The purpose of the blog assignment is to encourage engagement with current events and connect the study of public policy to the practice of social work. Throughout the semester, we will seek out information about the impact of policy in the lives of various populations of people and write a critical response to be posted to the class blog and presented to the class. As you prepare your posts, here are some guidelines about WordPress.
Schedule
Blog 1 – March 5 (TBD)
Blog 2 – March 12 or 16 (Poverty 3/12, Children/families 3/26)
Blog 3 – April 2 or 11 (Health/mental health 4/2, Older adults 4/11)
Response 1 – March 14 (poverty)
Response 2 – March 28 (Children/families)
Response 3 – April 4 (Health/mental health)
Response 4 – April 16 (Older adults)
Technical Guidelines
Each person is a contributing writer to what we hope will be an interesting and informative resource for people who are interested in social policy and its connection to social work practice. In order to make the product we put out as learned and visually appealing as possible, please adhere to the following guidelines when writing.
1. Come up with a creative title for each post. This is self-explanatory. Generate a title that will pique interest in what you write and will generate attention.
2. Tag and categorize your post appropriately. When writing and after writing, be sure to use categories and tags appropriately. This is called ascribing metadata to your posts. Tagging in particular is important, as it helps other people find the blog, and it is a conceptual map of what each post is about. You are free to use established tags or create new ones, if they make sense to you.
3. Use images and embed YouTube videos. Most blog posts should have at least one image somewhere, but preferably near the top of the post, “above the fold.” In order to upload images, use the “upload/insert” toolbar at the top of the writing panel. The best way to add an image is to download something from a website, save it to a folder on your hard drive, and then upload that file onto your blog post. From there, you can edit the size, add a caption, and even alt text. When appropriate, you are encouraged to add a caption that describes the picture or adds to the reading experience. Try to have the text of your article wrap around an image in a way that looks visually appealing when the post is published; you may have to fiddle with the dimensions of your image after you load it into the post.
YouTube videos are even easier to handle. Simply click the video icon on the aforementioned menu, copy the YouTube “share this” URL, and hit “insert.” Images and videos are a great way to synthesize multi-media content to the blog or just provide nice decoration.
4. Link to other sources, and embed links in your writing. Linking is a way of engaging with other ideas while writing online. In order to do this, simply highlight some text, and then click on the link button on the control panel. Copy and paste a URL. If the address is from another blog, or even a blog post by someone else from this blog, link to it as well. It will generate a pingback, which lets other bloggers know that you’ve interacted with their work. For instance, the other day, I read an important essay in The Nation about the problems with our government’s recent sequestration policy.
5. Set off block-quotations of other sources, especially from the media sources you find. In all your writing, do get into the habit of actually quoting the words of other people. This is a particularly good idea when the text in question is from a novel, play, essay, or poem that we read in class. WordPress has established a feature to do this: the quotation mark button on the dashboard. For instance, when talking about John Nichols’s breakdown of the federal government’s decision to freeze $85 billion of the budget, you may want to quote words from his essay directly:
Obama would do well to recognize, as Roosevelt did in the 1930s, that the United States is not just wrestling with economic and fiscal issues. This is a time for addressing critical questions of how democracy itself will operate.
Simply highlight the quoted text, separate it with a new paragraph, and then click the quotation button. Then follow your quotation with some analysis.
6. Comment liberally. One of the features of blogging and online writing is instant response from other interested readers. Read an average article on the AL.com website, and you’ll see what I mean. Here on the SWK 373 blog, everyone should use the comment feature liberally. Share ideas with classmates. Commend good writing. Critique ill-thought ideas. Complicate things. Respond to brainstorms. Laugh out loud. And most importantly, provide good feedback on posts that encourage your colleagues. Remember that this assignment requires you to read and respond to others posts at least 4 times this semester.
7. Use the built-in features to rate each blog post and/or “like” posts. With WordPress, you can express your reaction to a post with the click of a mouse; you hardly even have to register a coherent thought. Seriously, “liking” or rating a post on a scale of 1-5 is important for a couple of reasons: first, it lets the people who write know that they are being read and are doing a good job (or a not good job) and it helps me know which writers are resonating with people. There also may be grade bonuses for writers who achieve high ratings and whose posts generate the most hits, so there is an incentive for writing well, interesting multiple audiences, and getting page views.
Another good way to enliven the site visually and solicit feedback is to create a poll via the PollDaddy feature, located on the left hand tool bar. Again, this is intuitive. You’ll be surprised how easy it is.
8. When you see particularly good content, including your own, spread the word. WordPress has features installed that will help us circulate our content and put it on the screens of like-minded readers. By linking sites to social media and bookmarking platforms, you help increase your reading audience. So do your part to get the word out. Share a good post via Twitter, Facebook, or any other bookmarking site. Link to the writing of your peers. Link to other blogs in your writing. Cite the writing of other people in the class.
9. Strive for excellence in design, appearance, and writing. This blog is a creative space that you can make your own. As a class, we will take control of this blog collectively, and it is a goal that it will serve multiple roles as we move on. Not only will this blog be a portal for information about the class, but it could also become a place where people who are interested in reading about social policies and legislative action will come for like-minded conversation and ideas. That being said, do good work.
If you have any questions about WordPress or blogging, feel free to visit the WordPress help pages
The above video is a great talk by Josh Jones-Dilworth, who spoke at the University of Texas-Austin’s Digital Writing and Research Lab. I’ve also compiled a list of observations and advice about blogging on my own site.
Content Guidelines
The first list instructs us on how to blog and how to use the WordPress interface. This next list sets some guidelines on what to write, where to get ideas, and what kind of content you can create and include in your posts.
1. Get some sense of what other people are saying about your social policies or issues related to social policies. Read articles from the sites listed on the links menu and link to ideas that seem interesting to you. Develop robust lists on Twitter and Facebook, do Google News searches, and otherwise put yourself in the position to synthesize relevant, timely information.
2. Supplement class discussions with any content you come across that will help everyone else understand the connection between social policy and social work practice. See a video on YouTube that relates? Read an article on the Huffington Post that talks about health care coverage for older adults? Listened to a clip on NPR? Bring them into the discussion and comment on them.
3. Write with a purpose. Do you have an argument that you can back up by showing how at least 17 other bloggers are talking about? Demonstrate that in your posts. Have a question about something that came up in class that you find controversial? Write a blog post about it here. Use the blog as a space to explore thinking informally. What you write here may strike a cord with someone, and it may become the basis of a more developed project.
4. Don’t feel bad if you take images from elsewhere. When in doubt, give credit. The Creative Commons is always a good place to look for images.
5. Think about writing in ways that will interest a broad audience. The more interesting something is, the more likely a wide audience will read about it. Try to imagine that you are writing to an audience that may or may not be in this class.
6. Reference discussions we have in class. Follow up on them, or return to them when appropriate.
7. Take a stand on an issue. Explain why the issue matters to you and why you think others should care about it. Make an argument, and then support the argument.
Social Policy 