WEB-BLOG - FIRST ASSESSMENT

Hi Everyone

Please note your Personal Blogs are now accessible directly from the
BCB703 Weblog menu on the right hand side - please look at each others
and provide comments! If there is a problem with the linking just put a
comment up and I will attend to it.

Your first assessment of your Weblog will be undertaken on the 7th
April. From then on monthly assessments will be done and these marks
accumulated to form the final mark for your Weblog. Your Blog counts 30%
of the Scientific Methods BCB703 course. Please see my first posting on
this site. By this time you should have set up your Blog and have at
least five original postings. From now on you should maintain 3 postings
per week that reflect some of the issues that you face as you undertake
your Honours studies. Personal expressions are also useful but there
will be an emphasis on the depth of your postings and their relevance to
contemporary science and society. This does include issues of ethics and
what is currently happening in the world.

PLEASE REVIEW MY POSTINGS ON WEBLOGS TO HELP ESTABLISH THE USEFULNESS
OF YOUR EFFORTS IN MAINTAINING A WEBLOG.

http://bcb703.blogspot.com/2006/03/introduction-to-weblogs.html

Some General comments to help you

Provide some info (biography) and photos of yourself this will help
introduce yourself to the class on the other side of the country.

Make the effort to post useful links and articles so that it helps with
your revision and collecting of information for your project.

Some Specific comments to help you

Bevan and Bradley - you seem to be promising stuff but not delivering
anything - its time to start applying yourselves. There is no excuse for
not putting anything up on your Blog, you will need to start applying
yourself and getting down and doing some work this year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I will not be giving any more warnings just marks to reflect your
efforts. This is a core module that you will need to pass to ensure
successful completion of the Honours programme.

Elizabeth and Annamarie you have made a start and have several postings
but somehow there seems little connection to the science and society or
your current studies. Personal expressions are fine, including those of
frustration, but we want to know what useful resources you have found
(links of scientific interest), how is the field-work going? What have
you discovered about your project? OK so a little more focus, but I do
like the regularity that Elizabeth is posting and there is depth of
feelings here - your last posting was really nostalgic for me - I have
not thought about Afrikaans Poets for several years and not to any depth
since school!

Bentley - some great photos and I know the Chinese say a picture is
worth a thousand words - but actually we are requiring the thousand
words of original expression since to paste a picture these days is so
very easy! Nevertheless a nice design and a touch of humour but needs
more content!

Riaan - hey dude some strong images and you have put up some stuff
that's good for debate - but where do you stand? Should we continue to
criminalize the use of Dagga or let people do damage to themselves? At
least you put up some of your own views on the Global Dimming. We have a
digital copy of Global Dimming video if anyone is interested. Good that
you are providing links to other sites!

Vincent - glad that you are getting into the frog field work - but
surely some of the scientific thoughts we are exposing you to are
stimulating some thoughts that need to find expression? We are expecting
at least three postings a week.

Karen - you say "never to young to learn" - well you are getting into
the cyber age very fast - well done! Yes doing an Honours in ECOLOGICAL
INFORMATICS is a bit of a roller coaster - but that's the excitement and
frustration of the IT world. I think you are expressing yourself very
well - concise but communicative.

David - these are just like research articles - I really was interested
with youR last boat trip - these are really informative submissions and
its great to see such enthusiasm - I thing this cyber trip will be
something you will remember.

PRETORIA LEARNERS

You will also need to start your Weblogs as soon as possible. Can you
please use the www.blogger.com service so that we can compare this to
the other blog-services that people have found. Let me know if you have
any difficulties, but the help is really easy to get you started. You
will be expected to modify your templates with some html in a little
while. When you have your Blog setup please makes a new posting with the
links to your site and FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS FOR POSTING ARTICLES ON
THE WEB!

Cheers and signing off after a long day!

Rich

Dr Richard Knight
Co-ordinator: National Information Society Learnerships - Ecological
Informatics
Department of Biodiversity and Conservation Biology
University of the Western Cape
Private Bag X17
Bellville 7535

Phone 27 + 21 + 959 3940
Fax 27 + 21 + 959 1237

Email Rknight@uwc.ac.za

Web http://nisl.uwc.ac.za