XMind

Documentation Essentials

1. Flexibility

   1. any purpose

      1. revised editions

         Why think about repurposing: - In these digital days it is very common that an author (of all types of material) will rework good original pieces many times. Over a period of years and maybe decades they will likely produce second, third and fourth editions that reflect their growing knowledge and experience (and sometimes later editions might directly contradict earlier efforts as the author's paradigms shift). And authors (like you) will often publish elements out of these editions (in a blog perhaps) or, the other way around, will make the elements as stand-alone pieces in the first place, publish these to a blog or journal and later, gather selected elements up and make a coherent essay or book length piece from them. Most of us are not used to thinking long-term like this and instead assume that a piece of work created now just has a short life and then its done. However, with digital materials and an ePortfolio (Gaia University provides you with one of those) you can take the view that everything you author can be stored more or less permanently and revised and re-purposed over time. This is a very efficient way to build a significant contribution to the field.

      2. publish in print

      3. publish to web

         1. blog

         2. forum

         3. web page

         4. document

      4. email to allies & reviewers

   2. anytime

      1. now

      2. sooner

      3. later

2. Resilience

   1. use a universal form

      1. for text - rich text format = rtf

         1. Notepad (MS Windows)

         2. TextEdit (Mac OSX)

         3. Avoid MS Word due to dirty code

      2. for images - .png's or jpegs

      3. audio - MP3's, video MP4's

   2. produce and store locally

      1. avoid loss of current work thru dropped connection

      2. always have access even in power cuts/internet failure situations

   3. back-up with local, independent hard drive

   4. back-up text by posting online to GEL site or other

3. Practice

   1. Make local folders

   2. Create 400 word profile - your intro to the learning community

   3. Take/select an image (of you, not cat!)

   4. Save both in local folders

   5. Upload both to GEL site in Profile space - see video

4. Copyright issues

   1. Check copyright permissions when extracting the work of other people

   2. Choose which copyright license to attach to your own work

5. Organization

   1. What elements required?

   2. Pre-arrange local folders

      1. Text

      2. Re-sized images

      3. Links to other media

      4. References

      5. Cuttings