Wire 106: Week 1 –“The Setup”

Week 1 Introduction/Setup 8/25
all work is due midnight August 31, 2014
The first week is dedicated to getting setup for ds106; install your WordPress site and create other social media accounts such as Twitter, Flickr, SoundCloud, YouTube, etc. Complete Introductions via posts, twitter, Flickr, video, audio, etc. Watch The Wire through episode 9, and watch the commentaries on each episode.
Open course resource: http://ds106.us/open-course/unit-1-bootcamp/

Welcome to Week 1 of ds106. In the above video—which runs about 25 minutes—Paul Bond and I introduce the course, our expectations, and this week’s work. Below is a detail list of what’s to be completed this week.

1) Domain and Webhosting: You need to signup for a domain and web hosting through UMW Domains (login with your UMW netid). Detailed instructions can be fund here. If you already have this done, then you are one step ahead 🙂

For more details on how to get navigate your web hosting account, i.e. cPanel, subdomains, Installatron, etc., we have extensive documentation here: docs.umwdomains.com

2) Install WordPress: This tutorial will take you through installing the publishing platform WordPress. Keep in mind if you already have WordPress installed on your UMW Domains, you can use your existing site (and just tag or categorize your ds106 work accordingly) or choose to create a new WordPress site in a separate subdomain, such as ds106.myawesomedomains.com. Also, here is a detailed overview on how to use WordPress.

3) Once your blog is available on the web (it should be almost immediate) register yourself and your new blog on the DS106 site. You MUST do this in order for everyone to see the posts you’ll be writing for the class.

3) Class Avatar: Select an “avatar” for yourself, an icon or image that can represent you online (it need not be your face). This should preferrabyt by a square image. Create a “gravatar” for yourself at http://gravatar.com using the email address you most likely will use for course work (and keep in mind you can associate your gravatar with several email accounts). Many sites (such as our class site) will automatically use this image as your avatar.

4) Social Media: Create accounts and fill out profiles for yourself (use the same icon as you sent to gravatar) on:

  • Flickr (photo sharing) http://flickr.com You should post at least 5 images to your flickr account; it may not consider you “real” until there are 5 images in your site. Tag your photos with ds106
  • Soundcloud (audio publishing) http://soundcloud.com/
  • Google / Youtube http://www.google.com/accounts/ If you have a Gmail account, you are already set with this. If not create a Google account. This is what will allow you to join any synchronous video discussions we have (in Google Hangout) and gives you access to YouTube.
  • Vimeo: Alternatively, if you don’t want to (or can’t) get a YouTube account (like me), feel free to use Vimeo for your videos.
  • Twitter http://twitter.com Twitter will one of the main channels for communication in ds106. If you already have an account for personal purposes, you are welcome to use it or create a new account for communication related to this class. Make sure you customize your profile! Send your first message of greeting and be sure to use hashtag in your tweets. Learn how to search on the #ds106 hashtag.

5) Multimodal Introductions: Now that you have all your accounts, it’s time to use them to introduce yourself to the class. Use Twitter, SoundCloud, YouTube, and Flickr to introduce yourself to the community, be creative. Once you’ve done that you need to embed them all into a WordPress blog post. Here are some tips for embedding media in WordPress.

Are you exhausted yet? There a lot more still 🙂 If you wait until Saturday to do your work you will be crushed!

6) The Wire: Watch the first nine episodes of The Wire Season 1.

7) Wire106 Discussions: Catch up in the discussion Paul and I have had thus far about the first six episodes of The Wire, as well as the three discussions taking place this week about episodes 7, 8, and 9. Details as to when these will be taking place coming soon.

8) Weekly Summary: Finally, you need to post a weekly summary post narrating everything you’ve done the first week. This is how you get credit for what you’ve done, so don’t forget. These weekly summaries need to link to the various social media sites you created, the various introductions you made, your thoughts on the first nine episodes of The Wire, and reactions to the discussions.

All this by no later than 11:59 PM Sunday, August 31st. There is no credit for late work in ds106. We are professionals, we get it done.

 

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One Response to Wire 106: Week 1 –“The Setup”

  1. Pingback: Wire 106: Week 2 “Building the Community” | bavatuesdays

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