History of Science Online - Course Info - Time tips - Semester Schedule - Weekly Assignments - Timeline - Projects - Course Info: HSCI 3013 - section 995 - Fall 2008

Yuku Tips & Tricks

We are actually using two different discussion boards for this class: Yuku (which has tons of neat features and tricks), and Desire2Learn. This page explain some tips and tricks for using Yuku, because that is where we will have the vast majority of our discussions.

New Topic. Each week you will create three New Topics on Yuku when you post your Starting Assumptions, an Interpretation, and a Reflection. Just click the New Topic button in Yuku.

Add Reply. You will also respond to other students every week, replying to their Starting Assumptions, their Interpretation, and their Reflection. To do that, just hit the Add Reply button, or you can click on the Add Reply link that appears as part of their post.

Use cool "Subject" lines to get people's attention! Do you want people to read your post? Then pick an exciting title! If you just call your post "Interpretation", some people might read it... but if you call your post "What Newton REALLY Thought About Alchemy," then more people are likely to take a look.

Finding unread messages. Discussion boards can fill up with lots of messages, and it is nice to be able to know which messages are new. Yuku shows you all the messages in a topic all at once, in one big screen. When there are new messages in a topic, you will see a golden bullet icon by the topic name. Then, when you open a topic, you will see the individual posts that are new (down at the bottom) marked with the golden bullet. If you get done reading all the messages you want to read in all the topics in a forum, you can click on the link that says "Mark Forum As Read." Then later, when new messages are added to the forum, you will see the icon off to the side that lets you know there are new messages.

Finding your own messages. At Yuku, if you are looking for the messages that you have posted in a particular topic (or if there is somebody in the class you are looking for), then you can use the Search link.

Find out if somebody has replied to you: get an email alert! Yuku can send you an email alert when new replies are added to your posts. Just click on the link down at the bottom of the page that will turn on the "watch" feature -- and if you want to turn the watch feature off, just click on the link again and it will turn the feature off.

Say more with links and pictures. You can make your posts more intriguing and dynamic by adding pictures and links. It's easy!

• Custom links in Yuku. In Yuku you can also create custom links where what the user sees is not the actual web address, but a piece of text that you have typed. With Yuku you can just type the text that you want people to click on for the link (for example, "Cool website"). Highlight the text and click on the Link button over to the left. That will pop open a box where you can paste the address. Don't worry about all the HTML code. In order to see if the link worked, click on the Preview box and then hit Add Reply. You should see your link underlined and clickable. You can then edit your post some more if you want before finally posting it to the Yuku.
   
• Pictures. Yuku makes it easy to include pictures. You can include pretty much any picture that is already published on the Internet as part of your post. Just go to the webpage that has the picture you want to use. Right-mouse click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac) on the picture; then choose Properties (Windows) or Open Image in New Window (Mac). You will see a URL (web address) for the picture that starts with http:// (just like a webpage). Highlight that address and copy it. Then go to Yuku. Click on the "Image" link where you are creating your post in Yuku. It will pop up a box where you can paste in the address you copied. Don't worry about all the HTML code. In order to see if it worked, click on the Preview box and then hit Add Reply. You should see your image displayed there inside your post. You can then edit your post some more if you want before finally posting it to the Yuku.
   
• Create an Yuku personal photo or icon. Instructions are found in Yuku Help. Mine is a detail of a famous engraving of the inaugural lecture on geology at the University of Oxford by William Buckland in 1823. The complete colored version of the engraving hangs on the wall inside the lobby of the History of Science Collections.

Post-Icons and Emoticons. Emoticons, described here, are a great way to "liven up" your contributions to Yuku.

Spell Check. Please spell-check all Web Project assignments and posts to discussion boards (making your posts more readable through correct spelling is a courtesy for other students).

Editing and deleting posts. Yuku allows you to edit a post after you have created it, adding a little note that the post was edited which gives the date. In Yuku, you need to send the instructor an email if you want to have a post deleted: this is because I don't want to accidentally delete the posts of students who replied to you. If you want to remove your post at Yuku right away, just use the edit feature to delete the contents of your post! Then you can contact me to have the post completely removed.

	HSCI 3013. History of Science to 17th century Kerry Magruder, 2004-08 Report typos or broken links Many thanks to Mythology and Folklore and other online courses developed by Laura Gibbs.	Search course websites:
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