Friday, July 27, 2007

Welcome to learning communities Aotearoa blog

Welcome to Facilitating Learning Communities Aoteoroa

Facilitating this learning community will be Bronwyn Hegarty, Leigh Blackall and Terry Marler.

What you need to do now!

Join the email forum
Ensure that you are subscribed to the eMail forum. You can subscribe and manage your settings on the forum website. We will be using the email forum for discussion and announcements.

Check the content
Can you access the content? At present most of the content for the course is on eMIT Blackboard. The first week's activities are about getting organised and meeting each other. The facilitators will send out an introduction about themselves soon - this relates to Module 1 content and activities 1.1 and 1.2 on Blackboard and will get you started. While we work out ways to make the content more open, please check that you have a username and password to access the content on Blackboard. If you do not have a correct username and password, please contact Bronwyn by email: bronwynh@tekotago.ac.nz

Set up computer for web conferencing
Do the three preliminary checks for Elluminate. Elluminate is a web conferencing facility that we will be using on a regular basis. through this facility you will be able to join meetings, watch presentations, chat and share links. Please ensure that you have a headset and microphone ready for use, and that you have completed the three preliminary checks.

Our first web conference meeting will be on Monday 30 July at 7pm NZ Standard time. To access this meeting please click the following link:
http://tinyurl.com/34ub7f

What you will need to do by 14 August:

Set up a weblog (blog)
You will be expected to keep regular notes on what you discover and learn in this course in a weblog. This is assessment one. If you already have a weblog, please feel free to use it for this course. Further advice on how to set up a weblog will follow, but if you would like to make a start now we suggest you watch this short video, and then go to http://blogger.com to get started.

Start reading through the content.
Please start reading through the course topics. Each course topic has readings and activities, you should endeavour to make a start on these and make notes on your ideas and further readings ready for going on your blog.