Practice Session

Welcome to EDC586-921---"Using Blogs And Wikis to Facilitate Learning."

Throughout these 10 weeks we will be covering a vast amount of information.

New sessions will be posted once a week (by the end of business on Tuesday) Due to the condensed semester, I'll be posting two sessions during some weeks on each Tuesday and you'll have seven days to complete the coursework/assignments.

For this week only, I will be making our first official session's posting on Thursday to allow late registrants to try this practice session before we dive in head first. Please keep in mind that there are new developments and trends in online information every day, therefore we may have to be flexible when interpreting the syllabus. This may mean some modifications, changes and condensing of information.

To ensure that we are covering the most current skills, I will be assimilating and collating information right up until the moment I post a session. This means that each session's link (over in the left-hand margin) will not be accessible until its respective Tuesday. Even so, there may be times when a cited link is dead. If that is the case, I will try to keep saved copies of all the information. Just email me and I will forward the data to you.

During the first few sessions we will be covering foundational skills. This is to ensure that we all have the basic essentials ‘down pat’. Once this is covered, we will pick up the pace and begin to delve into the mechanics, nuances, and meat of our course.

To ensure continuous accessibility to the information within these presentations I suggest you immediately download, and save the sessions, to your computer. I cannot emphasize this enough. Along the left-hand margin, there will be a link for each session. When you click on this link you may be prompted to 'save' or 'open' the session.

Always ‘save’ it to your desktop. Previous participants have found it easiest to organize if they create a folder and store all the sessions in one place. Another option would be to right-click on the link and choose, 'save target as.'

‘Saving’ the sessions will decrease problems relating to your bandwidth. Also, although it may take a while for a presentation to download (up to 10 min. or more depending upon the speed of your connection) it will be much easier to toggle between a PowerPoint and the Internet if you have it saved to your hard drive. An added benefit is that our weekly sessions will also become portable if you save them to a thumb drive.

Additionally, you will need to have access to a computer that has PowerPoint version ’97 or above to view the presentations. If you cannot hear the sound on them it is possible that the 'wave' element of your volume is either on ‘mute’ or not turned up enough.

Please remember that we are all involved in education. Some of us are pre-service, some in-service, and some are working on becoming adult level instructors. Whatever field of education you may be in, please remember that this is a collaborative course. So, as you post your reflections and comments we will all be responding to you. Therefore, timely responses are imperative. After you have posted your weekly assignment, make an effort to return again later to read and comment about other participants’ assignments.

Once again remember that we are all perpetual learners; constantly growing. I hope to learn as much from you---as you will from me.

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Now I would like you to try a practice download. (Thursday evening I will update this page with information about our first session.) Along the left-hand margin you will see the words "PRACTICE SESSION." Please try to download this session to your computer, strictly following the directions above.

Once you have been successful with this process, please also download the syllabus. There is only one required, purchasable text, accessible here.
You may order it from most online book sellers. Until then you may want to read some of it online (not ideal), but here is the link: Wikis, Blogs, and Podcasts... Don't stress too much if it takes a few days to arrive. You'll be able to catch up in no time.

If you run into problems, please review the directions again. It is not uncommon for participants to 'stumble' a little getting used to this interface.

If you run into any trouble after that, then please feel free to email me or call. The smoother I can make the beginning of the semester for you, the more likely that you'll get the most out of the material here this semester.

Thank you,

Dave Fontaine
Internet Librarian and Information Specialist, NBCT
DaveFontaine1@gmail.com
401-835-3782