IRC is a service that lets people chat in real time. You log on, join a channel, and you can see what everyone else in the channel is saying. There are a couple of channels for Shokushu Campus where people often chat.
To get onto IRC you need a couple of things. First, you need an IRC
client. This is a program that lets you log on to IRC. The most commonly used one is
mIRC, for Windows. Or you can look at
a list of IRC client reviews. Or you can even
chat with a web-based application, although I've heard this one isn't
quite as stable...(The only reason you can use this web-based application is because Sorcery supports it, see below.)
You also need to know which IRC server to log on to. In this case it's "irc.sorcery.net". Sorcery has a number of roleplaying channels on it. (And, as mentioned, its website has the application that lets you access IRC through the web.)
To connect to IRC you need to set your 'nick', meaning your chat username.
And finally, once you're connected, you need to join the correct channel. Channel names start with a #. There are two Shokushu channels:
#Shokushu-Campus
#SHS-OOC
To join a channel, type:
/join #shokushu-campus
(Uppercase/lowercase doesn't matter.)
Then, once you're connected, whatever you type shows up in the channel.
Type "Hello!", you see:
<Dendrite> Hello!
And if you use the "/me" command, you can do "emotes".
Type "/me waves", you see:
* Dendrite waves
Good luck.