Writing for the Web #1: How do people read on the web?

Review students' final projects from past years and discuss your initial project ideas.

History of the Internet #1. Contributions by military, academic, and commercial entities.

Register on the wiki and review the course schedule. Be sure to set up notifications in your preferences, so that you will get an email when we change the wiki.

Review the project requirements.

Review student projects from recent years and be prepared to discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Reading for today: How Users Read on the Web

The History of the Internet in a Nutshell.

Wikipedia: History of the Internet

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Discuss/brainstorm your project ideas

Demo: Editing the wiki: How to submit Assignment #1

Impact and future of the Internet

Be prepared to discuss your preliminary project ideas in class. 

Reading for today: Millennials will benefit and suffer from their hyper-connected lives.

For more from the Pew study, read Will Google make us stupid?

Also on the subject of post-Facebook privacy, check out this Harvard Business Review's article called "We Googled You."

Futurism's past littered with faulty forecasts

Writing for the web #2: Know your audience; personas.

Discuss/brainstorm your project ideas (last chance).

We will tour Stanford and computing history exhibits starting in the basement of the Gates Building.

Collaborative brainstorming exercise: What is the Internet?

Assignment #1 Due
Write a 2-page concept piece (500-1000 words) about the general area of your project (medicine, retail, education, finance, social movements, non-profits, politics, etc.). How has this area of human activity changed in general over the past 20 years, and how has the Internet shaped the outcome? How will offerings in your general project area use the Internet more effectively in the future?

For example, if your topic is in game technology, write about how the internet has changed the game industry generally, or even the entertainment industry. Don't focus on your particular project until next week's assignment.

For more detail on this assignment, see Assignment 1.

Our weekly Writing for the Web topics are all covered in How to Write for the Web.

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Discuss Assignment #1. Impact and future.

Project research: on-line resources beyond Google and Wikipedia. Software tools for organizing research materials.

Reading for today: How to Find Anything Online: Become an Internet Research Expert

Notes03

Look at: Research Resources

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Writing for the web #3: Islands of content; headers and sub-headers; the inverted pyramid.

Demo: Creating web pages in Google Sites.

The technology of the web #1: networks, packets, routers, TCP/IP, DNS, HTML, browsers, architectural layers.

Assignment #2 Due
Write a two-page description of your project. Talk about your motivation, your target audience(s), and the structure of the site itself (e.g., the main sections). What's the main point you are trying to get across? What action do you want visitors to take?

Google Sites Documentation

Notes on Internet Technologies, HTML

Browsers: Note13, Notes 1

Notes04

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Discuss Assignment #2. Project descriptions.

Sector discussions. From time to time through the quarter we will examine the past and future impact of the Internet on Retail, Medicine, Entertainment, and other aspects of our lives. Today's topic: How will education and training be impacted by the web?

Reading for today: David Brooks, NY Times, The Campus Tsunami

Learn to use Google Sites or an equivalent website creation tool. There is ample online documentation. An hour or two exploring all the menus, buttons, and help pages in a tool like Google Sites will make you more comfortable and reduce frustration and stress later in the quarter.

Education: Notes on Education, Notes09, Notes05. See Sugata Mitra's inspirational TED talks on the future of education.

Cusumano 2013: Are the Costs of 'Free' Too High in Online Education?

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Speaking and Webcasting

Writing for the web #4: Above the fold; smart links; text in video.

A guest presentation by Rick Gilbert of PowerSpeaking.com about the do's and don'ts of voice and video.

Learn to use a video recording and editing tool. Editing facilities (and helpful people) are available in the Meyer Library Tech Services Center.

Assignment #3 Due.
By now you should have launched a website for your project - at least the home page. Put enough information on the page so that a reader who happens to land there knows what it's about and who the target audience is, i.e., whether he should read further. Put the title of your project on the Classlist page and link to your website.

If you are having trouble getting your website project started, please come to office hours before class on Thursdays and Fridays. The quarter is almost half over!

Also note availability of Stanford's Oral Communications Program. You are welcome to rehearse with tutors there, or show them your webcast drafts.

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Discuss Assignment #3 and website authoring tools, issues.

The technology of the web #2: search, metadata. Content and search complement each other.

History of the Web #2: Web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0. Crowd sourcing. The cloud. Big data. Anonymity

Reading for today: Wired: How Google's Algorithm Rules the Web

Browsers: Note13

Web 2.0: O'Reilly: What is Web 2.0; Notes14 

Web 3.0: Tim Berners-Lee's TED talk on linked data and the next Web. Hendler: Web 3.0 Emerging; Kate Ray, Web 3.0; Notes 16

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Writing for the web #5. Hierarchies, lists, and tables.

Business and project plans; Ongoing cost, market, trust as part of a business plan.

Approaches to income generation on the Internet. Advertising revenue. Business to business (B2B) on the Internet.

Continue tour of the Gates Hall exhibits.

Reading for today: Garage.com's Writing a Compelling Executive Summary

Assignment #4 Due
Prepare a short (3 minute) video or webcast about your project and the website you are building. Work from the description you created in Assignment #2. (Hint: create a script.) You can video yourself speaking, or talk over PowerPoint slides, or script a scenario with actors, or give a tour of the website with voice over, or any combination. We'd like to see you speaking in part of the video.

Note on Business Plans

Income; Past Notes 07

Rodney Dangerfield's approach to Business Planning.

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Review and discussion of students' webcasts. What makes web pages work?

Website workshop: issues and ideas

Data, information, knowledge. 'Actionable information' and your web sites.

Review everyone's webcast and be prepared to discuss in class. See Constructive Criticism.

Be prepared to discuss/demo in class neat things you are doing on your website or things you want to do and are having trouble with.

Note on Data and Information.

Data Science: How Kaggle Is Changing How We Work.

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Writing for the web #6, Navigation.

Discussion of marketing, market analysis, competitive analysis, and positioning. Demographics for market size.

Protecting your work and its Intellectual Property: Patents, Copyright, Trademarks, Trade secrets. Importance of IP as part of the value of a company.

Assignment #5 Due
Prepare a 2-3 page plan for your project that shows, like a Business Plan would, a certain degree of thinking through the possibilities and potential problems as regards the market (users), features, competition, costs, and operation of the project. See Notes07.

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Discuss Assignment #5. Project plans.

Sector discussion: government and politics. Virtual communities and Virtual Nations.

Reading: How Technology Changed American Politics in the Internet Era, a Mediashift timeline through 2010.

Student Critique assignments will be made in class (see Assignment #7). Critiques by your colleagues of your project and website are due next week, so it is time to get something out there to be reviewed. It's OK to have placeholders for some sections.

This recent Economist article on technology and the 2012 elections might also be of interest.

Past Notes 18 - Virtual Nations

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Public policy issues: Net neutrality, censorship, taxation, transparency, privacy, security, trust, surveillance, voting

Sector discussion: How will Healthcare and Medical Records be impacted by the web?

Assignment #6 Due
Examine some other websites in your space and "analyze the market." (What other sites might your target audience(s) go to instead?) What are the strengths and weaknesses of the related sites. Does your site complement what is out there? If you are competing, how is your site better? If yours is unique, why?

See top two articles on References page re Facebook privacy

Anonymity: Fast Company: The Future of the Internet, Where Everybody Knows Your Name

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Discuss Assignment # 6. Market analysis.

Website problems and triumphs -- sharing in class.

The future of college.

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Writing for the web #8, visual elements, review.

Discuss student projects and reviews.

IP Protection #2: Company valuation.

The Deep Web, databases, image and video management.

IP: Notes06, IP protection

Deep Web: Notes16, Past Notes 08

Note Representation, Past Notes 06

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Issues (privacy, universal access, net neutrality)

The Internet and the future of International relations.

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The future of the web.

Course review.

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