Here are the detailed instructions for your assignment for Friday. This will probably be the most complicated set of instructions you’ll ever have for this class, so don’t worry. Using the wiki might seem strange at first, but really it's quite easy.

1. Buy the class textbooks at the campus bookstore: Scott Mc Cloud’s Understanding Comics and Anthony Weston’s Rulebook for Arguments (3rd edition).

2. Take a minute to orient yourself around our class site. See what links we have up already, and see if other students have their blogs up yet.

3. Go to www.pbwiki.com and make an account. You will fill in your email address, and your handle. Your handle is your new online name, which you choose yourself. It is made of more than one word smushed together without any spaces, with each new word capitalized, like SargassoSea. You don’t have to worry about the email they send you; all we need is for pbwiki to know your handle and your email address.

4. Now that you have registered your handle with pbwiki, go back to our class site, and click on “Class Blogs.” Press the red "Edit" button, located at the top of the window. It will ask you for your email address, your handle, and the password for this wiki. This is not the same as the password that pbwiki.com sends you by email; this password is “popcorn.”

5. After you type in your name, email, and password, the next window you will see is the “Edit” window for the Class Blogs site. Add your handle to the list, and click "Update." You just added your new blog to the class list of blogs. The Wiki automatically realizes that, by having the capitalized words smushed together (called camelcase), you are trying to add a new page on the wiki, and it will create the page for you.

6. Go back to Class Blogs and click on the link you just made. It will take you to the space you just made, and you are ready to start your blog. (Formatting tips - that is, how to make a link, how to make something bold or italic, etc - are at the bottom of the "Edit" window, under "Wiki Editing Tips." Also, under QuestionsAndAnswers, I have a link to wiki-style help.) But don’t start typing your blog just yet; keep open this window while you move on to the next step.

7. Go to the syllabus and click on today’s entry (August 31). Read what is there, and then follow the link for the “Discussion of Intellectual Property.” Read what is there. It will explain what the Creative Commons license is: basically, by choosing an internet “license,” you will be telling Internet browsers what you authorize them to do with your work.

8. Follow the link to the Creative Commons to choose your license. Click on the “Publish” button on the righthand side of the window. Fill out the questions. On the question whether your work will be publicly editable, you must choose yes; this lets the class help you revise your work// Click “Select a License.” It will give you a string of HTML code. Copy this HTML code.

9. Go back to your blog “Edit” window. Paste the HTML code here. Please keep this code at the bottom of your blog at all times. It acts as your copyright, and you don't want to give that up!

10. Write your blog entry. For your first blog entry, you have two options. Either you can discuss why you answered the way you did to the Creative Commons license questions, or you can tell us why you chose the handle you chose. Our goal is 250 words per blog, but I understand this first blog might not require so many words. If you’d like, go ahead and make new blog entries about whatever you’d like to write about.

11. Spend a few minutes look at other students' blogs. Respond to their blogs if you'd like, either by adding your comments at the bottom of their blog, or by addressing their blog entry in a blog entry of your own.