Sample blog post

This is a sample blog post for ISCI 104 Spring 2017. Detailed instructions for making your blog post are at the end of this entry, but first and foremost, I’d like to show you how to make your posts pretty.  Say, for example, that you’d like to include a picture, maybe one you took with your phone.  Here is one of me drinking lemonade and looking skeptical.

photo by I.Grojnowski

I got it onto this post by clicking the Add Media button to the top left of the editing window and on the Upload Files tab, I hit Select Files and searched through my computer to find a picture.  If you do this on your smart phone, you should be able to upload directly, or you could mail it to yourself, download it onto a computer and upload it from there.  This will make your photo part of the Media Library.  Click on the photo and hit Insert into post.  Then, you can continue typing (resize the photo if necessary).  It is not necessary to attribute a picture you took yourself (this was taken by a colleague, so I captioned it as so), but anything found on the web should be attributed to where you got it.  One way to do this is to click on the photo and click on the pencil looking object in its top left corner.  Within the window that opens up you can put the picture’s original web address in the Link to box using the Custom URL option.

Here is a kitten.  You can make links like that by highlighting the text you want to use as the link and hitting the editing button that looks a bit like a chain and is labeled Insert/edit link.  Then typing/pasting the desired url.  Unlike the kitten link, you should probably explain what your are linking to.  For example, this is a really thorough and fascinating page on the Sierpinski triangle.

To add a video to your post, just cut and paste the youtube address.  For example, this is the best sheep herding video ever:

The type of blog post you are expected to write for this course isn’t an extensive report. Instead, think of it as a curated list of images, possibly with links, and videos that help the reader understand what we are doing here in the 3SPACE.  The style can be casual, but always think about what you especially want for a reader to know about either our class or a particular student’s work.  If you do profile a student and their work, feel free to include a short interview, but please be sure to run its content by the student in question before posting!

If you’re just getting started, then you might enjoy having this list of step-by-step instructions for making your first post:

1. Go to the “Student Blog” tab of https://sites.jmu.edu/3space .
2. Scroll down to SITE TOOLS in the right column menu and choose “Log in”.
3. Log in with your JMU e-id.
4. Click on “Posts/Add New” in the left menu column.
5. Give your post a title and type in the big box to write your post.
6. You can click “Save Draft” at the top of the right menu column as you go along.
7. Before publishing go to the “Categories” part of the right menu column and click “Student blog” – if you don’t do this then your post will not appear in the blog.
8. When you are ready, click “Publish” at the top of the right menu column (you can always edit it more later so don’t stress about having everything perfect first).
9. Now go to the “Student Blog” tab of sites.jmu.edu/3space and admire your work!