You pronounce Xanga
as Zanga
. The
Xanga web page says:
Xanga is a community of online diaries and journals. You can easily start your own free journal, share thoughts with your friends and meet new friends, too!
We will be using the site for 2 main purposes:
The learning journal will run for 10 weeks, starting in week 3.
The weekly entries in your learning journal will comprise 20
marks.
For a good description of a learning journal, see the MaWiki website. On this site there are some good suggestions, especially about how much to write each week.
As you will remember, the labs are marked: 1 mark for the first
lab, and 2 marks for each of the following labs. We want you to
come and do work in the labs related to COMP1710, so you can do
your assignments. You get 0 = didn't do any lab, 1 = showed up,
2 = did lab / assignment work / COMP1710 related work.
Since we will be marking your learning journal each week, its a good idea to do the lab work week by week rather than letting it pile up as it makes writing the learning journal easier (to have something to say about what you were learning, problems encountered and so on).
For the learning journal we will mark it out of 2 each week.
Here, 0 = not done it; 1 = its a learning log only; 2 = its a
learning journal with enough material (more than 2 paragraphs) to show
you have been thinking about the course. The MaWiki
web page says:
A learning journal is not...
- simply a detailed summary of the course material. Focus more on your reactions to what you've read, and what you've been reading.
- a learning log. On a learning log you might write down the times and days when you read something. The difference between a learning journal and a learning log is that a log is a record of events, and a learning journal is a record of your reflections and thoughts.
No! I expect most of you to get between 17 and 20 out of 20 for
this. I'm practically giving you marks for getting you to develop
good University study habits. I suggest you update the journal
often but it doesn't matter exactly when you do it. If some of
your journal is diagrams (because you draw things to learn),
perhaps you could scan them and add them
to your site or just describe the diagrams.
No, it will be possible to do the course without using Xanga. I believe using Xanga will make it easier to concentrate on the key learning experiences in this course rather than struggling with the technology. If you do not wish to use Xanga, please send me an E-mail and let me know your reasons and we can work something out (no frivolous reasons please, I hope all of you will be happy to use Xanga for the course).
Note for 2009: Only some of the labs will use Xanga.
Go to the Xanga web page and click on
the get classic
button. Once you have registered, the site
will send you an E-mail with your username and password in clear
text, so I would suggest not re-using an existing password.
Please read the Terms of Use
carefully. It is quite clear on the kinds of things you must not do.
Please also remember that you are also obliged to follow the University
rules on acceptable conduct while using University computers. Further,
to receive marks for work submitted irregardless of the computer you
use, you must follow the University rules on appropriate behaviour.
There is plenty of opportunity to add info, but the only required info is your date of birth (and then the default is to hide it anyway).
I suggest chosing the xanga classic
look for your site in
the first instance, as you will be modifying it in the labs anyway,
and my lab instructions might be more clear if you start the labs
with the classic look I'm expecting.
Invite as a friend
anyone else whom you wish to
share your learning journal with.
Click on your site
down the bottom, and once that page
loads, scroll down to Subscriptions
on the left near the
bottom and click Edit
. On the next page, select Edit your
General Settings
and Disable trial subscriptions. This is to
make sure there are no anonymous readers of your journal.
You can subscribe to each others' pages, but may be blocked by
the person whose page you are subscribed to. I do not mind if you
read each others' pages, just don't copy them! Remember that my
motivation is to make sure you all learn. We all learn from each
other so looking at and commenting on each others' work is fine.
Since you've turned Trial Subscriptions
off, you will know
if someone is reading your page. Also, we will take copies of the
pages regularly so if there is copying it will be easy to detect.
The plan is for your tutor to regulary look at your work. Make sure your tutor can see your entries (i.e. don't make them all private! - See below). Normally your tutor will read your entries some time before your next lab time. If you haven't written anything because of a medical or similar reason, let me (Tom) know by E-mail and we can arrange to look at your entries when you've had a chance to catch up.
The MaWiki website mentions that you may wish to
keep private thoughts with the learning journal. You can do this
on Xanga by using private posts
, which only you can read,
so they won't be collected.
Please start writing your journal now, you probably have some comments or reflections on what you've learnt or not understood or disliked or even liked in the course already. For this first week, we will look at the learning journals probably next Monday night to give a bit of extra time, but usually it will be Sunday night.
To add weblog entries (i.e. your journal entries), you should be on your main (weblog) page. Then click on the link with your weblog name on the top right. This should take you to a page which allows you to add new entries.