This pre-course assignment is designed to get you prepared to have success in the course by making sure all of your necessary resources are working for you. You should do the following tasks before the first week of class (consider printing this webpage and then "check off" the assignments that you have completed.
1) Review the syllabus.
2) Following the directions in the Moodle video, create your Moodle account. When you are into Moodle, update your profile, including a picture of yourself (a picture size of 100x100 pixels works well.) Here is a quick link to the video showing how to create your profile in Moodle.
3) View the Course Introduction video. This video provides an overview to what we will be doing this semester.
4) View the following support videos: "Who is Dr. Jerz," "Moodle Overview", and "Videos-Podcasts-iTunes." These can also be found on Moodle.
5) In Moodle, go to the "Introduce Yourself" forum and provide your classmates some interesting information about yourself. This is an example of a "discussion forum" in Moodle.
6) In Moodle, click on the "Upload Photo" assignment link. Upload a photo (or document). This gives you a chance to see how to upload files into Moodle. You will be doing a lot of this during the semester. You should also experience this "uploading" feature when you edit your profile.
7) In Moodle, complete the Student Information Survey. This is an example of a Moodle "quiz." Remember to "submit" this when you are finished. This "quiz" will not be automatically graded since it contains open-ended questions.
8) If you have an iPod/iPhone or other multimedia player, you might want to see if you can get the course podcast videos into iTunes. Usually, I prefer playing the "Flash format" videos from behind my computer. In my "Videos..." video, I show you how to get these various video feeds into iTunes (copy this feed URL, go to iTunes, click on Files | Subscribe to Podcast, and paste the feed URL into the textbox.) Some browsers can display these URLs.
http://www.rjerz.com/c/bs/Podcasts/bsu.xml "Subscribe in iTunes store." This is the URL to the main lecture videos.
http://www.rjerz.com/c/bs/Podcasts/bsu_A.xml This is the URL to the "administrative" videos. In these videos I typically provide answers to some of the questions asked throughout the semester. These videos are not in the iTunes store.
9) Browse the textbook in order to get a sense of what we will be covering.
A few days before the course starts, I will let you know (via an email) that Chapter 1 materials are now available. You will be able to begin this chapter before the course officially starts.
10) Let me know if you have any questions or encounter any problems.