Here beComes Everybody

How to get involved

First: refresh your memory

Take a look at this video:

Also, take a look at “New To Trails?” on the Trailmeme blog.

Then:
Sign up for the blog

Send an email to Will or Sean from your email address of choice with “trailmeme blog” and in the body of the mail write your preferred username.

Content development strategies

Please coordinate the production of a blog post that outlines what your group did this year. This post should contain a written description of the kind of work you did this year, for example, a blog post, a vimeo podcast, a lesson plan, and each of those pieces of work should have their own dedicated URL. Why? As we have seen, trailmemes works modularly. Your group will have a node, and that node will lead to child nodes with examples of your work. If you have worked on something doesn’t have a dedicated URL, the simplest way to get around this issue is to write a blog post about it.

Since this is multimedia writing, the more visually enticing the work the better. So include images, screebgrabs and even screencasts or movies. Each piece of work, along with having a URL, needs to other elements: tags, and a short editorial comment describing what the piece is about and a number of tags. Here’s why: Trailmemes have a roll-over function that enable viewers to read a short description and tags related to that particular node before they click on it. So, a snappy editorial comment and relevant tags will increase click-through rate.

Here’s an example workflow to help you wrap your head around this.

1. Write up a group blog post (written by the Group leaders on their own or in collaboration with group members) that describes:

• who you are
• what you set out to do this year
• what you achieved, including links to the work samples you wish to showcase (link within the blog to these samples as well; we want to give our audience as many ways to get to our work as possible).

2. Gather the links to the work samples. Write short editorial blurbs and assign them tags. Send them to Sean and Will who will input them into the map.

3. Ways of thinking about the content:

• If you have a lesson plan, or some other form of content such as a blog post that has a dedicated URL, then grab the link, write the blurb, and assign tags.
• If you want to describe something that doesn’t have a dedicated URL, then simply write up a short blog post describing it, with a short blurb and relevant tags.
• If you have a file or multimedia clip you want to show, you have a number of options. Say, for example, it’s a video that’s on our Vimeo site. Then you can simply link to that Vimeo page. If you want to give more context to the piece than merely a two-sentence blurb and a few tags, then simply embed the video in a new blog post, write about it, and use the blog post URL to send to Will and Sean. This strategy may be very useful if you have an audio podcast, for example.
• The same goes for a file such as a pdf, or Word document. Create a blog post, contextualize the file and create a link to it.
• Simply create a blog post, with no linking file. You may, for example, have ideas about the implications of what you have done this year, and there may be no media for that. Then go ahead and write a short informal paper about it.
• Bottom line: Everyone in the group has the opportunity to create multiple blog posts relating to the work you have done this year. For example, if you want to highlight a particular lesson plan that you created, or explain some aspect of your contribution to the project, or even as aspect of the lab (a space for example), then go ahead and create a short blog post about it, and we’ll incorporate it into the big map. Creating multiple blog posts may useful to people who are interested in having digital literacies as a major component of their professional portfolio, as it will increase your presence within the larger DWRL presentation this year, and your visibility to the Computers and Writing audience.
• IMPORTANT: Project leaders, please coordinate the work done by your group, and send the group’s work to us. We don’t want a situation where nearly 40 people are sending us random links.
• Timeline: The presentation is on April 30, and the online portion of the conference is full-steam ahead a week after that. So please have all materials finished and sent to us before the final presentation. The sooner you can do this the better, because the trailmeme will be going live in a week as a work in process, but April 30 is the final deadline.

Member Profiles

There is going to be a “People” node on the map, which will lead to individual profiles. We are asking you to create a short profile of yourself in the form of a short blog post on the dwrltrails blog. Your participation in this part of the event is voluntary, but if you wish to be able to use the Computers and Writing as a conference credit on your CV, then you need to create this profile. How you present yourself is up to you (keeping in mind that this is a conference audience, of course). Obviously, you can link to an online CV, instructor page or personal website, if you wish.

Regardless of whether you intend to participate in the conference or not, you need to work as a team to gather the relevant materials from your year’s work and to compose the blog entries that will be housed on the trailmeme. The work you will do for this experiment will effectively prepare your final presentation as well, so it’s not that much extra work.

Finally, if anyone is interested in helping create the trailmemes map, then contact Will or Sean and we’ll be delighted to get the help! We’ll be hanging out in FAC 9 every Friday until the final showcase in order to finish this project.