Week 1

We have almost reached the end of week one, and I know it has been a tour-de-force, I would like to say things get easier, but that would be a lie. Below are some details I want you to attend to to make you weekly summary work that much easier. What’s more, I have outlined specifically my expectations for the weekly summary posts. Let me know if you have questions.

Setting Up Categories

As described in this video, start by creating the following categories for your blog. By creating and using categories as your write, by the end of the semester, your blog is going to be like a well-organized footlocker.

• Assignments
• Daily Create
• Thoughts and Ideas
• Weekly Summaries
• Best Work
• Radio Show
• Final Project

Now create these additional categories, but for each one make sure the setting for Parent is Assignments:

• Visual
• Design
• Audio
• Video
• Web
• Mashup/Remix

You should end up with a category structure like this example.

If you haven’t already, add any and all Daily Creates, Visual and Design assignments to the proper category so it is easier for both you and me to find your work.

Permalinks

A key setting we want you to adjust is defining how WordPress creates the URLs for your content; the default setting is just not pretty or readily understandable. Under the Settings menu in your WordPress dashboard, click on the item “Permalinks.” Change the Default setting to any other of the options, the Day and Name or Month and Name ones are helpful because they give you an indicator at a glance when they were published. If you prefer shorter URLs, try the Post Name option:

Add Something to Your About Page

The regular activity of blogging is writing Posts, which are date stamped so that your site typically displays the newest content first. WordPress provides a similar content type know as Pages which are not part of this time flow but are available typically from top level buttons on your site.

Look at the list of Pages in your WordPress dashboard and you will find an existing one called “About”. It will say something like:

This is an example of a WordPress page, you could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from.

Try your hand at editing this page with some more information about you as a welcome. You do not have to disclose anything that will identify you online, e.g. your full name or address/location, but try seeing what you can put there as a small biography. Be creative with this and have with it!

Doing the Daily Create

During this first week, you were all required to do at least 4 Daily Creates. Generally, you are not required to create a blog post for every TDC you do (though feel free to if you want). Instead, you have to post them on FLickr with the required tags. What’s more, you should embed the Daily Creates images you did in your weekly summary with a link back to the image on Flickr so I can be sure you did it on that day. Keep in mind the image, audio, video, etc. must be a creation of your own making, or a significant re-mix of someone else’s, you can’t simply republish someone else’s work. Also, in preparation for the future, be sure you have accounts on SoundCLoud and YouTUbe for the upcoming Daily Creates

Also see the ds106 Handbook section for how to embed a YouTube video into your blog post (it is so easy). 

Checklist for Weekly Summary

This will be your first weekly summary, and we will use it to assess your progress in ds106! As always, the summary is due by midnight (11:59 PM) on the Sunday at the end of the week (5/26).

In this post, you should cover and include the following:

• A summary of  your reflections upon the media we asked you to review this week (Scottlo’s Podcasts, Gardner Campbell’s essay and video, and Michael Wesch’s presentation) along with links to your blog post(s) about them.
• Embeds of the Daily Creates you made. What do you think of Daily Create and the process of doing it?
• Embed all of you visual and design assignments along with links back to each of these assignments along with the number of stars of each assignment (the tally should be at least 20 visual and 10 design).
• Links to your accounts on Twitter, Flickr, YouTube & SoundCloud, so we can verify that you have these set up!
• A quick description of the redesign of your blog, the theme you are using, the plugins you installed, and a link to an about page that tells us something about you (there should be no My Blog titles and stock About pages).
• A link to the comments you have left on other people work (all comments have their own permalinks).
• Reflection upon your first week of DS106. What was hard? What did you learn? What are you excited about in this class? What are you dreading? What questions do you have?

I am looking for a substantive, reflective post for these weekly summaries, not just a list of links and a line or two saying, “This week was fun! Can’t wait for next week!”

When you are done and ready to publish, make sure you use the category “Weekly Summary” and submit the URL to Canvas.

Your weekly summary post is absolutely mandatory and must be submitted by midnight on Sunday. A link to your weekly summary post needs to be tweeted to me, @jimgroom, with the tags #ds106zone and #week1summary. If you didn’t complete all the work this week, don’t just not do a summary. At least use the post to tell us what you DID do. . Also, if you didn’t complete the work this week, given 20% of the class is over, you should consider whether or not you want to stay in this class. Tuesday, May 28th is the last day to drop this class without a W.

Finally, assignments for week two will be posted on the front page of ds106.us on Monday, May 27th by noon. I will be expecting you to check ds106.us for all weekly assignments and course announcements on a regular basis. I will not be email all weekly assignments and announcements after week 1, so the onus is now on you to check that site and keep up with the announcements.

If you have any questions, look for me on twitter or send me an email.