Whose Piloting this DS106 Thing Anyway?

After much delay, I was finally able to meet my students and get started today with DS106 at York College/CUNY. And we’re hoping to have as many open participants that are interested will join in as well. Can register your blogs on Jim Groom’s site here.

Last night I figured out how to use the ds106 wiki, and with liberal use of the great UMW syllabus I was able to post the outline of the Fall 2011 class. I still have to build a detailed calendar into the wiki and hope to have that done tonight/tomorrow morning. Thank you Jim Groom, Martha Burtis, Tim Owens, Andy Rushaw and everyone else in DTLT for giving me the opportunity to carry the ds106 torch this semester.

Teaching out of ds106 is a dramatic departure from how CT 101 (the course number of the York class) used to be taught. For a long time we used this introductory production class to teach the basic skills of portrait documentary. You can see examples of student work here and here. But it was strictly a television production course and we wanted to have a class that would work for a wider variety of our majors in communications technology. It’s very new for my students and I’m just hoping I don’t land on my head half-way through the semester.

Without the calendar completed, I wanted to detail the assignments to be completed  by next Monday. We’re also planning to have regular live broadcasts from the studio each week and if anyone would like to Skype in please do. Also, I’m pretty sure that Prof. Oliver is excited for our first broadcast as he introduces everyone to our Journey to the Center of the Internet. And whatever happens, in advance I apologize, I’m not completely in control.

So for next Monday, make sure you complete the following:

1. Most importantly get your domain name and hosting service setup. Here is a link to Martha Burtis’s tutorial on getting started (I’m hoping to do a video tutorial tomorrow as well). She suggests you get the experience of having to point your domain to the hosting services’ name servers, but if you’d prefer to register your domain with any of the suggested hosting options I think that’s ok. Just remember DO NOT host with GoDaddy or any other hosting company that doesn’t use a LAMP environment with the CPanel.

2. Install WordPress. There’s a great tutorial from Martha here on how to do this. And I’m fine with you not using a subd0main or subdirectory for the site if you prefer, you’re choice. Also, the Cast Iron Coding CPanel uses Fantastico, while Bluehost and some others use Simple Scripts. They’re basically the same thing, so look for one or the other.

3. Setup accounts with Twitter, Flickr, and Youtube (or alternates if you’d like). You don’t necessarily have to create a Twitter account, but a lot of course conversation is going to take place there. And consider using Gravatar to manage avatars for these accounts. I made a quick video tutorial on Gravatar and suggest you use it if you wish for your avatar to be visible when you comment on blogs.

4. Register your blog with the ds106 website here. This will make sure that all of your posts are aggregated to the ds106 mothership site. If you’d prefer to use a tag that controls which posts go to ds106, add “/tag/ds106” to the end of your URL. For example: http://myawesomeds106site.net/tag/ds106/ If you do this though, you must remember to tag all ds106 posts with “ds106!”

5. Finally get into your Dashboard and make your first post! Tell any story about yourself you’d like, use images, video, audio, anything, and make sure you tag it with “assignment1”.

As for our first video broadcast, we’re going to use the ds106.tv streaming channel and are pushing for late afternoon Wednesday. I’ll post details on Twitter as to the exact time.

Good luck everyone and remember to use search to see what you can find for help, but also know you can email me or tweet me with questions.

 


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16 responses to “Whose Piloting this DS106 Thing Anyway?”

  1. yaisuri Avatar

    Hi,
    I wanna share this blog as part of my first assignment in the Intro to Video class: http://blog.yaisurisalamanca.com/
    =)
    Yaisuri

    1. mbransons Avatar

      Great start Yaisuri.

  2. Sandeep Jadoonanan Avatar

    Hello, guys. I’m just posting here to make sure I have everything.

  3. Sidiq Mahmood Avatar

    Better late than never, just making sure everything works

    1. mbransons Avatar

      Your now syndicated to the ds106.us site. See if you can get started on the other assignments.

  4. irum malik Avatar

    just trina see if i could post here 😮

  5. Dehnia Avatar

    Just wanted to post that everything is up and running. I will get the rest of my assignments up as quickly as possible.

    1. mbransons Avatar

      Good to see you’ve finally got your blog up and running. It looks very nice. Hope to see some work up there soon.

  6. shannon Avatar
    shannon

    hello prof. Smith !!

    1. mbransons Avatar

      Hi Shannon –

      Are you ready to have some fun and make some art for ds106? Let me know when you have your first post up and I’ll add you to the ds106.us feed.

  7. shannon Avatar
    shannon

    We’re up and running, btw this is a totally difference experience from a class room. im a bit scared !

    1. mbransons Avatar

      Great to see you’ve figured out your Gravatar as well. Let me know when you’ve made your first post and I’ll get your blog syndicated to the ds106 website.

  8. 2cupsup Avatar

    checking my gravatar

    1. mbransons Avatar

      Not there yet. Make sure this email is associated with your gravatar account.