These activities will prepare you to use all the "back end" tools that will be required during your MTT and Ed Tech courses. Some of you may already know how to complete the activities - or you may have already done some of the activities in this orientation. If that is the case, you can probably fly through these activities. If so, you can always get a jump start on other activities you will need 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 run Elluminate, since we will be meeting the first week of classes. Please make every effort to attend the first session since this will allow you to ask questions, should you have any.

In addition, you may want to make a mental note about this orientation in case you get "stumped" somewhere along the way in the course. In addition to tutorials needed to complete each activity, you will also find links to resources and important contact information.

Please pay particular attention to the tutorial on optimizing photos and on uploading and retrieving your URLs. These are the two areas that cause the most challenge as you are going through the course. It is critical that you make sure you know how to upload and retrieve a useable URL that allows the instructor to have access to your projects.

If your projects are not accessible through the URL you provide, you run the risk of having points taken off for being late.

Good luck and hope to hear you soon.

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. Please follow the time for completion of the activities.

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Please Note: Before beginning the rest of the Technology Orientation activities, please review the Syllabus and complete the Scavenger Hunt. You can find the Scavenger Hunt by clicking on the link in the left sidebar menu.

Before you get started with this part of the Technology Orientation - did you complete the Scavenger Hunt? Please see above for information.

In an online course, extensive communication occurs via email. For this online course and others in the program, you will be using a variety of Web 2.0 tools. It is critical that you have an external email account so that you can use a variety of Google 2.0 features. By external, I mean outside of your work environment since many ISDs and companies block emails from "suspicious" sources. Listserv emails from universities often look suspicious.

Examples of external accounts are: Yahoo, RoadRunner, Hotmail, AOL, Google

Although you are not limited to the choice of accounts you set up, we recommend a gmail account that also allows you to send and receive large files, something that you may have to do in this or other online courses.

Google offers free, virtually unlimited space and is quite easy to use. Once you have an account, please ensure that you can receive emails from the listserv. Click here to go to gmail and set up an account if you do not already have an external account.

It is YOUR responsibility to ensure that your email address can receive course emails.  A tutorial on using the BlackBoard listserv can be found below.

To complete this activity:

• Go to the Listserv via the Course Email button on the menu bar.
• Send yourself an email as a single user and another to the whole group.
• Please put the course number, your name and Trial Email in the subject line. For example, your email subject line for this activity would be:

  edtc6320 (your name) Trial Email

• If you do not receive the email from the listserv, then you need to go to TeleCampus_Information_System_(TIS) and update the information to provide an email address that the Listserv can reach. If the email address is correct in TIS, contact the UT TeleCampus Help Desk for help. The 24x7 Helpdesk is available online or you can call 1-866-321-2988. You can contact the UT TeleCampus to get help by email or call 1-888-Texas-16 (1-888-839-2716).

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:

edtc6320 Janice - Your topic here.

If you do not include the course number and your name, it may be inadvertently overlooked and thus take a longer time to receive 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.

Tutorial on sending and receiving emails via the course listserv:

This will complete your first critical activity for Orientation.

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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 follow for Step 2A follow:

1.) Go to the wiki and request access from your instructor by clicking on the Request Access button (as shown below) and entering your email address.

If you cannot figure out how to do this, the PBworks blog provides additional instructions.)

2.) Log in to the wiki and you will see a link to your course wiki. Look for the title of your course and click on that to enter your course wiki.

Access and use your class wiki at the following location: http://butleratutb.pbworks.com. PBworks wikis are free and without advertising for educators. PBworks wikis are so named because creating and using their wiki is as easy as making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Once you spend a bit of time there, you will likely find that you agree.

The tasks you must follow for Step 2B follow:

This step is designed to take you through most of the mechanics of using your wiki. With all that said, you are now ready to complete this part of your orientation as you to complete this step follow:

1.) Find a photograph of you that you would like to share with the class. Make sure that your photo is the correct size for adding to the wiki. Your photo should be about 150 X 200 pixels. If you have a large photo, you will need to resize it and possibly crop it (we want to see your face - not the scenery around you) before adding it to the wiki.

To Crop and Resize: Many graphic editing programs are available now for free and many photo storage places have graphic editing tools. If you are not familiar with any of them, we recommend PhotoFiltre for its ease of use and price (FREE).

To download the free PhotoFiltre, click here, select Downloads, then select English version 6.3.1. After downloading, click on the file to install and follow the directions. Hint: This program is small enough that you can install it on your flash drive and always have a photo editing program available to you regardless of the computer that you use.

Should you choose to use PhotoFiltre, click here for a text and graphical tutorial on how to crop and resize your photo using Photofiltre.

2.) Next,

• access the wiki
• go to Bio and Photo page for your course
• upload your photo to the appropriate page
• include a brief bio sketch for others to view

Tutorial on adding bio and photo to appropriate page.

If you would prefer a text and graphics tutorial, please click here.

If you would like additional PBwiki tutorials from a variety of sources, please click here.

Once you complete these activities, you will be finished with your second orientation task.

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We will be meeting synchronously (all students and teachers at the same time) online through Elluminate Live Classroom. To use Elluminate, you first need to make sure that you have a headset that has a microphone. Headsets can be purchased at Best Buy, Office Depot, Staples, WalMart, etc. for about $20.00.

NOTE: If you are going to be taking several online classes, we recommend that you use a more expensive headset, such as a Microsoft Lifechat LX 3000, which runs about $40.00. However, the less expensive sets certainly provide acceptable quality.

Once you have your headset with microphone, you can access Elluminate through your UTB course menu sidebar to the left. Directions and assistance for logging in to UTB and accessing your course can be found here.

Once you have accessed the course, you will need to go in to Elluminate. While it is very easy to use, should you want more discussion, you can find anything and everything about Elluminate here.

Some critical things to consider for making your visits to Elluminate happy times:

Once you complete this activity, you will be finished with your third orientation task.

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For this activity, you will create a very simple PowerPoint (or other multimedia presentation) containing two slides.

Please include the following slides:

1. one nice photograph of something you would like to share.
• It does not have to be you; it could be a pet, your favorite musical group, your school, your child or grandchild - virtually anything that is meaningful to you.
• Please add a brief comment of no more than six (6) words about the photo.
2. On slide two, please include one web site URL that you think will be valuable to others in the class.
   • Assume that other students already know about Google, UTB sites and other frequently used commercial sites; thus, choose a site that you believe will benefit other students as they progress through the program.

Elluminate will not accept any transitions or animations, so create a simple PowerPoint with no transitions or animation. Be prepared to upload and share our first meeting.

If you cannot attend the Elluminate session, you will need to upload the presentation in the wiki so that the others in the class can view it. However, we highly encourage everyone to attend since the sessions allow you to hear from others in the class as well as share your expertise.

Save the PowerPoint as indicated below, including the course number, your name and intro in the file name. For example, mine would be named

edtc6320_ janice_intro

Please note: When you save and name your PowerPoint, you should not include the ".ppt" at the end. PowerPoint will add the ending extension for you.

An extremely important note about project names:
In a nutshell, it is critical that you DO NOT use any spaces in the names of any of your projects. Projects with spaces in the name often CANNOT be retrieved from a server so you should get into the habit of eliminating ALL spaces when you are naming any file.

Your project named janice intro.ppt cannot be retrieved from the server for others (your instructor) to see when you post it to the project site. If the project cannot be retrieved, it WILL NOT be considered to be completed.

Once you complete this activity, you will be finished with your fourth orientation task.

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It is important that you actively participate in class each meeting just as you would in a F2F class. Students will learn as much from your input and your questions as they do from the instructor (sometimes more). For full attendance credit in Elluminate, you must be an active participant - asking questions, providing feedback, adding to the discussion.

If you cannot meet during the first class, you must listen to the archived meeting and respond to the information that was discussed in Elluminate on the listserv.

You will not receive credit for class participation if you do not attend the Elluminate meetings or listen to the archived meeting and respond to the content of the meeting.

Your response to the archived meeting should be approximately 250-300 words and contain more substance than, "That was very interesting; I agree."

During your first meeting, you will share information about yourself through the PowerPoint presentation in Elluminate The presentation should be quite brief to allow everyone in class to present. During this presentation, you can share the significance of the photo included in the first slide and a few sentences about the web site you are sharing with others.

Once you complete this activity, you will be finished with your fifth orientation task.

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You will need a location for storing all your projects online during this course and the educational technology program. If you already have a server or online storage account that allows others to access files, you may continue to use that one. If you do not have a hosting service or server space elsewhere, you will need to set up an account.

You may either set up an account from a variety of web hosts who offer free and/or very inexpensive storage space. We recommend that you use one of the online storage hosts because you will continue to have access to your materials and projects long after you graduate. These accounts also allow you to save critical information that resides on your hard drive or an external flash drive.

Should you want to look at what is offered, below you will find a variety of options with links to information about each option.

http://drop.io/ and http://flipdrive.com are two that have been recommended by students for ease of use and features. Flip is free for the first 30 days, then you have an inexpensive paid subscription. I did find that uploading projects and movies eats up the free space rather quickly.

Drop is recommended by Lori McNabb from the TeleCampus. She states, Up to 100 MB is free (I have 96 documents, most of them pdfs and PowerPoint presentations, on my site now and am using 97 MB).  Extra storage is only $10/GB/year." The features of Drop are impressive and definitely worth looking at.

Another option is creating a wiki and uploading all your content there. It certainly takes a while to use up your wiki resources and when used up, you could just create another one and link it.

University of Texas at Brownsville offers a free account to students. You can find directions on how to set up that free account here.

Other options are below and you can certainly do some research to find others that are available for storing.

• http://pbworks.com
• http://www.box.net/
• http://www.mediafire.com/
• http://wordpress.com/
• http://www.bravenet.com/webhosting/
• http://www.google.com/sites
• http://www.110mb.com/
• http://www.webs.com/

This will complete your sixth critical activity for Orientation.

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To find your course wiki page, please go to the main wiki at http://butleratutb.pbworks.com/portal and find your course wiki page.

Once there, you will see the link to post your Technology Orientation multimedia presentation. If you are uncertain how to do this, the Support pages at PBWorks will guide you to do anything in a wiki in 30 seconds or less. The video in Step 2 is also instructive.

Once you complete this activity, you will be finished with your seventh and final orientation task.

Please note, in the past, we have had extensive directions on how to upload content into the university server and retrieve the appropriate URL. This semester, we are experimenting with students using a variety of online storage resources and do not have instructions for each one. Assistance will be provided in the event you cannot figure out how to share your files through your online storage resource or how to upload and share links using the Orange server.

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