| Don't Get
Overwhelmed |
It’s easy
to get overwhelmed in an online class when you’re using the
discussion board and you’re conscientious about answering your email
promptly. Here are some tips to keep the online workload comparable
to the workload for a traditional class:
- Use a variety of assessments and activities—intersperse those
that require your high involvement (i.e., you on the discussion
board with students) with those permitting lower involvement by
the professor (i.e., a group of students preparing for and leading
a discussion, other group assignments).
- Let your students know the turnaround time for email replies.
No longer than twenty-four hours is recommended, but set specific
times each day to check your WebCT email—don’t have the class open
all day. Also, be sure to let students know that the twenty-four
hour reply time excludes holidays and weekends.
Read
the rest of the article...
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| Convert documents to
PDF for free online |
There
are several good reasons for converting your word processing
documents to PDF before making them available to others
electronically. For one, PDF documents are read by the free Adobe
Reader plugin, which is said to be present on approximately 98% of
computers.
The main obstacle has been in
converting the documents to PDF. Programs that convert the documents
are either costly or require download and installation and a
learning curve, so most people don't have it readily available. Now,
however, Google's latest acquisition, Writely.com, makes it possible
for anyone with an internet connection to do the conversion quickly,
easily, and for free.
LTech has created a quick
video tutorial showing how to use Writely.Com, which you can find on
the Adobe
Reader (PDF) page of the LTech website (click
here). The page also mentions alternatives for creating PDF
documents, but Writely.Com is a great first
step. |
| Search a Web
Page |
So you've
done your key word search in Google or Yahoo! or Ask.com, but now
you're clicking into websites that hopefully have your information,
and each one is a mile long, and who has time to scan a whole page
to find the bit you're interested in?
Just click
Ctrl-F. In IE, a box will pop up and you can type in the word or
phrase to search the whole page. In Firefox, the Find feature
appears at the bottom of the window. You can just start typing and
the text will automatically be highlighted in the page. Click Find
Next to proceed to the next matching text. |
| LTech Staff
Changes |
|
LTech
welcomes Ron Walls, who will be providing faculty support in many
learning technologies. Many of you know Ron and already appreciate
his easy, helpful communication style. We also have to say
congratulations to Riotta Scott, who is now administering the
College website! But don’t panic — if you have WebCT questions, you
can still contact Riotta via our tech support request form (http://ltech.nwfstatecollege.edu/forms/dlrequest.html).
She will be answering questions and also manning our Friday labs
until we hire a new person. So we don’t say “goodbye” to Riotta,
just “See you around!” |
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