Blog Guidelines
The purpose of the HAPS blog site is to promote HAPS with personal accounts of topics relevant to the HAPS membership and the larger community. We typically prefer that authors commit to a series of posts to span a defined period of time. Unless otherwise negotiated, authors must contribute a minimum of four (4) informative and original blog posts per month to retain author status.
HAPSblog is not the appropriate venue for announcement type posts – those should be routed through existing social media avenues including the HAPS list serv, Facebook page, and LinkedIn site.
Proposals for blog topics and timelines should be made to either the chair of the communications committee or the HAPS executive director.
Guidelines for Authors:
Authors must be HAPS members or working directly with HAPS members
Authors agree to grant HAPS permanent license to use any content posted to the HAPSblog
Blogs posts must be unique content
Authors may not use the HAPSblog to:
- Conduct or promote outside business activities
- Promote or advertise commercial products regardless of whether they are related to teaching or unrelated to teaching.
- Defame or cause defamation to the character of any individual, organization, or institution
- Divulge personal information about students nor any personally identifiable information about students.
- Release any information that jeopardizes student safety or comfort in any way.
When contributing your views to this blog, please be mindful of civil conduct and ensure that you:
do represent your own views and not impersonate or falsely represent any other person;
do not be abusive, harass or threaten others;
do not post anything which:
racially or religiously vilifies others,
incites, induces or aids violence, discrimination, harassment, victimization or hatred towards others, or
is likely to offend, insult or humiliate others, particularly on the basis of their race, color, descent, national origin, religion, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation or any disability;
do not make defamatory or libelous comments;
do not use insulting, provocative or hateful language;
do not use obscene or offensive language;
do not post material to the blog that infringes the intellectual property rights of others;
do not post multiple versions of the same view to the blog;
do not promote commercial interests in your posts to the blog
Posts that do not comply (or do not appear to comply) with the above points will be removed from the forum and Author status will be immediately suspended pending review by the HAPS Communication Committee.
Style hints and suggestions
Many sites have guidelines for making posts more interesting for readers. A set of suggestions below is a modified version of those available from the British Council:
Blog posts should contain original and unique content. Readers are interested in reading new materials.
Write in a friendly and informal style. Refer to your real teaching experience in the classroom, but be careful to not specifically identify any students
Keep it short. Your blog posts shouldn’t be more than 250 words.
Add tags and categories. Tags and categories are both types of keywords and short phrases that you can use to describe your posting or topic. In general, we will have a smaller number of categories than tags. Categories will be designed to encompass a larger number of posts than tags. We will work with you to define the most useful descriptors for your posts.
Use titles to attract your audience. Your title should be catchy and should reflect what is delivered in the blog post.
Share accurate information. Make sure to reference any outside sources.
Break content into smaller units. Make your post readable by using bulleted lists or breaking into paragraphs. In general, even the most educated reader is not looking for hardcore, dense scientific writing in a blog
If you want to do something and do not have the technical capability to do it (add in links, categories, tags, etc) feel free to ask for help!
Also see:
http://www.edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2006/10/blog-rules
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/norm-schriever/the-20-golden-rules-of-bu_b_4388943.html