Its Mid-Semester Re-Cap & Domain Name Time!!

Here is the class recording from Tuesday 10/24/23:

Wow, here we are at the midpoint of our CT-101 semester! Time… goes by waaaaaay too fast.. Let’s take a minute to reflect, let’s take a minute to regroup, catch up, let’s induce a class reflection!

Let us ask ourselves the following questions, and reflect:

“How am I doing in CT101?  What have I learned? What new skills have I developed, cultivated and displayed regularly? How do I assess my performance through a self-reflection in this class?”

The assessment part is very tangible and clear as we have been producing results over the last 7.5 weeks in the form of blogging, commenting, creating visual imagery, discussion via various forms and class participation.

Let’s take stock, follow me below:

The CT 101 Course Schedule page is where everything is – this is the CT 101 HUB – this is the space where all the assignments and learning details take form each week – (just in case you forgot) – this is where you can recap and catch up on all assignments (and also access all of the class recordings) –  https://ct101.commons.gc.cuny.edu/course-schedule/

In fact, before we move into the next phase of our course, I want to take a week and reflect upon what has already been accomplished, as well as take accountability for what might be missing and in need of improvement.

Let’s title this next post:

Assignment #7 – The Mid-Semester Reflection Post / Domain Name Time

Assignment Details:

In a new blog post titled:

“Assignment #7 – The Mid-Semester Reflection & Domain Name Post”, please assess and reflect upon your last 7.5 weeks here in CT 101.

Please answer and address the following questions below, and also provide hyperlinks back to all of your previous completed blog posts.

This will help illustrate some of the questions below as you tell a compelling story here in the CT 101 blog space: (the use of imagery is helpful and needed but please don’t default to using too many GIFs or memes to fill in the gaps.) 

How am I doing in CT101?

What have I learned and retained the most?

What new skills have I developed , cultivated and displayed regularly in my weekly posts?

What do I know now that I did not know before taking this class?

What grade do I believe I am maintaining and why do I deserve that grade? 

Do I see my weekly blogging work expanding creatively? If so, please explain why –  or am I stuck in a loop where my posts seem to look the same most of the time, how will I change that?

Are there any assignments that you are missing? If so, list them.

Are you commenting regularly on your classmates posts? Are you responding back to comments given to you by the professor & your classmates?

Are you participating during the class time? If not, explain why.

This is the time to be accountable. How will you make needed improvements?

Have fun with this!

Feel free to include useful relatedness in the form of links, images, video or Make Something New to express how you feel about this post! (a technique learned from the dS106 assignment bank perhaps?)

Picking A Domain Name, too!

It’s Time to Pick a Domain Name as well! Well, lets get thinking about it!

It’s time to begin thinking about choosing a domain name  that can represent your digital self! <– (we will watch this video in class together)

Its time to start planning the website building aspect of this course! Exciting? It is indeed! But first, what is a domain?

You can’t (and shouldn’t) pick just anything..

This part is important!

It has to be unique! And it also has to be available!

It should be relevant – it could be based on your real name,

Or a nickname and or something meaningful to you!

You will need to search for its availability using a domain registrar and you can pick from a number of different ‘top level domains (TLD)’ – for example .com, .net, .us, and .org – then you can have an example like – “mypersonalsite.net”

As we go forward to select and register our domain names.

You’re also going to need web hosting, which will allow you to put files up online and will be discoverable through your new domain name! We are going to use a form of ‘shared hosting’ where you get a portion of a server – think of it as having an apartment in a building..

With shared hosting you will be able to do a lot of things including installing your own instance of WordPress! (via WordPress.org and not wordpress.com – they are a lil’ different)  With WordPress installed you can then start building your website for your domain name. I will cover a series of demonstrations on how to do this and I will record all of the demonstrations and tutorials.

But, what exactly is Web Hosting?

We use a company called Reclaim Hosting, with which we have a contract with so you can enter a coupon code and start your account for free.

**The coupon code will be e-emailed to everyone via blackboard starting next week and the week after – so I will be reminding you to check your York college e-mail address to get the code.

******************************************

**Assignment #7 Continued! 

As a part of your mid-semester reflection post, please shares a few of the potential domain names that you would consider using for the new website that you will soon build. List them (at least 5-10 potential names) and say a few words about why they would be good examples for the website that you will build. 

Let’s also speculate:

What might your new website be about?

This part is totally up to you! If you wish, you can use the website project itself for a specific niche project, for example, perhaps you want to share your passion for cooking and poetry. Which means you will be primarily writing blog posts about cooking and poetry while building the website simultaneously. This can also be applied to sports, or gaming, or politics or journalism, or simply put, website that fused together many interests as well as your ct101 assignments. 

Share your thoughts, excitements, fears and any other sentiments about how you are feeling about this next chapter in your life as a website owner!

Please apply all of the existing blogging skills that you have developed and include a few images, GIFs, memes and hyperlinks. Also – lets add a few screen shots of some of your favorite existing websites, let us know why you like them!