EO_P2_Tips_for_success.doc

Tips for Success from Intel 

Foundations for Success

Updating Your User Profile

When you register in the online environment, a very basic user profile is created for you. At any time, you may review, edit, or add to your profile by clicking your name or clicking the Edit Profile link on the course Home Page. You can update any of the following sections in your profile:

• Password. You can change your password, but please be sure to write it down and store it in a secure location. 
• E-mail address. You should verify that your e-mail information is correct.
• Timezone. Choose your region or UTC to reflect your timezone.
• Picture. You can upload a picture from your computer to represent you in various places throughout the course interface. The picture must be in JPG (or JPEG) format. To upload an image, click the Browse button, and select the image from a location on your computer.
• Description. Your description should tell other participants about your educational career. You should consider including the following information:
• Grade level(s) taught
• Subject(s) taught
• Years of teaching experience
• Leadership roles, including roles at school, in the district (department chair, administrator), and so forth
• Technology experience, including:
• Comfort level (on a scale from 1 through 10)
• Online course experience, if any
• Access to computers (Internet, lab, laptop, e-mail account, school vs. home vs. other, and so forth)
• Experience with technology in the classroom, if any

To update your profile:

1. On the course Home Page, click Update Profile, and then click Edit Profile.
2. Review your personal information and make changes if necessary. In the course Orientation, you will update your description including information about your educational experience.
3. Click Update Profile to save your updated information.

Review your personal information. Whenever you edit your profile, you need to click the Update Profile button located near the bottom of the Edit Profile page.

Planning Your Time

Each module includes an approximate time estimate. The amount of time required to complete a module will vary depending on how thoroughly you explore the resources and how much you participate in the online interactions. To produce a quality unit, you should expect to spend approximately 5 to 7 hours a week for nine weeks. You will have a better experience during the course if you schedule regular blocks of time for completing the course work. Your learning will be diminished if you work on course activities in five-to-ten minute work bites. You may also find it beneficial to meet face-to-face with a buddy or a group of colleagues to complete some of the online activities.

This course is designed to meet practical and professional needs of all teachers regardless of subject area, grade level, or professional interests. You will find it rich with resources and opportunities for further exploration and work. This means at times, you will feel some tension between wanting to dig more deeply into something but feel that time requires you to move on. You may feel rushed and have to make choices to be less thorough on some things or choosing to research one thing more deeply than another. Fortunately, there are two things that will help. First, this course is iterative—activities in later modules circle back to activities initiated in earlier modules. In many cases, you will return to earlier work. Secondly, the course materials and all your work are available for six months. You can return to materials and resources after you complete the course.

Working Offline

If you have limited Internet access, working offline is an option for working through some of the online course materials. Some ways to work offline include:

• Preparing your discussions in a word processing application and then copying and pasting your prepared text into the blog, wiki, or Sharing tab when you are online.
• Downloading the Notebook from the Resources tab and filling it in offline.
• Downloading the Course Progress from the Resources tab and keeping track of your progress offline.
• Downloading the modules, relevant resources, or your colleagues’ attachments to your computer and reading them offline.

Avoiding "Time Out"

You can avoid getting "timed out" by periodically selecting links in the online course. After 90 minutes of inactivity in the course, your session will time out, and you will need to log on to the course to have access.

If you get timed out while typing a post in a discussion, your work will be lost. Consider typing posts in a word processing application to avoid losing your work. After you create a post in a word processing document, you can copy and paste the text into a forum.

Signing Out

After you complete a session of the course, remember to click Sign Out.

Internet Sites for Course

Organizing Course Links

You will navigate among many Internet sites during this course. Add blog, tagging, and online collaborative Web sites to the My Links section of your Home Page for easy access. Also record the URL, your login, and password information to all of the sites used in the course in your “Login Information” document which will be saved in your Portfolio folder.

Registering for Internet Sites

Your facilitator will register you for many of the sites used throughout the course, and you will receive messages and information during the course to register for the remaining sites. If you have trouble registering for any of the sites because your district blocks automated e-mails, consider using a personal e-mail account for the course. You can also sign up for a gmail (http://gmail.google.com) account to complete the course. This personal free e-mail is easy to use and blocks spam effectively.

Course Communication

This course uses multiple forms of communication to foster the online learning environment. The following examples describe some of the communication tools that you and other participants will use:

• Announcements are posted on the course Home Page by your facilitator to remind participants of deadlines, post office hours, and share important course information.
• A facilitator may choose to use chat to hold office hours. Chat allows multiple participants to engage in a real-time discussion regarding the course content. Participants may choose to schedule voluntary chats with colleagues at any time during the course.  SKYPE: emilyemann
• Participants can send messages to communicate with others in the online course environment. If a participant sends a message to another participant and both participants are online, the messaging system sends the message to the Home Page. Unlike instant messaging, you will not be notified as soon as a new message arrives, but you will see the message the next time you visit the Home Page.  If the receiving participant is offline, the system holds the message until the recipient logs on, like an e-mail program. The messaging system allows participants to send messages to each other without disclosing personal e-mail information. Click the envelope next to any participant’s name in the class list to send a message.
• You can adjust your message settings so that messages not read within so many hours are sent directly to your e-mail address. Go to Update Your Profile and click Messages. Click Settings at the top of the window. Find the drop-down box in which you can set the hours. The suggested setting is 36 hours.
• Online Interactions allow participants to share ideas, insights, and questions through the Course Blog, Course Wiki, and Sharing and Lounge tabs.
• You can adjust your forum tracking option to keep track of posts you have seen in the Lounge and Sharing tabs. Go to Update Your Profile and click Show Advanced. Scroll to the Forum tracking option and change to Yes: highlight new posts for me.

Pointers for Using Chats

So that your chat discussions are more productive and enjoyable, follow these pointers:

• Pop-up blockers must be off to enter a chat room.
• Participants can only set up one chat room at one time.
• Participants can enter several chat rooms at one time. To view multiple chat rooms simultaneously, enter a room and resize the window to fit on the left side of your monitor. Then, enter another chat room and resize and move that window to the right side of your monitor. By resizing each window, you can readily participate in several discussions at one time.
• When a participant enters a chat room, a “beep” sound indicates to others that a new participant has entered the room. Participants can send a sound to each other by clicking the beep next to a participants’ name.
• A participant can only see comments sent after they enter a room. Participants joining a discussion will not have access to any previous comments.
• Participants can use standard emoticons to indicate their emotions while chatting:
• o  Smile—Type a colon, dash, right parenthesis :-)
• o  Frown—Type a colon, dash, left parenthesis :-(
• o  Wink—Type a semicolon, dash, right parenthesis ;-)
• o  Surprise—Type a colon, dash, small letter o :-o
• Chats are not saved. Once a participant leaves a room, all comments become inaccessible.
• When in the chat room, click ? next to the text box for additional pointers.

Saving Work

When completing activities in the course, you have the option of saving your work into an online notebook. The online notebook is linked from activities throughout the course. You may also access any notebook entries from the My Work tab. Make sure you click the Submit button after entering information in each notebook space.

Concluding the Course

Course Evaluation

After you complete your review of the eight modules, please complete the online course evaluation in Module 8: Showcasing Unit Portfolios, Wrap-Up. Your feedback and comments will help to determine the effectiveness of the various course components and improve the course for future participants.

Review Course Requirements

Before you complete the course, verify that you have read all the course information and completed all the required tasks. Also, ensure that you participated in the required online interactions. Viewing the Course Progress Checklist and the Portfolio Checklist can assist you during this final check stage.

Beyond Essentials Online

Participants will have access to the materials in the course for nine months.