What is CI Keys?

CI Keys is a project aimed at improving digital literacy by providing the opportunity to master the tools and technology that make up the web. Faculty and students involved in CI Keys will have the opportunity to manage their own domain. CI Keys users will have access to powerful open source Internet tools that will allow them to create online portfolios, exhibits, online journals and magazines, wikis, FAQs, and many other kinds of digital resources and publications for use in courses, the co-curriculum or wherever and however else they choose.

Faculty and students at CI who have started a CI Keys site have created amazing projects. We have seen e-portfolios, open courses, program sites, and personal sites (some examples are provided below).

CI keys provides access to numerous applications such as WordPress, Omeka, Known, DocuWiki and much more.  At present, most faculty primarily utilize WordPress which is why most of the content on this site is WordPress-related.

The video below provides a brief overview of how current faculty have used CI Keys; we also encourage you to check out the CI Keys Innovator Videos to hear faculty share their own experiences.

 

What is a Digital Identity?

As noted above, CI Keys gives students, faculty and staff the ability to create their very own space on the web, therefore contributing to the development of a positive digital identity.  The video below provides more insight into the idea of a digital identity.

 

Tour of cPanel (CI Keys Dashboard)

When you login to CI Keys, the first thing that you see is your cPanel. This is where all of the tools for controlling your domain are housed. You can see your installed web applications, such as WordPress sites, other web applications that you’re able to install, such as Omeka, Known, Drupal, Moodle (just to name a few), and more advanced settings such as add-on domains and database tools. We’ll take a look at some of the more common tools and give a short explanation of what they do in the video below.

<Video Coming Soon>

 

Creating a Domain/Getting Started

 

Creating a Subdomain

A subdomain allows you to have a separate space for content that you don’t want on your primary domain, and acts as a separate website. So for instance, say that you wanted to have a personal travel blog on your CI Keys site, but didn’t want to post that content on your existing website, you could then create a subdomain to have a standalone travel blog website with its own URL. This is most often used by CI faculty members who have a personal e-portoflio site with their domain (e.g. joebobfaculty.cikeys.com) and a separate site for their courses (e.g. ENGL123.joebobfaculty.cikeys.com). The video below will show you how easy it is.