This page provides some guidance regarding the ownership and editing of websites after the course is over.
Guiding principles
- Sensitivity to students' authorship and copyright of sites/blogs under your control
- The "launch" of a high quality and useful product that serves the community, university, and your careers.
Final Team Website URL
Your public team website has been copied to a new URL. It is more comprehensible and related to your website's unique title or subtitle.
Where's my new URL?
I've linked our updated URLs to our COMS 463 home page in the upper right corner.
All sites begin with http://sites.google.com/site/ and the endings have key terms of your titles: Team 1= /experiencingcsl/ ; Team 2.5 = /cslcalgarystudents/ ; Team 3 = /dialogueaboutcsl/ ; Team 4 = /natureofcsl/ ;
Team 6 = /cslchanginglives/
- Please update your bookmarks.
- I'm sorry if this is disturbing to any of you who have shared the site URL with other people already.
- I will not delete your old site, since it is yours. It is wise to keep an archive in case you want to find something that was lost during editing of the new site location.
- To prevent confusion, I will eventually archive your submitted site
(make it non-public) and visibly mark it as an archive.
Why was the URL changed?
Users' needs
- It is better to have an URL that is somehow memorable and comprehensible.
Allows for immediate editing of the "living" site
- During grading, it enables me to make instant corrections on embarrassing public typos (i.e. misspelling an interviewee or community partner's name, etc.) without changing the version that I am using during grading.
- You have more control and sooner -- you can edit/delete your portions even before I am finished grading.
No harm done
- No copyright breach or ethics breach -- Having your content moved to a new URL does
not reduce your access or ownership, nor does it make the site more
public than it already was.
- You still have access & are able to edit your site further if you want (i.e. for career portfolio purposes).
New Wordpress blog for all 5 sites
I've created a new Wordpress blog that features and connects our CSL websites, enabling commenting on all sites.
Not the planned "mega-site"
Q: Are you selecting & publishing our work already?
A: No, I am just directing traffic to your material which is already public.
This is simply a way of linking together the 5 sites as they currently exist publicly.
Not using waivers yet
I do not need your copyright waivers to set up a blog that links your sites. Even you can create a blog that summarizes and links to any public sites that are already out there.
You may wish the original to remain public whether or not you have donated any of this material for our copying and publication on other sites, That way, people can view your work as it was in its native context, There are risks when taking material out of context where it can be shortened or otherwise framed/edited.
Why was this blog created?
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Enables your website to fulfill service goals and your career development in a timely manner.
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Enables people to browse and comment on all your websites. It will do this before I have time to create a separate "mega-site" that copies the best of our waiver-signed content.
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Feedback -- On the blog, you can instantly view how people have commented on your site. The blog can drive traffic to your sites and back again for commenting.
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Stats -- I can let you know about your website's blog post traffic if you ask me, since Wordpress keeps excellent records of such stats.
Editor & author roles and responsibilities
You are the authors. The content is yours and you have control over this material.
I have served as an editor as I initially set up your site, as described below
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You can remove me from among your team's owners/collaborators if you don't want me to tweak or assist any further than I have.
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Don't depend on me to make further edits past the ones described below. I want the sites to be presentable but from now on, I will focus on editing material that has waivers.
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You can undo or further edit any of my edits you don't like -- it is your site.
The nature of Dr. Smith's initial edits
To give your sites a little "boost," I may have made some technical enhancements, many of which I did not expect you to have the time or skill to do as part of the course. These include tweaks to
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Buttons for comments : I have linked users to comment at the Voices of CSL blog by inserting theme-appropriate buttons/links on your site. Most of my page revisions are of this nature.
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Image updates & bonuses : Team 3 home page image panorama fixed; Team 6 butterfly icon added
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Layout fixes (i.e. cases of accidental collision of text and images due to technical quirks; fixing things that do not look right in Internet Explorer vs. Firefox)
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Linking/navigation (clear & consistent lists of subpages, tables of contents that boost ease of navigation; Team 6's home page duplication fixed)
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Accuracy (i.e. spelling errors, factual errors about courses/departments, i.e. "Faculty of Communications" "Zoey Fleming" etc.)
Reminders sent via email April 7, 2010
Audio, Photo, and Writing Waivers
 T. Smith, 2010, with subjects' signed consent.
The image is now property of U of Calgary and may be used on U of C affiliated media.
A copy of all the waiver templates can be found in
your Research Forms box.net folder visible through Bb Course Documents
and directly here http://www.box.net/shared/0n3ydu7iq5
Waivers
are for these media to be used by U of C and the instructional team in
the future megasite and related publications/sites.
Signing a
waiver is not required as part of the course grade and is completely
voluntary, although we are asking for waivers in advance and offering a
withdrawal window because contacting you after the course makes it too
difficult to collect signatures. We promise not to publish any work
that does not have signed consent from all participants after May 31.
But individually authored pages or page sections, and other individual
463 assignments, require your signed consent prior to publication.
Regardless
of publication waivers, the full contents of the team websites are
considered donated for the _internal_ use of U of C and Voulnteer
Calgary staff as your service to them.
Online Publications in your control
As
explained in class, team websites and individual blogs/websites are not
under the control of the U of C but rather yourselves and your team
members who have Wordpress and Google Accounts (which you may cancel or
leave inactive), and so you will need to make your own decisions and
arrangements amongst yourselves regarding how long they remain public
after grading.
You are also responsible for, and potentially
liable for, the ethics of content authored via a U of C course and
associated with the U of C, according to the ethics conditions on the
course outline and the consent forms used to obtain data/publications.
As long as your sites remain public, they may be freely cited, linked to, and/or quoted by others.
Best website design
To be decided by Erin, Buffy, Carmen and Dr
Smith -- after your websites are graded and final grades are submitted.
We may have time to provide a "hall of fame" doc with the "best of" in
several categories, which you can cite on your resumes if desired.
Mega-site Project
I MAY offer a directed study course to assist Volunteer
Calgary & U of C to put together the best inherited portions of the
CSL "mega-site" and to migrate some inherited material to areas of the
U of C website. This would be done over the spring/summer on a flexible
schedule mainly via distance learning, with monthly or bi-weekly
meetings.
Let me know at any time, but no later than 2 weeks after
final grades are given to you.
If I don't have the right # and
combination of enthusiastic, committed, well-skilled students who
approach me to request being on a team, I am now leaning toward doing
it myself (if I can find time) or hiring someone (if we can find money),
or asking Carmen to do some of it, or delaying it further.
Try the Website Grader to fnd out how well designed and used your sites are. My guess is that they won't receive much traffic until they are integrated into an active network. Here is an example of a website grader badge you can put on your site. I obtained this one for my blog, Edu*Rhetor:
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