Week 1

Here are the objectives for our first week:

By reading the course Syllabus you will have a good idea of what will be expected of you this semester and a general understanding of some of the terrain we'll be covering. I will learn something about you and from your survey; you will introduce your self to your classmates and shake hands with igoogle and Zotero. In sum you'll position yourself solidly for the rest of the course.

1) Print out the Course Syllabus found on the home page and read it carefully. Create a folder for this course and put your Syllabus in it. Don't miss clicking on the links for the Assignment points and Course Overview. Print these documents out and put them in your course folder too.

Note the dates for our Wimba live classroom meetings noted in the Course Syllabus. Put these dates in your calendar and purchase a computer headset before our first meeting.

2) Complete the Student Survey Assignment linked below and submit it to me through the Assignment tool.

3) Post your photo and your preferred e-mail address for this course to the Course Roster. This info will be especially important for your group project which starts in week 5.

4) Zotero is a WEB 2.0 research tool which allows you to keep track of your citations, create an outline for your paper and add documents to it as your paper evolves. You will write a final paper for this course using Zotero and google docs.

Click on the Zotero link below and click on the Z-tour posted on the home page, and then download and install Zotero on the computer and get more familiar with it. In a week or so I'll be asking to you to submit an assignment using Zotero.

5) a) Click on the google documents tour linked below and learn how google documents works. If you don't already have a google account then you'll need to create one.

b) Next write a brief 50 word bio of yourself in google docs and make it public on the internet by publishing it. Your bio will serve to introduce yourself to the class.

c) Copy the url for your bio and paste it into the web links tool (available from the tool bar) and add it to the "class bios" category found in the web links tool.

6) Read the two articles in the Course readings section below.

7) If this is the first time you're using WEBCT then take the time to explore this system. Click on all the tools in your tool bar and search through help for anything that puzzles you. You can also visit the UMB WEBCT student resources linked on the footer of the home page.

8) Post any questions about this course in the course Q &A Folder. If you have a question about this course, I'm sure someone else has a similar question so don't be afraid to post it or respond to questions posted there if you know the answer.

Do all these things by 9:00 Am next Tuesday, June, 3rd

Have a great first week!

Copyright ©2010 Eileen McMahon, Ed.M