Instructions for students

Posting Rules

1. Once a week, you must post about whatever you are currently up to in the lab. This could be papers you are reading, data you are working on, pilot experiments - anything to do with your project.

• If your post is about a paper, add a Reference section to the end with the full APA style reference for all papers mentioned in the post. You can also often link to the article, using the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number: most articles have DOI numbers and you can make the link in the form http://dx.doi.org/INSERT_DOI)_NUMBER. See this post on my other blog as an example.

2. At least once a week (but more often is better) you must comment on someone else's post - ask a question, suggest something, anything you like so long as it's constructive. Keep an eye on your own posts and reply to other people's questions and comments. You should subscribe to the 'Comments' RSS feed from the link on the front page. The reason is simple; I want you to get in the habit of reading things and asking the questions that pop into your head as you go. This is a critical skill for a scientist.

3. Add labels to your post using the menu on the right of the post editing page; add your name, and as many tags as you like to categorise your post. If the tag is already available, use that; if you want to add a new one, just type it in. This makes posts more easily found; clicking on the label link will take you to all the posts by a given author, or on a given topic. If you have old posts without labels, go back and edit the labels in; I've already done some of the older ones to show you what I want.

Tips
Try not to copy and paste from Word; Word stores a lot of unnecessary formatting information behind the scenes in the form of messy HTML. The post will display, but the formatting might be all off. The best solution is to type directly into the blog editor; another is to copy and paste into Notepad first, then from there to the Blogger editor.

Use pictures!

• If you have your own data in Excel, you can make graphs and save that chart out as a picture by right clicking on the chart and following the instructions. 
• You can also take screen-shots from journal articles (e.g. of their graphs; see this post for examples). The easiest way to take a screen shot is to use the free software Screenshot Pilot; it is insanely easy to use.
• You can do basic picture editing and tweaking in Powerpoint. Open up a blank slide, add the picture(s) you want, add arrows or text box labels or what have you; then select all the pieces and 'group' them. You can then save the whole thing out as an image.

Questions? Ask in the comments!