog entries submitted. Most of them were submitted sometime on Sunday. Many of them have repetitive portions summarizing the reading (which I have also read), and I am scrolling through lots of words to find the individual writer's perspective and insight and reaction. Eight to ten paragraphs multiplied by so many writers takes me hours to read and contemplate in any meaningful way. Perhaps I am the only one who thinks this is overwhelming to process on short notice, when I have a full day's work that needs my attention on Monday (often into the evening) , and little time before class on Tuesday to read the comments on the reading reflections that are posted between now and 6:20 Tuesday.

I'd appreciate any suggestions on how to manage the reading assignments and the blog reading/writing and maintain my balance. Thanks. - nan

I wonder if webct and the blog could be combined into the same internet-home. Has anyone ever tried to set up a wiki? Does UMinn have that capability? The blog gateway categorizes entries for readings and allows for strings of discussions, which is great. But it'd streamline things if readings could also be accessed from even a link here... Since all of webct slows down my ancient laptop, everything about the blog seems easier.

This post is in response to a question Cheri posed in the comments on another entry about how one would get themselves onto the first page of results for a Google search. I'd say the best thing to do is to have a blog under your own name, update it frequently, link to other folks, and get those folks to link to you.

It's not really something you can game all that well... some companies will advertise services to improve your search results, but they end up using tricky gimmicks that Google negates the next time they update their search algorithms.

Google works on links + frequency of updates, basically (as best as people can figure out--Google's actual search methods are a bit of a black box).

The more sites and people who link to you, the more you are considered to have authority from Google's standpoint. If people are linking to you, they must think you have something to say, right? The more those people who are linking to you are themselves linked to by other people, the greater their links are worth. So if you accrue authority on the web through being linked, the people you link to will reap the benefits from you imparting a bit of your authority to them.

The more frequently a site is updated, the more often Google "crawls" the site to add new content to it's index. The more regularly updated the site, the higher it will go in the Google index (sites that haven't been changed since 1997 don't get much play).

So a blog is ideal because it's meant to be updated frequently and it's meant to be a place for links and connections to other sites.

Also, having a unique name like, oh, say, Graham Lampa, is quite a bit "better" than John Smith. I put "better" in quotes, because it can also be detrimental if there are things associated with you on the web (kegstand pictures, etc.) that you would rather not have associated with your personal identity.

So that's what I would consider the prevailing notion of how one gets on the first page of Google's search results for, say, your name. Also, I would add that the system that this blog is running on—UThink—is actually uniquely situated in Google search results. Blogs on UThink tend to rank very highly because of the base URL of the site: blog.lib.umn.edu. The edu denotes an educational institution (usually higher ed), which Google gives more credibility. Also, the real kicker is the lib part, which denotes the content is produced by a library system (UThink is run by the U's libraries), something that Google really seems to love.

So I would suggest to any of you who are interested in getting your name out there and associated with you in a positive, professional way to start your own blog on UThink on a subject of interest to you (in which you have some pre-existing authority or expertise), write about it regularly, get in contact with other bloggers writing on the same subject, link to them, and try to get them (ask them) to link to you.

That's about all there is to it!

I may have missed something, but I canot figure out how to change a comment I've made.

To change your "Display Name", click on your x500 username in the upper right-hand corner of the UThink/Movable Type blog backend. (See circled area in image below)

Once on the "Author Profile" screen, input the name you want to display (your first and last name would be fine) on the website in the "Display Name" field.

Save the form and the next time the site is rebuilt (when someone posts a new entry/comment), your name will show rather than your x500 id.

Everyone should do this if your name is now showing up. It will help in keeping track of who's writing what!

Hi everyone. I apologize for the frustration and confusion caused by the 'preview' function of commenting directing you to a page saying that your comment had been held for moderation. In actuality, I had simply copied the wrong code into the comment preview template, which caused it to act like a comment pending template. So. This should all be fixed now and you can go back to previewing your comments rather than just throwing them up immediately by hitting 'post.'

I am very interested in hearing your feedback about the blog's usefulness in the course. I showed Prof. Crosby a few new tricks the other day, including how to subscribe to the newsfeeds. Here's a brief page on a few RSS readers and how to use the feeds. It's a great way to push information out from blogs and other sites into your computer rather than having to go out yourself and pull the information, visiting site after site after site checking for new content. If any of you need help, ask your fellow students who are maybe a bit "hipper" to the RSS feed jive, but if you really get stumped and really want to know how to use them, feel free to shoot me an email!

I am also working on figuring out how to force the system to display people's full names. At this moment, from consultation with some other techy people at the Humphrey, it seems that the problem might be related to folks who have "suppressed" their publicly-available info from showing up in University directory searches. If your posts are showing your x500 and not your name and you don't have your information "suppressed" in your umn.edu account settings, please let me know. You will be helping me solve this mystery!

UPDATE 6:09 PM (~20 minutes later): Ok, I'm stupid! I actually figured this out a few months ago and promptly forgot it. See the screenshot below for where to click (circled in red, your x500 ID) when logged into UThink.

I just finished writing a comment and decided to select "Preview" instead of "post." It went away and told me it was being held for review by the blog owner. What happened there? (guess that comment is lost now)

Markdown is a text-to-HTML filter that lets you nicely format your weblog posts without having to know any HTML.

HowTube posted a nice cheatsheet for Markdown, which you can download and print out for your own reference:

Download
Markdown Cheatsheet