As a finishing touch to your website we would like you to produce a 3-4 minute video or slide show capturing your field class experiences – something like the video produced in 2007 and shown below.
The mini-laptop supplied will have Windows Movie Maker installed. You could create a video slide-show entirely from still images, but most digital cameras also have the capacity to record short video sequences. Groups are welcome to take camcorders if you own them but this is not a requirement.
The video will require sound – music and possibly some narration. The music may be a backing track provided by Windows Movie Maker or you may use an MP3 or music file obtained elsewhere or captured from CD using Windows Media Recorder.
One way to publish your video is to upload the video file to Youtube and then embed your Youtube video in a sidebar widget or in a post or page. However there are some drawbacks to this approach.
We will discuss the video in more detail on the preparation day. One of the tasks between the two preparation sessions/days will be for each group to familiarise themselves with using Movie Maker and for making decisions on what if any music files will be required as you will make the movie while in Crete.
Twitter is the latest fashionable Web 2.0 application and allows individuals to post updates via the Web, email, or mobile phone to friends and other “followers”. An RSS feed of twitter updates is also available and this can be added to other Web 2.0 sites like Wordpress.
On this site we take feeds from two Twitter sites (twitter.com/sfakia_crete and twitter.com/gg2fc). The latter feed is our way of posting notices about updates to this site.
It’s not compulsory but a Twitter feed may be a neat feature to have on your Wordpress website. Wordpress.com includes a more powerful Twitter widget than we use here.
The great thing is that posting via Twitter won’t rely on being “online” in Crete as you can post from your mobile phone. It may add a sense of immediacy and allow ad hoc observations to be posted quickly, which may otherwise be lost by the time you write your blog entries in the evening.
Flickr is an online photo management and sharing application.
While in Crete a digital camera will be essential (each group will need at least one between them) and you will take many photos.
During the preparation day you will ensure that you’re able to transfer photos from your camera to the mini-laptop provided for each group’s use in Crete. Each day in Crete you will download your photos to the computer; they can be managed using the Windows Live “Photo Gallery” application and we recommend you back-up photos to a data stick.
You may add photos to your Wordpress website by inserting them into posts (without first uploading to Flickr).
However once uploaded to Flickr you can take advantage of the Flickr widget, which can be inserted into your website sidebar. You can also add photos to Google Earth placemarks (covered later).
The actual process of uploading to Flickr may wait until June 24th following your return to England as “online” time in Sfakia will be limited.
However each group should create a shared Flickr account well in advance.
Much like Wordpress, Flickr is intuitive and easy to use and has a number of potentially useful features. Anyone who can use Facebook will manage to use Wordpress and Flickr.
Wordpress is a powerful blogging and website content management system.
Wordpress.com hosts hundreds of thousands of blogs and it is possible to download the software from wordpress.org and install it and run it from your own web server (as we have done for this site).
Each group will create their own blog hosted on wordpress.com. The procedure for creating your group blog is simple. One person must take the lead and sign-up with wordpress.com. This person creates the blog as part of the registration procedure. As part of this procedure they will be asked to specify the blog domain:
The title is left to your discretion (and can be altered after the blog is created).
As soon as Wordpress has created the blog this group member has the status of “administrator”. They then invite other members of the group to join the blog as contributors. On the Wordpress dashboard, select “Users” from the menu and then from the sub-menu click on “Invites”. Complete the form:
Ensure the “Add user to my blog as a contributor” box is ticked.
Repeat this procedure for each group member.
Each group member will then receive an email from Wordpress with a personal link that sends them to a sign-up page. On this page they choose the option to create a username; not create a new blog. After the sign-up procedure is complete they will have become a “contributor” to the group blog.
All group members must be “administrators” so the original administrator (who created the blog) must upgrade the other members’ role from “contributor” to “administrator”. This is all accomplished via the “Users” menu. Each group member will then have equal power over the group blog and may add, edit and delete material.
Please also add me as an administrator by entering my email address a.howard@reading.ac.uk.
Using wordpress.com to create and manage content is simple and intuitive. The best way to learn is by trial and error, exploration and practice. A detailed user guide is available from http://spectacu.la/wp-content/uploads/wordpress-27_user_guide.pdf but this should not be essential reading.
The core features include:
APPEARANCE: Wordpress.com provides many themes (website designs) to choose from. You can normally change the header image in order to personalise it. A theme will include a main content area and 1 – 4 sidebars. This site has two sidebars. The sidebar contents are controlled by adding and arranging WIDGETS. These offer potential for easily integrating third-party content. For example on this site there are three “RSS feed” widgets, which display content feeds from external websites (including Twitter). The list of recent posts is displayed by adding the “Recent Posts” widget to the sidebar. The “Flickr” widget will enable you to add photos easily and again relies on the RSS feed from your group’s Flickr account. Your group will therefore need to create a “Flickr” account for the purposes of this field class.
POSTS and PAGES: Here is where you write your content. You can include photos, links and other media within posts. You can organise posts in categories and assign “tags” and they are clearly time stamped. They form your blog’s timeline and appear in your site’s RSS feed. Pages look similar but don’t use categories or tags, are not time stamped and do not feature in the RSS feed. They are useful for displaying “static” information but I recommend you generally add content via posts rather than using pages.
The remaining features of Wordpress will be used to manage your site – explore and experiment.
Before departing for Crete, your website will be complete in terms of design and it will be a matter of populating it with content while on the field trip. It is entirely possible to complete the task of creating a Wordpress blog and learning to use it in the week before we leave between the two preparation days/sessions. However groups should feel free to setup and explore the potential of their Wordpress site anytime between now and then.
We would like to thank everyone in Chora Sfakion for welcoming us on our visit in June 2009 and all the businesses who gave us free access to wireless Internet which meant everything you read and watch here was produced 'in the field'. Our field trip included three staff (Dr Alan Howard, Ken Beard and Richard Tegg) and 28 students registered for the degree in Human and Physical Geography at the University of Reading.
