HFC F2016: Welcome to History and Form of Cities

Welcome!

This is the first blog entry marking the History and Form of Cities, Fall 2016.

Students are not responsible for any information on JelloSpace previous to this post

Try leaving a comment to see how this blog works.
If you have questions about the blog questions please email Prof. Andrew H.:
andr (dot) hart @ gmail (dot) com

Check back soon, updates for the first week's class will be posted soon - additionally each week there will be a new class-related post.

First: Important Blogging Information

Please take the time to thoroughly read these instructions on using the course blog. As this will represent the majority of our means of communications it is very important to fully understand its use.

This blog will have up-to-date information relating to the course and discussion topics related to both lectures and debates. Topics relating to the lecture will be posted in conjunction with those lectures. Students should visit the website and test posting comments before the first deadline to insure they are familiar with the online tools of the course. Direct all blog related questions to Prof. Andrew Hart.

Blackboard will be used for official course postings, announcement, course documents, lectures, and debate, notes and updates. Check there for all official course documents.

University Email will be used to notify everyone of new updates, general comments, and specify student notes on progress and practices. Here are a few guidelines to remember when emailing to ensure the speediest response + feedback to your emails

• *All emails directed to Prof. Hart should be titled starting with "HFC:" followed by a brief description (ex. HFC: question about this week's lecture)
• *When emailing always sign your name; this ensures that it is clear who the email is coming from.

JelloSpace Blog All students will post comments in regards to lecture material on the JelloSpace Blog. Comments are intended to facilitate online discussion of the lecture topics. Other uses for the blog include but are not limited to, topical discussion on current events pertaining to the course, gathering student found/generated public resources, web links, etc.

Students are encouraged to submit content to Adj. Professor Andrew Hart via email to be incorporated into the website, provide feedback to fellow students, link to material to augment the course, generate meaningful discussion. These practices will the course participation grade. Students are highly encouraged to participate beyond the mandatory minimum listed in the syllabus.

Posting Practices to Blog:

All students comments will be signed using the First Name followed by First Initial of Last name format, as shown here (please note this is essential, since we meet online this is how you will be gauged on class participation and attendance):

John Doe = John D.
Jane Doe = Jane D.
Samantha Kutiz-Meyer = Samantha K. or Samantha K-M
Tien-Xing Hao = Tien-Xing H.

• *For the purposes of this blog and this class do not sign comments using nicknames, i.e. Samantha, please do not post as Sam, Sammy, Sammie, S. K. etc.
• *It is not necessary for you to have a Gmail account to post on the blog.
• *Although there is an option to leave an email address, this does not substitute for not signing a name.
• *This is for student privacy. No last names please. This format is mandatory for grading identification. In the event of students with the identical naming practice name the faculty and students will designate an appropriate alternative.
• *If you notice another person in the class has a similar name to you, (ex. John Hogan and John Haverford, which would result in a post for both students as 'John H.', please take it upon yourself to expand your signature until it is unique to you - that way you can be sure there are no mix-ups and you will be credited for your posts)
• *Comments which are not signed cannot count towards grading.
• *You must submit at least one comment per lecture or debate post, but you are not limited to one submission, in fact the best discussions have begun over students responding to other students observations!
• *Best practices is to post once to address the lecture points, and post again as follow up with questions, challenges, answers and additional resources for your classmates and the general discussion.
• *Grading will be reflect the quality of the writing, level of interaction and participation, submitting and the ability of each student to generate and maintain an informed discussion by using the resources at hand.
• *Posts which are deemed better-than-average will receive more credit.
• *Missing a posting, or posting late will result in zero credit for that assignment unless otherwise noted.

Notes on Blog Writing:

All students should endeavor to write thoughtful, meaningful, well-reasoned and original responses, which move the discussion forward. References to work inside and outside of class are welcome and should also be accompanied by a reference as laid out in official course literature and practices (see Blackboard). Additionally all external website information should be linked to in a usable format and date given as to when the information was accessed. Journalistic, professional peer-reviewed and scientific resources are more reliable sources for basing arguments. Sites such as Wikipedia, and personal web sites are discouraged. These site can sometimes be utilized as gateways to better, citable, resources, but they should not be used as student cited resources. There are plenty of additional, more substantial resources to pull from, current newspapers, magazine publications, and official online content from government, departments, policy consortiums, design groups, etc. are able to provide much more detailed and useful information for our purposes. The link list on the left hand side of the blog is a compilation of links formed from previous classes

Faculty will review student comments for content as well as writing quality. If you have any questions, want more feedback or have additional resources or topics you think could find their way into the course please contact us!

Please feel free to utilize the comments section of this blog post to test the comments feature and signing your name correctly (while this may seem overly simple it is essential that you know how to do this for the online portion of the class).

Additionally, if you use Google+, or a blog feed reader you can subscribe to JelloSpace for automatic update notifications.

Happy blogging!

Andrew H.