6329 Technology Orientation Overview | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Beginning a new online course can be more daunting and uncomfortable than showing up to your face to face (F2F) classroom the first time. In a F2F course, the instructor is waiting in the room to guide you and answer any questions. In the online course, you often enter the first day and face a screen with multiple links asking you to do a variety of activities that may or may not sound like an alien language. In order to ameliorate these first time jitters and the strong possibility that students are at varying levels of expertise both in online learning and in technology skills, the first week of this course will be spent preparing you to be successful in this course.
These activities are intended to prepare you to use all the "back end" tools that will be required throughout the semester. Some of you may already know how to complete the activities - or you may have already done some of the activities in another orientation. If that is the case, you will likely fly through them. If you find yourself finished with all the activities, bored, and ready to move forward, feel free to get a jump start on future assignments you will be completing for the course.
The activities are listed in the approximate order you will need them. Please note that you have a very narrow window for setting up your computer to Collaborate, since we will be meeting the second week of classes. Please make every effort to attend this first session since this will allow you to ask questions, meet your fellow students and get to know your instructor.
In addition, you may want to make a mental note about this orientation in case you get "stumped" somewhere along the way in a course requirement. In addition to tutorials needed to complete each activity, you will also find links to resources and important contact information that can be very helpful.
This course will emphasize brain-based learning. Because I am a great believer in reflecting to learn and reflecting on learning, please take time to reflect on the activities as you are working through them. Examine your attitude about the work you are doing. Do you find it challenging? Is it interesting and fun? Is it boring? Does it assume that you know more than you do? Does it help you master the objectives? Was it frustrating?
These reflections should guide you as you move forward to develop your own instruction in the online environment.
And, now you are ready to move forward. Good luck and I look forward to meeting you all in the online world of Collaborate. |
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Objectives | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Upon completion of this project, you will be able to use the technology tools necessary for success in your coursework in the Educational Technology program. In addition, you should become familiar with toggling between BlackBoard, the course wiki, your wiki and Diiigo Groups. We will make every effort to help you navigate the course components.
Due to the limitations of BlackBoard, most of your course will reside in a course wiki. The portal page for your course wiki can be found here: You will also find a link to the course wiki in the left menu bar of the BlackBoard course. In truth, for most of the course, you will not need to enter BlackBoard. BlackBoard will be mainly used to house your grades, and provide the jump point to get into Collaborate.
Please complete these activities during the first week of class. They should be finished by Sunday, Midnight.
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Scavenger Hunt | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This Scavenger Hunt is intended to guide you through important information about the course and the requirements for success. You can wait until the end to complete the Scavenger, but I recommend that you open the map and the questions before you begin the other activities so that you know the information you are looking for. Using the Treasure Map and the Scavenger Hunt Questions, you should become familiar with course expectations. Once you have all the answers, you can go to the BlackBoard course and click on the Quiz 1 link in the left menu bar. |
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Ensure you can receive emails; external email account ; formatting of emails |
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In an online course, extensive communication occurs via email. For this online course (and others in the program), you will receiving emails from the instructor and from your peers. We have found that many workplace emails consider the UTB listserv as spam and delete or put them into a spam folder. Thus, it is critical that you have an email account that can receive email from the listserv. ISDs are absolutely the worst about blocking emails from UTB listserv. As harsh as this sounds, I will often get busy and forget to "hunt you down" and resend the email if it does not get to you. So, for this activity, I ask that you ensure that you can receive messages at your email address and open an external one if you are not receiving the email.
Google offers free, virtually unlimited space and is quite easy to use. Others such as Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail, etc. are acceptable. Once you have an account, please ensure that you can receive emails from the listserv for that email account by following the steps below.
It is YOUR responsibility to ensure that your email address can receive course emails. Follow the directions below for emailing through listserv:
FORMATTING FOR ALL CLASS EMAILS: To enable everyone in the class to easily organize emails, please include the course number, your name, and then the subject of your email in the subject line as seen below:
edtc6340 Janice - Your topic here .
If you do not include the course number and your name, I may inadvertently overlook it and thus take longer to send a response. Having the course number in your subject line also allows the instructor to put the context of your question in the appropriate course. Also, if you have an email address that does not include your name, it is difficult for me to find the correct context from which to respond. |
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Request access to the course wiki |
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For this part of the orientation, you will be "getting to know" our class wiki: how to access it and read it, how to optimize photos before adding to the wiki and how to edit the wiki. You will also have the opportunity to "meet" and learn about your fellow classmates through the wiki. If you are interested in learning about all things wiki, we recommend you visit the following site: http://emergingtechk-12.pbwiki.com/Wikis,+wikibooks developed by a student in the UTB Ed Tech program.
Briefly, a wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit web pages using any web browser without the need for an html editor. Thus, it is a cross-platform tool that allows massive collaboration on projects and can be edited anytime, anywhere, by anyone. In every sense of the word, wikis are a disruptive technology. Yet, they offer great hope in allowing students to collaborate online, breaking many barriers that exist when students (or businesses) are located in different parts of the country.
The tasks you must complete follow:
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Post photo and brief biography | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
A potentially very embarrassing event the first semester I taught online classes convinced me that it really is important that you have a face to associate with voices in Collaborate and email messages. Hence, I have had students do this each semester since then and it continues to be popular. You will be posting your photo and a brief profile to the course wiki so that others can get to know you better. To do this, first find a photo of you that you do not mind sharing. Make sure the photo is the appropriate size for posting ( about 175 X 200 pixels - or so) and is cropped to show you at your very best.
Please note: If you are not familiar with how to use a wiki, please click here for a step-by-step tutorial on how to complete the above portion of the technology orientation. If you would like additional PBwiki tutorials from a variety of sources, please click here.
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Click here to go to Part 2: Technology Orientation Activities |
Photos attributed to photographers are from http://www.sxc.hu ; non-attributed photos purchased or created by course designer - all rights reserved.
Pages are maintained by Dr. Janice Wilson Butler
© Copyright 2013