Documentation Website

Documentation Website #

Document your learning process and the final project development on a website or some other type of online document. You need to keep updating your personal documentation even if you work as a group. Your group can of course share materials and content if needed.

Your site should have these things at the end of the course:

  • Documentation of your Gesture Assignment group project
  • Project Proposal for the Final Project
  • Final Project development process
  • Description and audiovisual documentation of the Final Project with an emphasis on your role in the project if it was a group work.

Additionally, feel free to reflect and document anything else that you find relevant for your learning process during the course. Gather references, take notes, reflect on the readings etc.

These instruction are in order from very simple to more complicated. You don’t need to do all these options. Choose the option that seems the best for your skill level (or your ambition to learn new things).

Your own website #

If you already have a website you can just use that. I assume you know how to publish content on your site.

Aalto Blogs #

Using Aalto Blogs is very simple. It’s essentially just a Wordpress site. You can create different blogs for different purposes.

  1. Go to: https://blogs.aalto.fi/
  2. Login with your Aalto account.
  3. Create a new blog by clicking Create your blog from the top-right corner of the site
  4. Start creating content.

Using Miro, OneDrive, Google Docs, Notion etc. #

You can also create your documentation as another type of online document using Miro, Google Drive, Notion or other similar services. Just make sure that you give Matti the access to the file or folder.

I would prefer that you create a public website so others can also learn from you and so that you can share your project easily. But I understand if you want to do the documentation in a more private way like this.

Cargo Collective #

Follow the instructions below if you want to use the educational version of Cargo Collective:

  1. Register to Cargo
  2. Choose a template and start building your site
  3. Check MyCourses for the code that enables you to publish your site.
  4. There should be a button that says This site is Private: Upgrade to go Public on top of the editor window.
  5. Add the code you got to the Promo Code text box
  6. Your site should now be public

Webflow #

Do the following if you want to use Webflow for this course (or just in general).

  1. Create a Webflow account with your Aalto email using this student account application.
  2. Send and email to Matti and ask to be added to the Aalto Media Lab classroom.
  3. Create your site!

Here is an example site I created using Webflow

Github Pages (Simple HTML) #

  1. Follow the instructions here: https://pages.github.com/ to setup the GitHub Pages.
  2. Create your HTML files
  3. Start writing content

You can also create the site under our New Media GitHub team. Please ask Matti to add you here if you want to be part of the team.

Here is a simple example site that we created. You can use it as a templete if you want. It includes an installation guide. Click here to see how the site looks like.

Github Pages + Static website with Hugo #

This is a more complicated process, but once you figure it out, it’s a very powerful tool to have in your pocket. You can use a tool called Hugo to build your website. This will be lot more convenient than manually editing HTML files.

Essentially, you create a template for your website that allows you to write the content using markdown. This means that once you have your site configured correctly, you don’t have to worry at all about the html tags, you can just focus on writing the content.

Using Hugo requires you to work with the terminal/command line of your computer. This can seem a little bit intimidating if you have never done it before.

  1. Install Visual Studio Code
  2. Install Git
  3. Install Hugo. The instructions are different depending on what operation system you use.
  4. Configure GitHub to host your page

A video of this process coming soon….

Calendar Jan 12, 2023