Comm Lab - 1st Class

Earlier this week we held our first Comm Lab class, led by Marianne Petit. Comm Lab is one of the foundational courses at ITP. If focuses on providing a theoretical introduction to, and hands on experience with, using a variety of tools for communication and story telling. In this class we will explore the use of blogging, social networks, comics, animations, sounds, video, imaging, and other media technologies. During this first session we reviewed the course syllabus and reviewing the process for setting up a WordPress blog.

The course is structured as follows: Mandatory weekly readings (reading list featured below) are coupled with class discussions to provide the theoretical underpinnings for the course. Collaborative and individual exercises are assigned on a weekly-basis to provide practical experience and know-how. Documentation of these explorations and readings is a key part of the course, serving as a foundation for developing strong skills and knowledge in this arena.

Required readings: Orality and Literacy by Walter Ong, Understanding Media by Marshall Mcluhan, Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud;

Recommended readings: Film Directing Shot by Shot by Steven Katz, Digital Foundations: Introduction to Media Design with the Adobe Creative Suite by Michael Mandiberg.

For this week our main assignment is to install the WordPress blog software on our partition of the ITP server. Here are the step by step directions for accomplishing this task. We are also tasked with reading the first four chapters from Walter Ong's book and posting a response on our newly set-up blogs. On a personal level, I am going to use this opportunity to test out the WordPress platform to determine whether I want to transfer all of my blogs from Blogger, where they currently reside.