The Backbencher
Information about the Weblog
for HIST 381
"The Backbencher" is the name of the weblog, or "blog" for
short, for Professor Isern's course in the history
of Why is it called "The
Backbencher"? Well, the Backbencher was a renowned tavern situated
catty-corner across from the Beehive in Participation in the weblog is required of all students. This is where all
assignments are submitted; where announcements are posted; and where
discussions, supplementary to what we do in class, take place. It is a
general forum, too, for all matters having to do with history and life in What
Is This Thing?
If you haven't been part of a group weblog before, let me explain what happens. You, as a student in this course, are subscribed to the blog. As subscribers you, I, and all the other students can post to the blog. It's like a big bulletin board, where announcements and assignments can be posted, only it's better than that; on this bulletin board we can interact, talk back and forth. (You may wish to keep in mind, too, that this course operates on world-readable websites; it might affect what you write!) The weblog operates via a free blogging service called Blogger. What
Are We Going to Do With It?
Here I'll spell out what I just mentioned above. There are three functions for the blog in this course. 1. Posting announcements. I will post announcements, and you may have occasion to, too. 2. Most important: submission of assignments. This is where you send your work. 3. General
discussion—of other people's submissions, of text and lecture, of all matters
having to do with history and life in You need to go to the home page frequently and see what's posted in the blog. You need to note announcements; you want to see what others are doing; and someone else may well be writing back to you about something you have posted. House
Rules
Let me ask you, as you participate in the blog, to observe three requirements: literacy, civility, and discretion. 1. Remember that what you write to the blog is part of your participation in the course, not some note you're sticking on the refrigerator. So be literate. Clean up the grammar and punctuation and write clearly. 2. Treat others with respect. Disagreements are cool; disparagements are not. 3. Don't post things to the blog that have no business there. No junk mail, no irrelevant forwards. A little fun is OK, of course. Posting
to the Backbencher
The first day of class I'll ask for your e-mail address. Right after that you should receive an e-mailed invitation to become a member of the weblog. Please respond promptly. (I’ll demonstrate this in class.) Here's a hint when you do: instead of just clicking on the link in the invitation, copy and paste the URL into your browser. (Clicking on the link sometimes causes problems with your Internet provider.) When you're a member, you can post to the blog. Learn to navigate the Blogger interface, so that when you need to post, you can. Try sending an introductory message to the blog—just tell us who you are, something about your interest (or not) in the course, that sort of thing. Now, here I'm starting a list of suggestions for use of the weblog. Suggestions welcome! Help me make this useful. · When you open a link given within the framed weblog, it's best to right-click on it and use the option to open a new window. Sometimes the linked document, especially if it contains images, won't fit nicely into the frame. · Blogger software doesn't seem to handle the coding for quotation marks or apostrophes imported from other programs. What this means is, if you compose your message in Word or Word Perfect and then paste it into the posting form for Blogger, your quotation marks and apostrophes will come out with some weird coding when they appear on the web. So, after you paste in your message, you need to replace the quotes and apostrophes manually before posting. |