Welcome to DigMe 256 Digital Literacy

Can you imagine what it would be like to be shipwrecked alone on a deserted island? Or adrift at sea? What about surviving a plane crash on a mountain top? Do you ever think about those poor people in war-torn countries huddling underground just to make it? These scenarios have been the subject of many stories and films; sometimes they are true and sometimes they are fiction. But they point to one truth, the resilience of the human spirit.

Hello, I’m Professor Bill Genereux, the instructor for this course. You can find me many places online by searching for the name billgx. This digital literacy course will be built around the theme of “Survival” and all that it entails. Stories of surviving, both factual and fictitious, abound. Throughout the semester, be thinking of the stories that you are familiar with or that you encounter along the way and use them to inform your work.

Getting started in the course involves some hard work. Surviving always does. While it will be challenging, it lays the groundwork for everything we will be doing together throughout the semester. We will be learning to use many different digital and online tools to communicate, tell our stories and share our ideas.

The key to success in this course is to do the work assigned and document it by writing up a summary of what you accomplished. These summaries will typically be due each week on Monday evenings at 11:59 PM.

For the first week’s assignments, complete the following activities then write a weekly summary and submit it to Canvas by the due date of Monday, August 29, 11:59 pm.

• Any website option will do, so long as you can write and post information to the world wide web that I can view in my browser.
• Create a personal website For years, we have recommended using Wordpress.com for web publishing beginners. However, this is a recommendation only; the only course requirement is that you publish your work to the world wide web. We must be able to view your work in a standard web browser online! The video about Geocities shown below provides an introduction to the “do-it-yourself” ethos that existed in the early days of the Internet. We encourage this DIY attitude in the Digital Literacy course. Check out the first 3 minutes or so of the video to see what the Internet was like in the early days. While it looks antiquated to our modern eyes, Geocities was truly one of the first great user-created content websites.
  
  Here are some options for making a website for this class:
  • Option 1: sign up for a free WordPress.com website
  • Option 2: sign up for another web service like Wix.com.
  • Option 3: If you already have your own website, fantastic! You may use that for this class.
• Communication. Please use MS Teams for communicating with the professor and others in the course. Click here to access the Digital Class Teams group. You can install the Teams app on your phone or computer or you can access it in a web browser.
  • Introduce yourself to others in the class on Teams. It’s ok to use a nickname or real name, whatever you prefer.
• Submit the URL of your website/blog to K-State Online/Canvas. 
• Set up some Digital Media Accounts
  This is an online class and we will use freely available online resources to do our work. You should not have to pay for any of these services but the accounts you use need to be publicly visible so we can share our work and see the work of others. If desired, you may create new accounts to be used only for this course and you are never required to reveal your name anywhere online.
  • Teams mentioned earlier. It will be used for non-public communication in this class. Use this link to begin: Microsoft Teams DigLit Group.
  • Soundcloud (audio publishing) http://soundcloud.com/
    Set up an account if you don’t already have one.
  • Youtube (video sharing)  If you have a Gmail account, you are already set with this because Google owns YouTube. If not, create a YouTube account.
  • Vimeo (optional video sharing) http://vimeo.com
    Alternatively, if you don’t want to (or can’t) use a YouTube account, feel free to use Vimeo for publishing your videos.
• Introduce yourself to the class, and welcome others.
  Now that you have all your accounts, it’s time to use them to introduce yourself to the class, and welcome the others as well. Use Teams to introduce yourself to the others in the online learning community; be creative. 
  
• Write a summary post on your website/blog every week. This week, write a post that shares your reflections on what your completed during the first week. These posts are REALLY important. We use them to grade your work every week, so you need to include reference links to any other posts you have made during the week for assignments, other 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? Please be sure to include your handle(s) in your weekly summary blog post for the various websites & social media that you’ll be using this semester. When your summary is completed, submit a link to it for Surviving Digital Literacy on K-State Canvas.