Web Site

You must make a personal web site for the course. The primary purposes of the site are two-fold. It will be used as the point of contact for interaction with the instructor and it is where your assignments will be posted. This site also serves as a professional site highlighting your career and is likely to last well beyond the duration of this course.

Build your web site in the following way.

1. Get a Gmail (Google) e-mail account. If you already have one then use it. Start at www.gmail.com.
2. Once your gmail account is established, open it and click on the "more" button on the action bar at the top of the page. Select "sites." This begins the process of creating a new web site account which will then allow you to create new web sites. Follow the directions until you are ready to create a new web site.
3. Create a new web site under your google account and name it with your name. This is important because your site represents you personally and professionally. Do not name the site something silly or gimicky. If your name is unavailable, try a logical variation that will still easily be found through a search to find you. Choose an appropriate template for the site that reflects your personality but is also professional. Set the permission as "shared with everyone in the world." Keep this in mind as you add content to the page. This course is about ethics and the course lesson begins here.
4. Once your site is established, learn how to use the Google sites software by playing around with the different features. It is a relatively intuitive program that should be easy to use for most people. If you have used web site development software before you will see that this does not have all of the bells and whistles. That is desired so that everyone in the course is functioning at the same level and has the same opportunities. Many creative things can be done with this simple program so consider this a true test of your skills and creativity.
5. You will need to establish some standard mechanical elements and some standard content within your site. The rest of what you do is up to you and your creativity. However, please note that not all creativity will be considered as appropriate for the purpose of this site (read the evaluation rubric to the right).
   1. Mechanics:
      • Choose and use different levels of headings.
      • Create links to external sites that are appropriate.
      • Create links to newly created pages within the site.
      • Customize (edit) the side bar.
   2. Content:
      • Produce a defining paragraph about who you are based on your aspirations. This may be creatively composed as a poem, an essay, or something else.
      • Include a selection of links to Internet sites that say something about you, your values, and ethics.
      • Include a photo of yourself that is professionally appropriate but also creative.
      • Create a link to a new page that is made for the Advanced Ethnobotany Course Portfolio that you will be producing for this course. (Each week assignments will be posted through this page or subsidiary pages for evaluation and comment by the instructor.
      • Create a link for a new page that is made for Ethical Dilemmas faced as a student at University of Hawai`i and as a researcher in Hawai`i.

Note that this is not a "one time" project. You are expected to keep this Portfolio page up to date as you use it as a repository for your assignments, as you discover new links to relevant Internet sites, and as a place to add notes on Ethical Dilemmas as you encounter them.

Evaluation Rubric

Your web site will be evaluated using the following measures:

Total = 40 points

A Note About Google Sites

Until recently, we added content to the World-Wide Web by creating web pages. This usually required the use of an editor program (e.g., Microsoft FrontPage). Moreover, it was difficult to move new web pages to a server so that they would be accessible. The development of the Wiki changed all of that. Google Sites is a Wiki-based web environment.

A Wiki lets you edit a web page "in place." It also lets you create and link new pages almost effortlessly. And the process doesn't require an external editing program.

Your instructors have completely abandoned the old way of making Web pages in favor of the Wiki approach. This has added efficiency to the process and created a new dynamic for our collaborative research.

Is a Wiki page as "fancy" as a well-designed traditional web page? No. There are constraints on Wiki pages. But we believe that these limitations are minor compared to the advantages you get by having a more spontaneous and fluid way of adding (and correcting) content on the Web.

We encourage you to experiment with this new style of using the Internet. Welcome to the Wiki world.