How to Blog

Greetings, BIO 502ers! 

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I hope that your first quarter at Cal Poly was all you hoped for. I am excited to welcome you to winter quarter, when you should be developing your thesis project and establishing a committee (regular MS students) and working your butt off in coursework. Part of that coursework is BIO 502, enigmatically named The Biology of Organisms. This quarter, this means animal physiology, which I know gets you as excited as...

In BIO 502 you are required to write two blog posts. The due dates vary by student and are on the syllabus. The blog posts should be entered on this class blog site, should be about topics that interest you (one rule: they must be about physiology/behavior but can be on any organism), and should be high quality. I will let you figure out what that means on your own, but here are some tips:

1. Check out some of last year's blogs by looking at the archives. Another great example of a blogging graduate student can be found here. Click here for an article on how to write a good science blog.

2. Watch out for the three biggest mistakes that newbie science bloggers make! These are: blog is too short, blog is too long, blog is too technical. These last two are especially sucky, as they can lead to...

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2. Really good blogs should have lots of links and images, and not too much text. This will hopefully result in...

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3. Obviously, all blog entries must be 100% original material, written only by you, with citations and image credits where necessary. Please do not use an assignment you have previously completed for your blog post.

4. Read the other students' blogs as they are posted. This will prevent you from posting on the same topic, and besides, info from the blog posts will be on the exams. Please advertise your blog posts and your classmates' on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

DON'T FORGET, THE CLASS HASHTAG IS #Physiologizing

5. Choose your topic carefully! Remember, if you are bored writing your blog post, your readers probably will be, too. You get to pick the topics, so you have no excuse for being boring! Just remember this and you will do fine...