Week One: Bootcamp

by Bendis & Deodato, from Invincible Iron Man 10

8/28/17-9/1/17

All work is due by midnight on Friday, 9/1/17

Welcome to ds106! This first week is dedicated to getting set up: set up your domain and Web hosting; 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. The sooner you get started, the better. If you run into trouble after looking through the supporting links, the Digital Knowledge Center in the ITCC building is a great place to go for help.

Here is a detailed list of what to do this week:

1. Review the Syllabus
   You should carefully read through the syllabus. This course is different from most. The syllabus will help you understand the work and activities of the course. If you have any questions on the content, send them to us via Twitter or email.
2. Get a Domain and Webhosting
   After review the syllabus, first thing you need to do is choose a domain name for yourself. A domain name is a just a fancy name for a URL or Web address. For this class, you will register a domain name (free through UMW’s Domain of One’s Own project) of your own. Check out some advice about choosing a domain name. It really should be about you and not this course. Once you choose your domain name, you need to register it and set up web hosting through Domain of One’s Own (login with your UMW netid/password). Detailed instructions can be found here. If you already have a domain through Domain of One’s Own, then you are one step ahead. For more details on how to navigate your web hosting account, i.e. cPanel (your control panel), creating subdomains, using Installatron, etc., we have extensive documentation here: http://docs.umwdtlt.org/umw-domains/signing-up-on-domain-of-ones-own/ Shortly after you sign up for your domain and Web hosting, you will receive an email requiring you to verify your domain. This is a legitimate email, and you must follow the instructions in it! If you do not, in two weeks, your domain will go into a state of “limbo” making your site basically unavailable.
3. 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.Find out what a subdomain is and how to set up a subdomain on our documentation site. You will be using WordPress A LOT in this class. If you’re not already familiar with it, please keep this set of WordPress resources handy.
   NOTE: Do not use wordpress.com. You have to set up your own domain, or use a domain you already have (see Step 2, above), and you have to install WordPress on it (this step).
4. Register Your Blog at the Main ds106 Web Site
   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. NOTE: In order to register your site, you will need to give us a Twitter userid. You may want to skip ahead to the Twitter portion of #6 if you don’t already have a Twitter account.
5. Set up Your Social Media
   Create accounts and fill out profiles for yourself on:
   • Flickr (photo sharing) http://flickr.com
     If you are new to Flickr or have no images in your account, you MUST post at least 5 images to your flickr account right away (they can be whatever you want); Flickr may not verify and make your account public until there are 5 images there. When you upload your photos, tag them with ds106. Get in the habit of doing this!
   • Soundcloud (audio publishing) http://soundcloud.com/
     Set up an account if you don’t already have one.
   • Google / Youtube (video sharing) 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 (video sharing) http://vimeo.com
     Alternatively, if you don’t want to get a YouTube account, feel free to use Vimeo for your videos.
   • Twitter http://twitter.com
     Twitter will be 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 #ds106 hashtag in your tweets. Learn how to search on the #ds106 hashtag.
6. Make some 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, be heroic. 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 the weekend to do your all work you will be crushed!
7. Super106
   We’re using a Superhero theme for this semester. We are on a mission to make art on the web (and of the web and about the web). We will get to forge our own roles and identities. Maybe we’ll even get our own jetpacks. The purpose of the theme is to give us some common ground for interaction, but you are welcome to stretch and twist it in any way you like. You will have ample opportunities to personalize the work you do. You, as a group, have as much influence over where the theme goes as you care to take. To that end, I want you to share your thoughts on the theme. It is not necessary to be a fan of the genre because you are not bound by any conventions. You get to make of it what you want.
   If you need more background for the theme, Wikipedia has a pretty good overview and TV Tropes gets a little crazy with it. For a more intellectual view, read Ramzi Fawaz’s introduction to The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics (PDF). We can take this theme in any and every direction we like though. Do you like it? Do you have favorites? What do you think we can make out of it? Write your thoughts in a blog post and tag it super106thoughts.
8. Write your Weekly Summary
   You’ll be completing these summary posts on your blog every week. This week, write a post that shares your reflections on the first week. Tag this post WeeklySummary. These posts are REALLY important. I use them to grade you every week, so you need to link to other posts you’ve written, embed media you’ve created, and narrate the process of learning that you went through this week. What did you learn? What was harder than you thought it would be? What was easier? What drove you crazy? Why? What did you really enjoy? Why? NO EXCEPTIONS. NO LATE WORK ACCEPTED.