Blogging Instructions

Welcome to the Main Course Blog for English 469!! General course announcements, reading assignments, and information will be posted here, as well as links to all of your individual blogs. This blog will function as the central "hub" blog for the course, so make sure to check in regularly. I have posted the syllabus and course assignment schedule as the first post on this blog, so you can always reference it easily in case you happen to lose your hard copy, and at the very end of the syllabus, there's a link to download a hard copy of the syllabus as a Word document if you wish.

Before our next class meeting on Thursday, January 20, please make sure to visit http://www.blogger.com to sign up for a Blogger account and then set up your own new blog where you will be doing all of your on-line journaling for the course. Please also make sure to bring in the URL to the new blog you have set up on Thursday. Your new URL will look something like: http://INSERT-YOUR-OWN-TITLE-HERE.blogspot.com. The process of setting up a Blogger account and on-line journal is fairly straightforward, and Blogger will walk you through it step by step.

A Few Tips On What To Expect When Setting Up Your Blog:

If this is your first time visiting Blogger, click Create on Create Your Own Blog now. You will be prompted to set up a user name and password. Make sure to write down your user name and password so that you can access, edit, and post to your blog.

Once your account is set up, click next/continue, and you will be prompted to give your blog a name/title, and create a URL for your blog (In other words, choose your own address for the "INSERT-YOUR-OWN-ADDRESS-HERE" portion of your URL http://insertyourowntitlehere.blogspot.com. Make it something easy to remember).

Hit next/continue, and you will be prompted to select a template (i.e., alayout for how your blog will look on the internet . . . you can change it later, if you wish.)

Blogger will create your blog for you, and then give you a Start Posting prompt. I definitely recommend writing and publishing a test post at this point (even something as quotidian as TESTING, TESTING, ONE TWO THREE . . . you can delete it later if you like) to establish the blog on the internet and familiarize yourself with the posting process.

When you're on the posting and editing screen, you can just type in your entries (or cut and paste from a word processing program--for longer, assigned entries I definitely recommend cutting and pasting from a word processing program so you don't accidentally lose an entire post should there be a technical glitch). When you're finished with your entry, simply click on the button labeled Publish. Blogger will publish your post the the web, giving you a message that your post was published successfully once it has done so, and then you can click on the link to view your blog post on the internet.

Once you've posted an entry you can always go back and edit it by clicking on the edit posts link. This will pull the entry back as a text window where you can edit it as much as you like, or even delete it altogether. You might want to play around with posting, editing, and deleting test posts a bit to get a feel for how all this works.

On subsequent visits to Blogger, you can simply sign in with your account name and password, and you'll see the title of your blog listed on your Blogger Dashboard once you sign on. You can simply click on that link and your editing menus will come right up for you.

This should hopefully be enough information to get you started. Please don't hesitate to e-mail me with any questions at lroripau@usd.edu, or feel free to come visit me during my office hours or set up an appointment if you need further assistance. Good luck, and have fun blogging!!