Class Officially Begins

Greetings and Welcome to CIOS 108, Graphic Design for Computer Applications

Today class officially begins today

By now I should have received all enrollment confirmations from students that are in my class. After today I will not be using the UASonline enrollment system to send announcements and will only be sending out announcements to those students that have followed the confirmation instructions. If you have not sent an email confirming your enrollment, to me, at jrfehringer@uas.alaska.edu , you will not receive important announcements regarding class assignments, projects, meeting times and lesson resources. It is your responsibility to keep accurate and timely communication ongoing between you and the instructor.

New Students
If you are new to the class it is your responsibility to read through the announcement archive at https://uascentral.uas.alaska.edu/online and get caught up with the rest of the class. If you have any questions about what is expected of you, after you read the class syllabus and timeline, email me immediately.

Elluminate Live
Due to the update to Blackboard, UAF is having difficulties getting Elluminate live up and running correctly. For this reason, we will use the UAS Elluminate system instead. Login and test your connection to the system at

https://uascentral.uas.alaska.edu/online

Once you are logged in, select your class and navigate to the Communication Tools in the left column and click on Web Meeting. If you haven’t already downloaded the Elluminate software, you will be prompted to do so and taken through the steps.

Tip: Before you come to the online meeting it might be wise to restart your computer and clear off your desktop. Occasionally I will switch control to a student so they can demonstrate a process, which means that student’s desktop will be visible to all other participants. There may be information on your computer within sight that you do not want anyone to have visual access to.

For those of you using the Photoshop CS3 key server software from UAS: Before signing on to the meeting, start your VPN client and THEN start Photoshop CS3. You cannot do this in reverse order and will only delay your participation.

If you have a separate monitor (this is NOT a requirement), this will be a good way to follow along with any demonstration and try the process in conjunction to watching through Elluminate. Due to some of Elluminate’s limitations, it is often difficult to simultaneously view the demonstration and try the process yourself. Your software will often block your view to the demonstration on a single monitor system. When time permits, I will give folks time to try a process before moving on.

Blackboard and Blogger
I will be using both Blackboard at http://classes.uaf.edu/ and Blogger at http://cios-108.blogspot.com/ as the central hubs for our class. The information needed to participate in the class instruction will be posted on both sites in order to eliminate difficulties that sometimes arrive in gaining access to one or the other. You are responsible to check in with both sites for your class, frequently during the week, to stay current. I have set up an RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feed for the class blogger site in order to streamline the process in notification when there is an update. You can link this feed to some of your favorite newsreaders and be kept up to day with a subscription to all Posts and Comment updates, if you like.

If you have not set your personal blog-folio up yet, do that very soon. I expect them to be up and operating with the URL link sent to me before our meeting on January 22nd. Do not wait until the last minute. Blog-folio URLs that are submitted late will have points deducted from their total set-up score.

That’s it for now. I look forward to our meeting next Thursday.