Welcome back to the second technology session. Although you may have felt overwhelmed last week, you can pat yourself on the back for having chosen to continue and learn to build a website or your electronic portfolio as we call it. This session we will be concentrating on teaching you to how to post your work to the server [that's the place where everything is stored]. I hope you brought along your diskette with your self-learning goals on file. Of course your website can be all text, but we thought you would like to learn to scan pictures, or retrieve them from the web and post them to your site. It just makes your site more attractive and "a picture speaks a thousand words."

 

No, that does not mean that you can have a pictorial paper rather than writing words. Your papers should average between 3 and 4 double spaced pages (1 to 2 pages single-spaced). That is about 1300 to 1750 words--no more. Of course your work will not be double-spaced on the webpage. That's no problem. Just check to see if it fits the "word" frame by going to File and clicking on Properties and then Statistics. That will tell you how much you have written.

 

I hope you have more than words to post. If you need any help with developing your writing skills, I recommend that you try several things. Read you paper aloud. Does it make sense and do you see any errors in spelling, grammar, or structure. Of course grammar and spelling checks on your computer should have caught most errors, but read it aloud to make sure it makes sense and that one idea flows into another. Does it have an introduction, middle and conclusion? Have you cited any sources? If you need more help see Grade Aids.

Another help might be to see some good examples. Your paper should be a Research Essay.

Since you are posting your material to an electronic portfolio, everyone will be able to access your work. I will be grading your work from your portfolio and the other students will be reading your work to learn and to write their mid-term and final critique. You will want their short papers to be clear and factual, so you will want to show them the same courtesy. You may click here for a good example of a short paper. [connect to library scan miller.pdf] You might want to jazz up your paper with data from census bureaus and your reading. If you do, don't forget to cite the source (Click to view examples).

Now it is time to learn more about technology.