Week 1 (15 September):
Blogging with wordpress
Resources
- Watch knowledge clips about WordPress (apologies for the audio quality):
- Installing (useful if you are interested in getting your own WordPress powered websites, but not necessary for your course activity)
- Posts (watch this before making your first post)
- Themes (useful if you are interested in getting your own WordPress powered websites, but not necessary for your course activity)
- Gutenberg WordPress Editor FAQ (wordpress.com, 2018)
- The History of WordPress (WPBeginner.com, 2018)
- Creative Commons Images for non-Copyright materials for your blogs. You can also try Google Image Search with Usage Rights, Wikimedia Commons, or Archive.org.
- Video on copyright by Youtuber Tom Scott
Read
NB here and below, “read”means before next class. In addition, unless hyperlinked, the texts can be found on Brightspace.
- Science Blogging: The Essential Guide
- Chapter 1 (Wilcox, 2016)
- Chapter 11 (Lillie, 2016)
Things to do
- Sign up for the course blog via digmedia.lucdh.nl/login,
- when you choose a username, use your own name
- Exception: if you are not comfortable using your own name, you are allowed to use a pseudonym if you let Janessa Vleghert and I know via Teams it is you.
- familiarize yourself with the WordPress CMS Gutenberg editor
- Make sure you know how to create posts
- Learn about the Roles plugin (i.e. understand how you can control the visibility of your content)
- Write your first post! Make sure to flag your group tag in your post!
- when you choose a username, use your own name
A Hyperfast History of the Digital
Resources
- Lecture slides can be found here.
Read
- Digital Media and Society, Chapter 1 (Lindgren 2017)
NB Here and below, “Fun” means it is an optional thing to do.
Things to do
- Get to know about the basic workings of the web through Part 1 of the Working with the Web tutorial.
- Fun:
- The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage comic.
Week 2 (22 September):
The World Brain(drain)
Resources
- Lecture slides can be found here.
Read
- The Brain Organization of the Modern World, in H.G. Wells’ World Brain (1938).
- The Anatomy of a Search Engine (Brin and Page, 1998).
Things to do
- Set featured images on any posts you have made so far.
- Include at least one image, of which you have use rights, in your upcoming blog post.
- Fun:
- Watch Google and the World Brain documentary on Archive.org
- Drop by the during my Open Office hours (Thursday from 15:00-17:00; Veth 1.07) and I can give you a tech-geeky, small tour of the Digital Lab and our Livestream studio.
Week 3 (29 September):
The Valley where Gold turned into Silicon (and back again)
Resources
- Lecture slides can be found here, after class.
Read
- Silicon Valley Explained in Adam Fisher’s Valley of Genius
- Sillicon Valley by Christine Finn in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Contemporary World
Things to do
- Familiarize yourself with HTML and WordPress’ Code Editor, through Part 2 of the Working with the Web tutorial. Try editing part of your post using WordPress’ html code editor.
- Fun:
- Learn how to make a podcast via the knowledge clips.
- Listen to some episodes of the Valley of Genius podcast.
- Read Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution or watch the documentary based on it.
- Check out the Hacker Quarterly or the MIT Gallery of Hacks
- Read about or watch the origin of “Information wants to be free”
- Happy Leids Ontzet! Stay safe, healthy and have fun!
Week 4 (6 October):
The Ego Online
- Lecture slides can be found here, after class.
Read
- The I in Internet in Jia Tolentino’s (2019) Trick Mirror.
- ‘The Presentation of Self in the Online World’: Goffman and the study of online identities. Bullingham and Vasconcelos, 2013
Things to do
- Fun:
- Find out about the cool little magic of anchor links! Very useful if you need to reference something in your post (e.g. a bibliographic entry) or a footnote.
- Learn a bit about making videos with the knowledge clips.
- Fun: We Live in Public (link to Full Documentary)
Week 5 (13 October):
The Network Society
- Lecture slides can be found here, after class.
Read
- Maffesoli’s From Society to Tribal Communities
- Pick and read one (or more) of the chapters on Digital Communities
- Pearce and Artemesia’s Communities of Play
- Miller’s Tales from Facebook
- Burges and Green’s YouTube
- Zhu’s The psychology behind video games during COVID-19 pandemic.
- Kennedy’s TikTok dance and the E-girl Aesthetic
Things to do
- Remember this is online, but referencing is still very important. In fact, if a piece of information is not linked, it does not exist!
- Make sure you use urls to link to content online.
- If you have included references that are not online, but that you have listed at the bottom of your post, you can use the magic of anchor links to put in a link.
- If you made videos or podcasts, you can still use references, e.g. by putting a list of links in the descriptions of the video.
- Go back and check this is in order for all your content so far!
- Fun: Join one of the livestreams of the Streaming the Past project!
20 & 27 October: No Class
Things to do
- The ‘My Take-aways from the Course’-test is online on Brightspace from 18-30 October. Don’t forget to complete it as it is part of your final grade for this course.
- This is a good time to lay out a strategy for the remainder of your content production. It is also a good moment to get back and improve your previous blogs with your growing understanding of how WordPress works.
- Fun: Spend a day offline!
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