Hi again, everyone.

A couple of emails arrived from Fellows yesterday asking about how to enter their posts into the blog. I was grateful for this reminder that, in addition to my messages about the rationale and strategy of the blog in our class, some more details about the mechanics would have been useful! This summer’s attempt at a hybrid, multi-site course is definitely a shake-down cruise, and such feedback will be essential all summer.

Here are a few directions I hope will do the trick for you, so that by next week you won’t even need to think about them anymore.

1. Go to the blog. Here’s the URL: https://sites.middlebury.edu/exploringlocalfoodsystem/blog/ Just highlight this and paste it into the address-bar at the top of your computer screen. You can then bookmark it for easy access on future occasions.

2. Click the box for “sign in” at the upper right of the blog page and enter your name and Middlebury password, as provided to you earlier.

3. If you want to read my updates and prompts (as I hope you will on a regular basis!) click “Letters to Class.” But for your own posts go to “Responses to Readings.” At the top of the screen there’ll be a + mark and the word “New.” Click that.

4. A screen will open with space for a brief descriptive title and a blank page for your message. You can either write directly on that page (my general recommendation) or paste in a message previously composed in Word. Either way you can do basic editing right in this space. Don’t worry about underlining or italicizing.

5. When you think you may be finished you have several options, shown at the right of the screen. “Save Draft” will let you come back to work on it at a later time. “Preview” will let you see how your post would appear to readers; the look on the page becomes a bit different. “Publish” would go ahead and add this to the blog. You can still always return to edit published posts. (I just added an l to published misprint, “bog,” two sentences earlier.) After such editing, click the “Update” box to your right.

6. Here’s how you’ll respond to a colleague’s post toward the end of each week. (Reminder: this will be due on Friday this week instead of Thursday, because of the videoconference from D. C. on Thursday evening.) After reading the post you’ve chosen, go down to the bottom of the page and write your message in the box labeled “Leave a reply.” It will expand to offer as much space as you need.

I hope this gives you plenty to get started. Please don’t hesitate to ask further questions as the blog gets rolling. If you’re wondering about how something works, others probably are too.

Best,

John