Welcome to Class!

These activites must be completed by Monday, January 12, 2009.  If you have not made contact with me by January 12, 2009, then the IP&T secretary will unenroll you from the class. (Sorry, but it's to protect you from a bad grade.)

This Week's Activities

The purpose for this week's activites is to get oriented to course expectations and to become familiar with some of the technologies that we will use for this course and that you could use in your future classroom.  This week you need to complete all of the activites listed below in order to fully participate in the course.  Plan to spend between 1.5 to 2.5 hours completing course activities this week.  If you have technical difficulties with any of the activities, wait a few minutes and try again.  If technical difficulties continue, send me an email immediately and work on something else in the meantime.

• Create accounts (5-10 minutes)
  • Join the class Wiki (you should have recieved an invitation via email.  Please contact me immediately if you have not received your invitation.)
  • Set up a Gmail/Google Account  and choose a username that reflects your professional or "teacher persona".  You can use an existing Google Account if the user name is appropriate for professional use: mr.smith.scienceclass, teacherjones01, or jane.j.Brown will all make much better impressions on parents, students, and future employers than will muscleman, smartypantz, or 087ditzygirl.  Your Google account, will give you access Gmail, iGoogle, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Reader and a host of other free Google services.  Throughout the semester, we will learn how to use these services to improve the educational experience for yourself and your students.  
• View the Gospel Insights Presentation.  Read the suggested article and add your comments using the comments feature on the wiki page. (15-20 minutes)
• Sign up on the Gospel Insights Presentation Schedule. (5 minutes)
• Contribute to or comment on the Presentation Rubric after having reviewed the guidelines for Effective Educational Presentations, particularly the Death by PowerPoint link. (15-20 minutes)
• Compose your Learning Contract. (15-30 minutes)
• Record your Video Introduction.(15 minutes) 
• Submit the pre-test and introductory survey.  (30 minutes) 

Finally, this isn't required, but it may simplify your life.  If you have multiple email accounts, you may want to have all of them forwarded to a single account that you contact daily.  Some services make it more difficult to forward their mail to other accounts, but it is almost always possible.  The following resources will help you set up a universal email account on Gmail or forward your new Gmail account to the account you already use most frequently.  

• If you would like to forward your Gmail address to another account, see these instructions.
• If you want to use Gmail as your universal inbox, you may want to look at some of these help guides.
  • To forward hotmail to Gmail, read these instructions.
  • To forward aol mail to Gmail, read these instructions.
  • To forward Yahoo! mail to Gmail, read these instructions.
  • To forward email from a POP server (like a @byu.edu email account), read these instructions.

I have set up my Gmail account to be my universal account.  However, I have not tested all of these instructions.  If you find better instructions on the web, please let us know in the comments on this page.  Also, if you find similar instructions for making Yahoo! or (any other service) your universal account, please share.