Thing 8: Online Notebooks and writing prompts

Nulla dies sin linea:  Never a day without writing--Horace

If you want to be a good runner, run.  If you want to be a good writer, write. Writing is like athletics in that it requires practice to attain competence.

I can feel when I'm out of shape, writing-wise:  it will take me MUCH too long to get words on the page, or the words that do come to me seem flat and lifeless.

But if I'm "in training," so to speak, the words flow out, organizational patterns bloom in my mind, and new concepts flash and spark.

How does a writer get in shape, though?

Daily writing practice is a staple in the lives of many people who write. And while writers used to carry around a notebook for this practice, today there are digital tools that make daily writing easier--and more fun. 

In addition, people who write daily can lower stress levels and improve their immune function.  Writing is awesome, isn't it?

A blog is a great place for daily writing.  But writers sometimes need to write in private.  That's when online notebooks come in handy.

There are several sites where you can establish a private journal or diary.

I use Penzu.  With a free Penzu account, I can keep a private writer's notebook/diary on a site that has military-grade encryption, so I can feel safe about your privacy.  If I write something you do want to share, I can do that, too.  Penzu sends me reminders to write via email. 

I don't use the Penzu mobile app, but if I had a smart phone, I might.

Take a look at this video about Penzu.


One trick about writing discipline and daily writing is . . . thinking of things to write about.  If you're sometimes at a loss of what to write about on your Penzu, you can click on the little lightbulb on the Penzu page--it will provide you with a question to answer.  They're usually fun.

If you're looking elsewhere for writing prompts, you can also try Plinky, which will email you prompts, and provide you with a place to write and share daily writing.  These also make great conversation-starters!

For Thing 8:  Explore some options for keeping an online Writer's Notebook.
1.  Set up a free account on Penzu, Plinky, or on another online notebook/diary app.  (Both Android and App Store have several; I have one called "Notebooks" on my Kindle Fire.)  You can create your notebook on a computer, on your phone, or on a tablet.  Or you can create several notebooks--that's what I did.
2.  Set up your account to send you reminders to post.
3.  Write your first post, using your own idea, the light bulb prompt, or a Plinky prompt. 
4.  Write on your blog: 

• Which type of Writer's Notebook did you choose:  Penzu.com, Plinky, or an app for your smartphone/tablet?  Why did you choose this one?  
• Have you ever kept a daily (or semi-daily) writer's notebook?  Was it for a class, or on your own?  
• If you haven't (or aren't now doing it), what have been the reasons for not keeping one?  Would these new digital tools address those reasons?

Thing 7: Making Multi-media stories with Storify

So now that you're on Twitter, you can see that a 140 character post can be useful.  And the immediacy of tweets can draw in readers who want to know what's happening NOW.

But let's say you're following a particular topic:  say last week's big winter storm Nemo (that name keeps making me think about a fish).  There may be lots of tweets tagged with #Nemo, but I'm guessing not all of them are that interesting.  And what if you want to look at pictures?  or read longer comments--on blogs, for example?

If you want a full picture of the storm, you might want to look at many different media sources.  And maybe you'd like to make your own story about it and share it.  Like one news channel did here!

Storify is one way to sort out the most meaningful material from social media and put it together yourself, creating a story that's a mosaic of tweets, images, and commentary on a particular trend.  It's a way for writers to create multi-media stories by collaborating with social media creators all across the web.  News outlets uses it, and ordinary people use it, too.  Here's a brief tour on one web page.

Or if you'd rather look at quick video, here's the official Storify intro video.


Thing 7:
Explore and try out Storify
1.  Go to Storify and explore the trending stories.  Look at the multi-media, collaborative stories created with this digital tool.  The most recent ones are linked on the home page; you can search for others.  Choose three stories about topics that interest you, and look at them.  On your blog, describe one of the Storify stories you viewed/read.
2.  Create your own story.  First get a free Storify account.  Think of a recent topic that people are buzzing about in social media:  could be in national or international news, arts, sports, entertainment, even weather!  Then click on "create a new story."  Follow the instructions to choose tweets, blog posts, images, and other media to your story about a recent topic.  You can add your own text, too.  It doesn't have to be long, but do try to include various types of social media.
3.  After you've created a Storify story, embed it in your blog and share your reflections about the process:

• what did Storify allow you to do that you might not have been able to do were you writing a news story in the old-fashioned way (interviews and local research)?  
• If you're tweeting, would you like your tweets to be shared in someone's Storify story? 
• What are the limitations to writing stories this way?

Thing 6: Social Bookmarking and annotating

If you're like me, you search the web every day to find useful sites and information.  Sometimes you find a site that's amazing, and you bookmark it so you can come back to it.

But what if you want to share it with someone from your tablet--or what if you found it when you were hanging out at the library computer lab?

And what if you were reading the information and you wanted to write a note to yourself about the text?

Social bookmarking tools can help writers use web information more intelligently.  Not only do they help you revisit great websites from any device, they also can allow you to annotate the information on the site.  As a big fan of Marking on Books, I love this.

Watch this video from one social bookmarking site, diigo, to see what a social bookmarking and annotating site can do.

Diigo V5: Collect and Highlight, Then Remember! from diigobuzz on Vimeo.

There are many other social bookmarking sites, too--I've used Delicious and Scoop.it.  You can check them out, too.  I like Diigo because of the annotating abilities it has.

For Thing 6, create a Diigo account for yourself.  Be sure to add a diigolet to your most-used computer--it allows you to quickly add sites to your Diigo library.

Then practice bookmarking and annotating two items:

• this article about online reading and 
• one other website--could be an article or could just be a web page--you can annotate anything with Diigo. 

On your blog, write about your experience with Diigo.

• Have you used social bookmarking before?  
• What sites did you bookmark?  How/what did you annotate?  did you just highlight, or write note on digital post-its?
• How might a Diigo account help you with your studies here at Coe?  Can you see it being useful in classes besides this one?  How?
• How might a professional use Diigo?  Imagine yourself in your dream job:  can you see a use for social bookmarking and annotating?
• Be sure to share a link to your Diigo pages.

Thing 5: Twitter

Of course no study of digital tools for writers would be complete without a brief look at Twitter.

Maybe you're already a Twitter fan and you tweet regularly. Or maybe you aren't part of the twitterverse.  Either way, Thing 5 will look more closely at Twitter as a tool for writers, and give you a chance to try it out if you haven't yet.
  
Thing 5: Twitter

Read the article "Twittering, Not Frittering, Professional Development in 140 Characters" from Edutopia.  Then create a Twitter account for yourself. If you're comfortable sharing with the world, set your account as "Public" (that way we can all find you on Twitter). If not, then you have to approve individual people to be your followers. Do a few Internet searches to find leaders in your area, and chances are that they will have a Twitter account. "Follow" at least three of them, post your Twitter name to your blog (mine is jcnesmith), and then let us know who you're following.

If you're interested in a particular topic, you can look for who's tweeting about it. Check out the "trends" box on the right side of twitter. If you tweet about a particular topic and want to make sure people interested in that topic find it, you can add a hash tag, like #writing or #oscars.

To post a link, use tinyurl to create a smaller version of the URL--so you won't use up those 140 characters.

I like to follow other writers . . . and some funny tweeters. Here is an example of some of the people I'm following:

• Wired magazine, which posts updates about tech (@wiredmag)
• Stephen Fry, the British actor and word nerd (@stephenfry)
• essayist Susan Orlean (@susanorlean)
• Local journalist Christophe Trappe (@CTrappe)
• children's book author Sarah Prineas (@SPrineas)
• and The Onion (nice to have 140 character laughs!) (@TheOnion)

I have to admit I don't tweet much. I used to use it for posting updates about my writing, but I'm not doing that now--I just enjoy reading others' posts, and I've learned about some cool stories that way. Plus I get a laugh from The Onion.

If you want, you can have your twitter posts automatically posted to facebook. Just include the hash tag #fb at the end of your post.  You probably already knew that . . .

Discovery Exercise

1. Create a Twitter account if you don't have one yet.
2. Find at least 3 people to follow--or 3 new people if you already have an account.
3. Post a tweet about some writing project you're working on
4. Retweet a post or two from someone you're following
5. Post a link with a brief comment (use tinyurl)
6. Add Twitter to your blog with a Twitter gadget. This allows blog readers to quickly catch up on your tweets.  Just go to "layout" from your dashboard and look for a twitter gadget.
7. In your blog: Tell us who you're following
8. Reflect on your experience using/reading about Twitter. How do you see professionals using it? How do you see writers or PR people using it? Will you keep tweeting this term?

Thing 4: Digital Mind-Mapping

Let's move from blogging on to some other digital tools for writers.

Bubbl.us is an online tool for brainstorming or mind mapping. You remember brainstorming from your earlier education days, right? You start with a concept, usually in a bubble in the middle of a page. Then you start thinking of all of the other related concepts (in bubbles surrounding the initial concept).

Brainstorming helped you look at all angles of the concept, to sort out related items and visualize connections. Mind mapping is similar, except the concepts are things you know or you are studying, and you are connecting them to other things you know (or are studying). It's a great visual technique for getting many many ideas and seeing how they link together.

Here's a mind map I made during break:

I've also used mind maps to get ideas for what to write on my blogs. It's kind of boring to write "this is what I did today" posts . . . every day.

One great thing about Bubbl.us is that, like many tools out there for writers, it's free.  You can just start working on the mind map, and sign up later.

Your Thing 4 assignment:

Try out a mind map for some writing project you have to brainstorm for: an upcoming paper? ideas for a blog you'd like to write?  See if you can get several layers of bubbles out there. Move them around to make the map pleasing to your eye.

If you have no upcoming writing projects, mind map what you need to do this week.

In your blog, post your mind map (just export it as a jpg and post it on your blog as a picture).

Then write about the experience of using another visual brainstorming tool. How did this work for you?  . . can you imagine situations in which you could use it? Do you like the computer version, or would you rather draw your mind map with pen and paper?

Thing 3: Finding great blogs, RSS feeds, and Google Reader

Now it's time to move out into the wider blogosphere.

I'd like you to find 2-3 additional blogs that you'd like to read--maybe about a topic you're interested in, or someone you're interested in.  You can find them through Technorati, an aggregator and indexer of blogs, or on your favorite news site.

You might also check out Technorati's Top 100 Blogs.  You might choose some blogs to follow from there, too!  You can also find out "rising" and "falling" blogs on Technorati's home page.

Now that you've found some great blogs, you might want to check in on them now and then . . . and you may also want to see what the blog writers in this class are doing, too.

But sometimes it's hard to remember to check on websites or blogs--or know when there's something new to read.

What if you could check for updates of all your favorite blogs, online newspapers and other regularly-updated sites by visiting one simple page? That's the beauty of RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication. You may have noticed that some of your favorite websites have little orange icons that look like this:

This orange RSS icon lets you know that you can subscribe to the website using a news reader such as Google Reader.  That's what we're going to use to keep track of blogs for this project.  Watch this Common Craft video to learn more about RSS feeds and Google Reader:



Your job for Thing 3

Is to get your Google Reader account going, add the blogs of your classmates, plus at least 3 other blogs, online newspapers, or websites to your reader. Chances are, some of the websites you already visit a lot and the blogs you just discovered have RSS feeds available.

Here's how to set it up:

Open the email account you use most often.  Look across the top for "Reader."

1. If it's not there, click on the "more" drop down on the left-hand top of the page, and select "Reader"
2. Now, go to your favorite, regularly-updated website (see some suggestions below) and find the RSS feed icon (shown above...usually orange, but not always). Click it. You'll be asked if you want to add the feed to your Google Reader or your Google Homepage. Choose Reader.
3. Repeat step 3 for other newsfeeds/blogs/sites.
4. If there's no RSS icon, you can also add blogs by clicking on "add a subscription" at the top left corner and copying in the URL of the blog.
5. Add this blog, 13 Things for 2013--so you can see when I post an update.  And add your classmates' blogs.
6. Leave a friendly comment on at at least 3 of your classmates' blogs.
7. Now instead of going to all these sites daily to read what's new, you go to Google reader--it's right there on your gmail account.

Here are some sites with RSS feeds to get you started:
Cedar Rapids Gazette (look for the RSS icon on the right-hand side column, about half-way down--you can also get news delivered to your phone, etc.
The New York Times RSS index--Tons of different RSS feeds for every interest!
NPR's RSS index

Write on your blog:  
After you have your Google reader set up, write a post reflecting on your experience with RSS feeds and news readers. How might it be useful professionally?

Which blogs are you following with RSS and Google Reader?  Have you used Google Reader before?

Also, write about commenting--why do you think commenting is important in online communities? How might professional blog writers (someone writing a blog for an organization, for example) view comments--as helpful or annoyances?

Thing 2: Adding media, using gadgets, and labelling your posts

Now that we have our blogs established, it's time to get them looking good.

For Thing 2, you'll be adding media, customizing your blogs with gadgets and labeling the posts.

First, add some media to your blog.  It's easy to add links and images--you can see the icons above.  To add a link, just highlight the word you want to be a link and click on link.  For example, I might want to include a link to my teaching website.

The "add image" icon is next to the Link icon.  It's very easy to add images, like this rare photo of me teaching.

You can add a movie, too, from your camera, phone, or YouTube.  Here's a video feature story I made a while ago about an Easter Island statue in Iowa.

Say something about the media you chose, too.  I chose these items to give you a sense of how you can use the blog to promote yourself as a competent and digital-savvy person.

Next, add some gadgets to your blog to give your readers more information about you.  Gadgets that share information and make your blog easier to use are available on the layout page of Blogger.  Go to your dashboard and find the Layout icon on the left-hand side.  When you click it, you get a schematic of your blog.

You can see that there are many places to customize your blog.  Along the top, you can create your own favicon to replace the orange blogger one.  You can customize what your navigation bar looks like.

Throughout the blog--at the top, along the side, and at the bottom, are places for you to add gadgets.  To do so, just click on "add gadget."  You can choose from the various gadgets available.  This blog, 13 Things for 2013, has a blogroll (your blogs) and an email notification gadget.  Choose gadgets and customize your blog.

Finally, make it easier for people to enjoy your blog posts:  Labeling categorizes your posts, which is really helpful if you blog regularly. To "label" your posts, use the "label" function that's to the right of the edit box. Think of words--labels--that describe what you're writing about.  For example, you might label this post with "labels" and "gadgets." Your first post might have "social media" --and some other labels.

You can also add labels to your first post.  Go to your dashboard and click on the title--that allows you to edit.  Add your labels.  As you start to create labels, you can click "show all" if you have trouble remembering the name of your labels. Note: I am really bad about tagging. Please be better than I am.

When you're done, write on your blog a bit about your customization and labeling.  What will you have to consider when adding media to a blog?  How did you choose what to add? And which gadgets did you find most useful?  And how did you choose the labels you did?

Thing 1: Getting started

Welcome to 13 Things for writers. This project will provide you an overview of how you, as a writer, can make the best use of Web 2.0. Some of you have a good idea (you're probably tweeting about it right now!), but you're looking for some new insights. Some of you would rather go check your facebook than actually create something on the web.  That's OK.  There will be something for everyone here.

Throughout this project, I hope you gain a better understanding of how Web 2.0--the social web--is changing the way we write. 

As a Gen Y writer, you are expected to have a good handle on how Web 2.0 works. Author Marc Prensky ("Digital Natives/Digital Immigrants") calls you a "digital native"--you were practically born with a cell phone in your hand, and you learned keyboarding when people of my generation were learning cursive. 

However, I've found that while many "digital natives" are great users of Web 2.0--you have facebook accounts and shop online--you're not necessarily in the drivers' seat. What about you? Do you keep a blog? Do you have a Twitter or Delicious account? Have you participated in the creation of a Wiki?

 Maybe you have, and maybe you haven't, but one thing is sure: when you graduate, employers will expect you to be savvy about digital communication of all kinds. This project will help you reach toward that goal--and develop your own digital footprint.  It will also give you a chance to play around with tools on the web that writers of all kinds can use--either socially, or on their own.

Now that we've got some background and insight, let's get started.  You're going to complete this project over the course of several weeks, and record your reflections--and links to your online projects--on a blog. So your first step is to build your blog.

THING 1: Building Your BlogYou'll use your blog to record your discoveries as you progress through the 13 Things. I recommend you use Blogger*, a popular free online blog hosting service that is easy to use.


Creating a blog using Blogger is easy:

• Create a gmail account. Unfortunately, the Coe email address won't work to set up a blog. But that's OK. You'll need another address once you graduate anyway--to send out employment materials, etc. You can set up a gmail account right on the blogger site. Keep in mind that you probably don't want to send out resumes from an account called "hotmama@gmail.com." How embarrassing. Use your first and last name, or something similar.
• Set up your blog. Just follow the instructions. The "Display Name" is your name on the blog. You can use your first name, or an alias.  Keep in mind you might want to share this blog with potential employers--to show off your mad digital skills.
• Name your blog. Blogger will tell you if the name is available.
• Select your template.  This is very similar to selecting a template in Google Sites.

Once you've created your blog here are two important things to know:

• To add posts: the interface you will use to add posts, edit or change the set-up of your blog is "blogger.com," accessed at http://www.blogger.com. Be sure to email yourself your login and password.
• To view your blog: To read the blog, use the "blogspot.com" address. Be sure to email yourself your blog address.

Once you have your blog set up:

Create a post called "Thing One" (you can also give it a subtitle if you want). Address these two questions:

1) So far, how have you been using Web 2.0?  Have you created any content for Web 2.0? Are you active on social media (besides facebook)?

2) What interests you about Web 2.0--what would you like to learn about? 

Finally:  Tell me where you are!  Add a comment to this blog that has YOUR blog's URL.  Just copy and paste it in.