Our topic this week in Social Media for PR is social bookmarking. Here’s an excellent, and short, explanation of what social bookmarking is, created by Lee and Sachi Lefever from Common Craft.
As the video is no longer available on YouTube, here’s a link to Social Bookmarking in Plain English at the Common Craft site.
About a week ago, I sent out a request on Twitter for ideas for how to back up a WordPress.com blog. You see, all of my students at Georgia Southern University and Southeastern University (about 200 total) are blogging this semester as part of their course engagement and participation requirements. I had a sinking feeling that some of my students might not have the information they are posting at their blogs saved anywhere else, and wondered what would happen if WordPress.com went down or out of business.
This afternoon, WordPress.com was down for a while. And some of the students (and many, many others) began to — in layman’s terms — freak out. As I suspected, they didn’t have their information backed up.
We love having free services available for ourselves and our students. We expect the services to work all the time. And when they don’t? Life is unpleasant. And a little scary.
Because I wanted a little more control over my blog, I chose to self-host it using BlueHost. It costs me about $100 a year, which is a reasonable investment for me. (GoDaddy is less expensive, but I find its ads offensive so I choose to spend my money elsewhere.) Do I force my students to pay to blog? No. Should I recommend it as a good option? I’m thinking that I should now.
That all said, what should students do to be sure they have backup copies of all their blog posts (especially when they will be graded on their blogs)?
Here are a few ideas:
Bottom Line: When you’re working in the cloud, especially on free sites, have a back up plan. (Back up? Get it?)
What other ideas would YOU recommend?
In this short presentation, I share the four ways I benefit from using Twitter. Connect with me on Twitter, where you will find me as @BarbaraNixon.
Other than the four ways I mention in this video, are there other ways you have benefitted by using Twitter?
Tonight on Twitter, I saw a tweet from Milton Ramirez that pointed me to this presentation by Arun Basil Lal. Arun has some great tips here on writing good blog posts. The most useful information specifically about writing starts on slide 11.
It’s worth reading. Soon.
If I was paid a dollar this semester for every time I heard/read a student say this, I’d be rich. Well, at least I’d have enough for daily Starbucks.
It’s so confusing having an online class! I can’t ever remember when things are due…
Here’s my suggestion.
Create a Google Calendar for yourself. (Here’s how.) Your Google Calendar is available from any computer, and it can automatically synchronize with many popular smart phones (like the iPhone, BlackBerry or Palm Pre) — which means that you’ll have the ability to know when things are due no matter where you are, 24/7.
For my classes, look in BlackBoard/GeorgiaVIEW for deadlines for:
Look here on my blog for blogging guidelines and descriptions of when your blog posts are due. These vary by class. And remember to include your TOWs (Topics of the Week) for those classes that include them as part of the assignment (all but PRCA 3711/4711 and FYE 1220); TOWs are due Saturdays at midnight.
Create a calendar entry in your Google Calendar for each item that is due. Set interim deadlines for yourself for larger projects. You can tell Google Calendar to send you a reminder about any deadline you choose.
And that’s all there is to it. At least, except for the “completing the assignments” part.
Hope you found this helpful.
(NOTE: If you have another calendar method you prefer, and it already works well for you, USE IT. No need to switch. But if you’re having trouble staying on top of your classes, try this method. It’s how I keep myself organized.)
