Service Learning Project Guidelines-How to
Reclaiming Broken Places: an Introduction to Civic Ecology MOOC
Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................................. 1 Getting Started ............................................................................................................................................ 1 Timing .......................................................................................................................................................... 1 Example civic ecology practice stories ......................................................................................................... 2 Storify: Online platform for creating your civic ecology story ..................................................................... 3 Create your Storify Account .................................................................................................................... 3 Creating Your Story .................................................................................................................................. 5 Sharing Your Story ................................................................................................................................. 13 Using the “Embed” option to share your story. ................................................................................ 13 Using the “Share” option to share your story .................................................................................... 14 Learn More about Storify ...................................................................................................................... 17 Service Learning Project Guidelines
Reclaiming Broken Places: an Introduction to Civic Ecology MOOC
Introduction
The civic ecology service learning project is designed to help you apply what you learn in the course to a
real practice. Whether you are able to visit or volunteer with a local practice, or create a story about a
practice you learn about online, your service learning project will help the practice by sharing its story
over social media. And you also will be contributing to a collection of stories that will demonstrate the
importance and diversity of civic ecology practices worldwide.
Through the service learning project, you will:
• participate in a civic ecology practice or visit a practice online.
• apply what you learn about civic ecology to the civic ecology practice you choose.
• share your experience and learning with class participants and with a global audience online.
You will be asked to:
• identify a practice.
• visit that practice in person or virtually, and participate in the practice if possible.
• explore how the civic ecology principles covered in the MOOC are expressed in your practice.
• using the online platform Storify, create a story about your practice with text, photos, video,
diagrams, and links to other sites about the practice.
• using the online platform Storify, reflect on what you learned in the service learning project.
Getting Started To start your service learning project, you will need to identify a civic ecology practice. This practice will
become the subject of the multi-media story that you create. You will use a series of guiding questions
related to each of the civic ecology principles to gather information for your story. As you gather the
information about your practice—including photos, video, text, web links, and interviews—you will post
it on your civic ecology Storify site. In the end, you will have created an online story of your civic
ecology practice that can help spread the word about that practice and about your work in this course.
Timing Please identify your civic ecology practice as early as possible during the course. If you are working with
a local practice, arrange a time to volunteer or visit as soon as possible. By the time you visit the practice,
you will have covered several of the civic ecology principles and be ready to start gathering information.
You can continue to add information to your story as you progress through the course. You can also
update your story or add new stories about civic ecology practices using the guidelines provided after the
class ends.
1 | P a g e Example civic ecology practice stories We have provided example civic ecology practice stories on the Civic Ecology Storify site.
Local practice we participated in.
https://storify.com/CivicEcology/the-friends-of-ithaca-city-cemetery
Practice we researched online.
https://storify.com/CivicEcology/civic-ecology-practices-in-soweto-south-africa
You can use these stories to get ideas for your own story.
2 | P a g e Storify: Online platform for creating your civic ecology story We have chosen Storify as the platform for you to create your story. Storify allows you to embed photos,
videos and other media you have already posted on Instagram, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites.
You can also input text. And you can link up Storify with your Facebook, Twitter, and other accounts.
You can view stories posted to Storify with your mobile device but as of February 2015, you cannot edit
stories using iPhones.
Below are directions for getting started on Storify. If after reading the instructions and trying out Storify,
you encounter problems, pose your questions on the Storify Troubleshooting Discussion on EdX. Please
also visit the discussion to help out your fellow students with their Storify questions!
Create your Storify Account Go to http://www.storify.com/
Click on “Sign Up Free” button near top of page.
Choose a username, enter your email address, and pick a password.
Click agree and then click on the sign in button
3 | P a g e You can also sign in using your Facebook or twitter account.
Once your account is created, click on “New Story” at the top of the page.
And get started creating your civic ecology practice story!
4 | P a g e Creating Your Story See Creating the Content in Your Civic Ecology Practice Story of this document for guidelines on
locating a practice and what content you will want to include in your story. Here we explain how to
embed elements and add text using Storify.
IMPORTANT: You will want to become familiar with the civic ecology principles and other information
to include in your story prior to deciding on what media and text to use in your story. See Creating the
Content in Your Civic Ecology Practice Story below and the material in the course modules.
You will use your Storify account to build your civic ecology practice story.
1. Click on the “Create your Public Story” icon.
2. Enter a name for your Story in the title box.
5 | P a g e 3. In the tagline under the title, type in the hashtag #civicecology
This is the tagline. You should enter the
#civicecology hashtag here along with
anyother hashtags that might relate to your
story
4. Add other hashtags in the tagline that describe your practice (e.g. #communitygarden #trashcleaning
#rivercleanup #friendsofparks #cleanenvironment)
You can give your story a subtitle, followed by multiple hash tags. The hashtags are what make it
possible for people to find your story in online searches.
Here is an example of the tagline for the Soweto Mountain of Hope story.
5. Locate the media you will use in your story. If you are creating a Story about a practice you visit in
person, you can take your own photos and video. If you are not familiar with posting to YouTube,
Instagram, etc, it may be simplest to create or use your Facebook account and post photos or videos
on Facebook. If you are creating a story about a practice you learn about online, you can search for
the practice and locate photos, online articles, videos, and other media about your practice on Google,
YouTube and other platforms. (You may also find online media about a practice you visit in practice.)
6 | P a g e 6. You can connect to your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Flickr accounts to access your images or
posts. You can log in to all of these accounts from Storify.
Click on the Twitter (Facebook, Instagram, etc) icon and enter your user ID.
Drag and drop the relevant twitter feed
Follow a similar procedure for importing media from Flickr and other apps.
7 | P a g e 7. You can also search for images or articles on Google and use them in your Storify story.
Click on the Google icon in Storify.
Choose the article or other media you want and drag it into Storify.
Drag and drop the best
news item across to
your story
The article is now embedded in your story.
8 | P a g e You can also click on Flickr and other apps to search for publicly accessible media that are
relevant to your story.
And drag the images into your Storify story.
Drag your chosen image
across
The image you chose is now embedded in your story.
9 | P a g e 8. You can embed a URL for Vimeo or other apps that you are not able to link to directly from Storify,
Click on the “Embed” icon on Storify.
Cut and Paste the Vimeo URL from your browser and click the search icon
The url for Vimeo video.
10 | P a g e Drag the video into your story.
11 | P a g e 9. You can customize the sources for media on your Storify account.
Click on the “+” button.
This brings up sources you already have access to and the available sources.
Drag any available sources over to selected sources and click “Save.”
10. Change the location of any element you have added to your story by dragging and dropping within
Storify.
12 | P a g e Now you are ready to type in text to explain and tie together the media elements. See Creating the
Content in Your Civic Ecology Practice Story below. But first we will complete our Storify
tutorial by explaining how to share your story.
Sharing Your Story Once you have started writing your story, you can share it on the Civic Ecology MOOC Facebook Group
and other social media like Twitter. You can do this using the “Embed” or “Share” option.
Using the “Embed” option to share your story. Click on “Embed” on the upper right corner of your Storify page.
Copy the Embed Code
Paste it on the Civic Ecology MOOC Facebook Group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/583738625103665/
Use the same process to embed your story in other social media.
13 | P a g e Using the “Share” option to share your story Once you have completed writing your story, you can “Publish Changes”
Then click on the “View and Publicize it” link. It will take you to your published story.
Scroll down to the end of your story and click the “Share” icon.
14 | P a g e You can share your Storify on your Twitter account.
You will be prompted to log into your Twitter account. You can also enter any #hashtags #civicecology in
the tweet text window.
Enter your login and password. Then click “Login and Tweet” and story will be posted on your Twitter
account.
15 | P a g e To check if your Storify has been posted, log into your Twitter account
Success!
Follow similar steps for sharing through Facebook.
16 | P a g e Learn More about Storify For additional help you can take a guided tour on Storify, browse through the Storify FAQs, or access any
of the resources below.
Guided Tours
https://storify.com/tour
https://storify.com/storifyfaq/frequently-asked-questions
http://youtu.be/ZR305mwfreY
Getting Started with Storify
http://youtu.be/PIIWe8nMEZs
Creating the Story
http://youtu.be/luZcU2E5cgI
Storify in the Classroom
http://youtu.be/pe5R-I3uFHo
How to Use Storify to Archive a Twitter Chat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=l9iHniFjiVc
Sharing your Story
http://youtu.be/8jEy45REAbQ
17 | P a g e