Electronic Resources for Anth 230

We'll cover a lot of territory here, and return to some of it in later classes.

The first thing is *setting up your Web presence*

  1. START ==> My Computer ==> your H: drive
  2. Is there a folder called public_html ? If not, create one (FILE menu ==> New ==> Folder and name it public_html)
  3. Open public_html
  4. Inside public_html, make a folder and name it anth230 (lower case, no space)

  5. Use the START menu, and Programs ==> Internet tools ==> Microsoft FrontPage (opens the application with a new blank page)
  6. Type your NAME and fiddle with font size, color, etc. (it's a WYSIWYG editor)
  7. Use SAVE AS from the File menu, and navigate to H:, then to your public_html, then to your anth230 folder, and name this file index.html
  8. Open a browser and type the URL
    stufs.wlu.edu/~yourusername/anth230
    ...and you should see your page.
    Don't close the browser.
  9. Go back to FrontPage and make some changes. SAVE using the floppy disk icon, or <Control><s>, or SAVE from the File menu
  10. Go back to the browser, hit Refresh to see your changes

  11. Back to FrontPage and type Anth230 course page
  12. Highlight that text
  13. Click on the globe-and-chain icon ("Link") and in the Address: field, type
    http://home.wlu.edu/~blackmerh/anth230/
  14. Save the page again
  15. Go back to the browser, hit Refresh, and click on the link to the course page
Those are the essentials of making Web pages. Lots of refinements possible, and much to experiment with. If you are clueless about HTML and want a quick jumpstart, Alex Halavais' What Is HTML might be helpful.

Now to add a few more items to the page:

  1. In FrontPage, type Anth230 Blog and highlight
  2. Click the Link icon, and type this URL into the Address field:
    http://bloggery.wlu.edu/anth230/
    and Save

  1. New line in FrontPage, and type Course Blog login and highlight
  2. Click the Link icon, and type this URL into the Address field:
    http://bloggery.wlu.edu/mt.cgi
    and Save

  1. Another new line in FrontPage: Type Bloglines login and highlight
  2. Click the Link icon, and type this URL into the Address field:
    http://bloglines.com/login
    and Save
Now go back to the browser, hit Refresh, and TEST those new links
Now what about blogs and blogging?
The beauty of the medium is that it's a form of self-publishing, or you might think of it as "social publishing":
"...weblogs are becoming a vast and diffuse cocktail party, where most address not 'the masses' but a small circle of readers, usually friends and colleagues. This is mass amateurization, and it points to a world where participating in the conversation is its own reward." (from a newly-released OCLC Report on 2004 Information Format Trends)
We're going to explore ways in which the blog medium can be useful in a course, and it's part of my continuing effort to outrun the conventional straitjacket of The Course, which traditionally relies on full frontal lectures, assigned readings, exams... I think there are more satisfying ways to teach and to learn, and I've been experimenting with them for years.

The blog environment gives Authors the space to develop and try out voice --communication with audiences, articulation of interests, presentation... It's not risk-free, and in fact it demands a lot of participants, in terms of time and attention.

de.licio.us may be part of a solution to a problem all of us have: HOW to keep track of what we find as we navigate the Web? This utility/service is effective for one's own machine (but not if you use many different machines in campus lab settings):

See the main del.icio.us site, and my own del.icio.us/oook --and its extispicious rendering...
» del.icio.us is a social bookmarks manager. It allows you to easily add sites you like to your personal collection of links, to categorize those sites with keywords, and to share your collection not only between your own browsers and machines, but also with others.

» Once you've registered for the service, you add a simple bookmarklet to your browser (see below). When you find a web page you'd like to add to your list, you simply select the del.icio.us bookmarklet, and you'll be prompted for a information about the page. You can add descriptive terms to group similar links together, modify the title of the page, and add extended notes for yourself or for others.

» You can access your list of links from any web browser. By default, your links are shown to you in reverse chronological order, with those you've added most recently at the top. In addition to viewing by date, you can also view all links in a specific category (you define your own categories as you add the links), or search your links for keywords.

» What makes del.icio.us a social system is its ability to let you see the links that others have collected, as well as showing you who else has bookmarked a specific site. You can also view the links collected by others, and subscribe to the links of people whose lists you find interesting.

(from About)

Webnote is another bit of "social software". I've set up five for this course, and assigned each person to a group, drawing on your expressed preferences. You are of course welcome to visit (and post on) any other group's page:

230economics: Tim, Clint, Shari, Robert
230politics: Dan, Alex, Ted, Matt
230socio: Julianne, Michael, Arielle, Kristen, Emily
230aesth: Megan, Leah, Kathleen, Joe, Letisha
230history: John, Pierce, Carlos, Valery, David
Make a link on your /anth230/index.html page for your group.

Just how we'll use these Webnote spaces is still a bit murky. It is a pretty neat medium, and has some interesting flexibilities. You CAN insert a hyperlink into a posting, using the HTML code that makes a hyperlink in any other Web application:

<a href="url goes here">link text goes here</a>

Bloglines has some useful features, most especially a readymade blog with your own name on it, which comes along with registration. I use mine as a place to stash postings I encounter via my Bloglines feeds (at the end of each feed item there's an option to Clip/Blog the item). You can edit items you've blogged (add more details, etc.) after the fact, so in fact it can be a pretty full-featured personal blogging environment, if you want such a thing. You can set up a User Profile and do other things to configure the blog to your preferences.

Here's how you should be thinking about the USE of these opportunities for this course:

Your course page now has links to You should visit these links frequently --that's part of the Work of the course. And you should feel a responsibility to be an active participant, posting things YOU find interesting, asking questions, commenting on other people's postings. Part of the 50% of the grade for Assigned Writing will include my assessment of your activity in these various communication opportunities.

Some electronic resources you should know about:

Searching the Web: Pretty much everybody seems to rely on Google for basic Web searching. I do too... but you should also explore some other views/perspectives on the anarchy and riches of the Web. I suggest to you

For East Asian information and data, you should know about these resources:

There are others that I'll show you from time to time.