Add Your First Entry
To add your first entry, visit your My Entries page.
If you receive an error saying you were "Redirected" or a message saying you are not in a classroom, the most likely cause is that your instructor has not added you to their classroom yet.
To check your classroom status, visit https://discovery.tinyearth.wisc.edu/my-account/classrooms/.
Once you have been added to a class you may continue.
Click the grey "Add New Entry" box to expand the available options.
The first entry you'll add is your Environmental Sample, to represent where you collected your sample and under what conditions.
Click "+ Environmental Sample" inside the "Add New Entry" box.
Whenever you create or edit your database entries, you'll be taken to a page with a form for recording your information.
To create an Environmental Sample entry, at minimum you will need to record:
- A nickname for the sample
- The date it was collected
- The exact location it was collected
- And the sample type, such as soil, water, or so on
If your sample was collected from privately owned land, you will also need to attach a completed Private Donor Form.
If you have other information about the conditions the sample was collected under, such as air temperature and humidity, record that as well.
By clicking the box that says "add media", you can add photos to support your written data.
Photos can add details about your soil sample and where it was collected.
You will also be able to set a featured image, which means the image that will first appear at the top of all pages for this sample.
You can find the "Set featured image" button to the top right corner of the form.
You may also use the Additional Notes space to add any other information not covered by the form, attach images, describe procedures, and so on. Communicate with your instructor about what they would like to see represented there.
Once you are done recording your Environmental Sample's information, click "Save" toward the top right of the form.
Keep in mind that the database does not autosave. You will have to click save every time you create a new entry.
When you click save, you are making your work public to just yourself, your instructor, and your coauthors (if you have any). Your work will not be public to the world until your instructor has reviewed it.
You've just created your first entry in the database!
Science is a collaborative effort, and students in Tiny Earth classes often work together, so next let's talk about adding coauthors to your entries!