Your Blog is Ready – What to Do

You now have your own blog/website on LCC’s new scholarly commons.  The commons is called OpenLCC.net and student blogs/websites are located at Voice.openlcc.net.  (there’s a directory of the more than 150 student blogs so far – it’s a bit disorganized and not pretty but that’s because it’s a work-in-progress).

Why A Separate Blog + the Course hub site?

You might be wondering why you’ll be asked to post some things on your own blog site when we already have a discussion site going on the course hub at compsys17.econproph.net.  That’s a good question.  There are three reasons.

  1. Simple text vs. Complex text. Posts on the coursehub compsys17.econproph.net are limited in what you can create. Specifically, it’s harder to style text, add links, add images or videos or insert quoted material from another website in your post.  The coursehub is really just about conversation and discussion.  For some posting assignments, you’ll want to write more in-depth pieces that are based on some research. You’ll want to link to other sites, quote material, and maybe insert some images or videos.  These more in-depth written pieces are what your blog/website is for. It’s easier to do them there.
  2. Permanence.  The coursehub site, compsys17.econproph.net, is relatively temporary.  It will stay up and be public after the semester ends (unlike D2L), but it’s not clear how long it will make sense to keep the site up since it’s purpose was to be a place to have a conversation.  Your blog/website, however, can be more permanent.  It stays up afterward the course is over. You control it. It’s your blog and website.  LCC simply hosts it as part of our scholarly commons. But it’s you. You can post whatever you want on whatever topic you want (subject to a very few limitations like legality, no ecommerce, and suitable for work/school).
  3. Digital Identity and Portfolio.  One reason LCC is experimenting and creating this voice.openlcc.net scholarly commons of blogs/websites for students is because it is increasingly important that students, graduates, and professionals have a “digital identity” that they control on the Web. This voice.openlcc.net blog/website of yours is your site.  It helps establish who you are on the Web. Google will eventually find it. It becomes a digital portfolio of who you are as  professional or scholar.  If you later you don’t like the LCC hosting, your blog/website is a WordPress site which means it can be easily be exported and transferred to just about any webhosting firm in the world. It’s your data.  I’ll give a brief example of why this permanent digital identity might matter to you.  A student from a few years ago had a student blog for this course and wrote his major project on his blog.  A couple years later after the course, this student had transferred to four-year school. He had an opportunity for a scholarship at that school but needed an example of his “scholarly work”.  No problem. He just gave them the URL address of his blog post where he had done his course project. Oh, by the way, he got the scholarship.

How Do the Student Blogs & the Course Hub Work Together?

Our conversation, the talking to each other and replying/responding, takes place on the course hub site.  But sometimes, especially later in the course, you’ll have need to make longer, more in depth posts. Instead of commenting on something else, you’ll be wanting to make a statement of your own with research support or images/videos.  You’ll do that writing on your blog/website and publish it there. If you simply check a “category” box to categorize your post on your own site as ECON260 (there’s instructions), your post will be not only be published on your site, but the course hub site will automatically find it, make a copy from your site, and post that copy into the course hub with a link back to your site.  All that happens auto-magically in the background. That way you publish on your site but other students get to see/notified of what you wrote.

How to Get Started

To get started, see the How To Use Your Blog-Website page. It can also be found in the menu bar under the How To tab.