FACTSnet Manual 2010

Written by: Matthew Fong on May 12, 2010.
Last updated on June 4, 2010

Table of Contents
-- Preamble & Introduction
-- Organization of Personnel
-- FACTSnet Usage
-- Blogging
-- Advanced: Blogger Coding
-- Addenda

PREAMBLE & INTRODUCTION

The Internet is undoubtedly a powerful structure in modern society, whether in a complex post-industrial situation as North America or a small monastery in Tibet. Its ability to facilitate information transfer on a mass scale - both in terms of volume and globally - is unmatched by any other communicante. Naturally, like television, this rapid flowering of information has also produced methods for distraction. Advertising, pop culture, and other permutations of the entertainment industry pervade the extracellular spaces of the World Wide Web, and effects have resulted such that fundamental values of information exchange have changed for the worse, or are neglected.

FACTS (Family & Community Twining Society) is a society whose mission and goals are to use the Internet as a tool for encouraging development and use of value-based media in community network development. Groups that are served by FACTS include the elderly, schools, religious groups, immigrant groups, First Nations, and other visible minorities. FACTS also recognizes the trend in information exchange and has made its mandate to facilitate dialogue in various forms and the use of the Internet as a value-based medium. Towards this end, FACTS has established a network of weblogs ("blogs") through the Google-based Blogger service. Collectively known as FACTSnet, these blogs number approximately a hundred, and each is tailored to a specific target demographic - examples include Stony Plain Heritage, Alberta Social Studies (Grade 8), etc. Through the use of these blogs, FACTS aims to bring a sense of collegiality to said networks for the betterment of education, quality of life, and community.

ORGANIZATION OF PERSONNEL

FACTS was founded and is led by Dr. David Ibsen (factsc@gmail.com). He has assembled a team of people that truly defines itself as a network, in that all individuals are located around the Greater Edmonton area, but come together to create, manage, and interact with FACTSnet.

Brian Gold (bgold@ualberta.ca) is the supervisor for the Millwoods project. Olenka Bilash (obilash@ualberta.ca) is working on cultural networking at the University of Alberta. Ernest (Ernie) Chauvet (ctourisms@gmail.com) is the head of Société de Tourisme Centralta (CTS/STC), which is responsible for providing the French community of schools, families, and neighbourhoods with the same resources and cultural insight that FACTS provides.

For 2010, we currently have a number of student team members split mainly between FACTS (David) and CTS/STC (Ernie); in alphabetical order by last name:

FACTS
Matthew Fong (mifong@ualberta.ca, or fong.matt@hotmail.com)
Jonathan Lam (skinsmen@gmail.com)
Andrew Love (alove2@ambrose.edu)
Jenny Yoon (under Brian) (jjyoon@ualberta.ca)

CTS/STC
Meghan Arcand (i.love.damien@hotmail.com)
Nicole Labonté (princessleia_19@hotmail.com)
Amélie LeBlanc (mulder773@yahoo.ca)
Ramona Rumuri (rumuri@ualberta.ca)

This list is subject to change, and additions will be made when David begins hiring high school students who will ultimately be responsible for the content of FACTSnet blogs. Team meetings will be held on a regular basis to keep everyone up to speed; for now, they are held approximately once a week at locations to be determined by David.

It should be noted that CTS/STC also has a number of students under its wing, and we may be required to provide support for them at various times.

FACTSNET USAGE

FACTSnet is currently comprised of approximately a hundred blogs. Currently, as you may or may not have noticed, they are disorganized and only marginally navigable, and certainly not usable by the public. The current state of FACTSnet is known as the Alpha version, so to speak. It is essentially the groundwork that previous students working for David had laid down in preparation for our work concerning FACTSnet this summer. Our focus is to turn FACTSnet Alpha into FACTSnet Beta, meaning that by the end of the summer it has to be working well, to the point that it will be on the cusp of being ready for the public.

The current manner in which we organize and work with FACTSnet is as follows:

1. "FACTSnet Summer Program Network" -- http://hsummers.blogspot.com/ -- This is the current 'central' blog for FACTS' summer programs. As FACTS operates mostly in the summertime it's important to concentrate alot of effort in keeping this page up to date and informative. Currently it needs alot of work, but in the meantime, this is an important blog to look at because it contains the information about our programs during the summer, as well as information on our own student summer jobs (as Canada Summer Jobs looks at the descriptions of what we're doing). If you are interested in developing the front page, or would like information on this part of the project, don't hesitate to ask Matthew for an explanation as well as a copy of his presentation on this matter.
2. "FACTSnet Summer Archive" -- http://factsum.blogspot.com/ -- Colloquially known as "the archive", this is the blog that you are reading right now. This acts as the 'working area' blog for our own use. Everyone involved with FACTS has, or should have, access to at least basic authorship on this blog, as it is intended to be a place where everyone can post thoughts, ideas, and proposals. Following this, everyone can also comment on posts as a way of substituting online commentary when we cannot all meet face to face, in between our regular meetings. Therefore, it is extremely important that we use this blog effectively between ourselves, as it is a useful collection of resources such as this manual.
3. "FACTSnet Workshop" -- http://factsnew.blogspot.com/ -- This is a training blog for those who are new to blogging, and need to set up their Google accounts for Blogger (otherwise you will not be able to use FACTSnet Summer Archive and other blogs as necessary). There are also instructions here for creating new blogs, in the event that your work this summer requires you to make new blogs.
4. "FACTSnet" -- http://factsnet.blogspot.com/ -- This blog is the front page for FACTS. Currently it explains the hierarchy of blog privileges within FACTS, the required and standard features of all FACTSnet blogs (important!), and contains an interesting piece on dialogue types of which David is a proponent.
5. "Alberta/Japan Grade 7 & 8 LA/Social Studies Network" -- http://abssgr8.blogspot.com/ -- This blog ties in FACTSnet programs to the Grade 7 and 8 curriculae in Alberta.

These are only a few out of the many blogs we have, but these are the four most important sections of FACTSnet to us as they contain the most pertinent information for developing FACTSnet Beta.

BLOGGING

So, how do we use these blogs? We have a number of Google accounts that we use to log into Blogger in order to publish, edit, delete, and modify blogs and their posts. With respect to the FACTSnet hierarchy, these are:

1. factsc@gmail.com -- open only to FACTSnet Coordinator, can see/edit all FACTSnet blogs
2. factsum@gmail.com -- open to all FACTSnet Administrators, required to use the archive
3. tricomn@gmail.com -- this account is used for authoring on the Tri-Community Network blogs, which collectively include Stony Plain, Spruce Grove, Parkland, Winterburn, and other such areas, moderated by Jon
4. factsabj@gmail.com -- this is the login for the Alberta/Japan Grade 7 & 8 LA/Social Studies Network blog, moderated and authored by Andrew
5. ctourisms@gmail.com -- Société de Tourisme Centralta's account used for authoring on French blogs

Passwords for these accounts will not be posted here, and will be given out at meetings in person.

There is a ton of different options and actions that you can perform while logged into FACTSnet blogging which we will not discuss in detail here; you can explore these avenues on your own as it would be faster to learn Blogger that way. Instead, the main sections of Blogger one should focus on are the Dashboard and Settings pages. The Dashboard is your central hub for monitoring and maintaining all your blogs. In the Dashboard is a Settings tab for each blog that you can use to control every aspect of your blog, from permissions for viewing to adding authors to importing/exporting blogs.

You can publish posts as you see fit from the Dashboard view, where there will be a New Post button (in blue) for every blog for which you have authoring access. If you need to post to a blog that you currently do not have access to, just ask one of the FACTS administrators for access.

Adding links: Links to other webpages or images can easily be inserted into text. To do this, highlight the words in your blog post that you want to act as your link, and click the button on the toolbar above that looks like a chain link. The chain link is the universally accepted symbol on the Internet for a link. Then specify the URL of the webpage or image that you would like to link to, and voila.

Creating a Page on a blog: see this post. A Page, under Blogger's use of the term, is simply one webpage on your blog that you the administrator singles out from among the other posts and information on your blog to signify some measure of importance and priority. For example, you can specify a Page for information about yourself instead of publishing that information to a post that will be inevitably lost in your other blog content over time. The major advantage of this feature is that you don't have to resort to unprofessional means such as dating priority posts/information to the year 2030. A Page follows the general template of your blog, so there is no need to custom code a whole new template for it. To enable comments on a Page, go to your Posting tab for your blog (accessible from the Dashboard > Edit Posts). Then click on the Edit Pages subtab. Click on Post Options (under the blogging window where you type your content), and then choose your preferred option for commenting, as well as HTML settings or composition settings.

ADVANCED: BLOGGER CODING

Blogger Code is the website coding language upon which Blogger is based. It consists of three basic elements that are used simultaneously to create templates:

• HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). HTML is the basic coding necessary for all webpages, including Blogger's. Without HTML you cannot have a website; if you want to learn HTML, it's very easy and takes only a few hours to master the basics. There is a somewhat informal but very helpful guide located here to start you off.
• CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Cascading style sheets is a secondary 'layer' of code that you can add to your basic HTML-coded website to achieve all sorts of effects. These can range from custom animations, to colour coordination, to general but advanced arrangement of your website's layout. A useful guide to CSS is located here
• Blogger Tags. Blogger uses its own custom tags alongside the tags specified under the official HTML and CSS rules. There is a short guide to them here.

ADDENDA

Various points and manual errata will be added to this manual at various points in the summer to reflect our constantly evolving knowledge and learning concerning FACTSnet, so be sure to check back on FACTSnet Summer Archive regularly, whether to contribute new information or to (re)read sections you want to brush up on.

At any time, please feel free to comment on this post, as this will contribute to our creativity.