Multimedia Seed: Course Materials: Requirements

This page provides a review of the basic requirements for the course. Go to the Course Guide for specific assignments and the Course Calendar for specific due dates.

Getting Started

This class is intended to be a practical approach to the skills needed by today's information technologists, media specialists, librarians, and educators. Whether you're interested in the role of the school media specialist, church librarian, or another type of information technologist, this course is designed to be flexible enough to address the varied needs of students. Keep in mind that the class contains students with a wide variety of educational, work, life, and technology experience. Try not to compare yourself to other students. Instead, focus on your own strengths and weaknesses. Be sure to email your instructor if you have questions or concerns about the specific projects and how they can better fit your professional needs.

Course Updates

Your instructor will be sending out periodic class updates to review important course information and assignments. Please read these carefully. If you have questions, please reply to these updates for clarifications or questions. If you think you've missed one of these communications, check the Course Email Archives.

Oncourse Overview

Since this is an online course, much of the sharing and discussion will happen using the OncourseCL online learning environment. However since you'll be experiencing many different technologies in this course, be sure to read the activity guidelines carefully to determine where projects should be shared.

Use the following documents if you have questions about Oncourse CL:

Oncourse contains a menubar on the left side of the screen for easy navigation. Use the following instructions to help you use the resources for this course:

1. The SYLLABUS links to all of the course materials.
2. The ROSTER shows the class list. You may wish to include a personal profile and photo so we can learn a little more about you.
3. The GRADEBOOK is a place where you can track your progress. If you lose a point, I'll provide a comment indicating the problem.
4. The MESSAGE CENTER contains a place to send and receive mail messages. You might want to check the settings. You can have these messages sent to your personal email if you wish.
5. The FORUM area is where we'll be holding our SPROUT discussions. You'll notice 12 forums. Although you may wish to read all of the postings, you're only required to post and reply in ONE of the subcategories under each forum. For each SPROUT, you have 1-4 options. To read or scan these forum discussions, you may wish to change the VIEW option from ALL to THREADED so you can see the topics and subtopics within each discussion more easily.
6. The FORUM area is also where you will be used for posting general information and class introductions. We'll also use this area for our GARDEN postings and discussions. This is also where later in the course, you'll share your PROJECTS with peers in your interest area. You can elect to share with any one of these GARDEN areas: (1) Schools Patch, (2) Public Library Patch, (3) Academic Library Patch, or (4) Other Library Environments Patch. I've created separate areas so these Garden Patches don't get so full. But feel free to 'jump the fence' to another patch to 'soak up the sunshine' or 'plant a seed.'
7. The CHAT area can be used by anyone who would like to share in "real time" with anyone in the class. There are no required course chats.

Discussions Area

Our first activity will be introductions. In addition to the Introduce Yourself area, two other forums are provided at the top of the Discussion list.

Practice Area. If you're new to OncourseCL, you might be a little nervous about posting assignments. This area is a place to practice. No one is monitoring this space. It's just a place to practice using HTML coding, making attachments, or trying out ideas. If you're not sure how your posting will look, use this area to create a sample posting.

General Discussion. The General Discussion area is intended for anything you'd like to share with the class. Do you have a question about the profession? How about a concern about the class? Maybe you're looking for a ride to Indianapolis next semester. These are just a few of the topics you could discuss in this area.

Garden Patch Cohort Groups

The biggest drawback to an online class is the lack of face-to-face communication with your instructor and your peers. I'll be sending out weekly course updates that will hopefully help you feel connected to me. I'll be reading your assignments which will help me feel connected to you. We can email personally whenever you have something you'd like to share or discuss. I LIVE on email... in the motorhome our living room, dining room, bathroom, and bedroom are all within 38 feet, so I'm always available. When I'm "on-the-road" I'll usually provide information in the weekly update. In this case, it should still take less than 24 hours for a reply.

In addition to your instructor, a course is more valuable when you can bounce ideas off your peers. Rather than making formal requirements, I prefer a more informal cohort group organization. You'll be asked to join one of our class cohort groups. These will be based on professional interests. You'll be able to find these areas within the discussion forum in oncourse. These aren't meant to be "top secret" meeting areas, instead they're intended to provide an area where you can discuss class issues, share ideas for projects, and review the ideas of others.

The scout cohort groups are designed to assist you in making class and professional connections. You are professionally responsible for completing the activities. In other words, they are a required component of the class, but I won't be counting postings, replies, or interactions. I will check my oncourse log to be sure that you've been to a cohort group area, but there's no evaluation. I may drop in now and then to make sure the conversation is running smoothly, but don't expect many comments from me. This is your place.

Some students find it extremely valuable to get to know their classmates. Think of these activities as the replacement for face-to-face classroom interaction. The quality of the interaction is up to you.

I've provided you with a few required activities. Otherwise feel free to use the cohort group area for open discussion to share issues and concerns about topics both inside and outside the course. You will also be posting your projects in the cohort groups.

The cohort groups are listed in the forum section of Oncourse. The groups are based on professional interest areas, but feel to choose any group you wish.

Complete each of the following cohort group activities in the GARDEN discussions at Oncourse:

Garden Introduction

Post Projects - Prior to submitting each of three projects for grading, post them in a Garden patch area. Be sure to make it clear that your is ready for evaluation and their review.

Review Classmates Projects - Reveiw and provide constructive feedback to at least one classmates work for each of the three required projects.

Personal Web Space

Throughout the semester, you will be sharing your projects with the class and with the virtual community. This means that you will need to have an online space that you can submit and store your final work.

Remember this is not a competition, all projects are graded with the same criteria checklist (the minimum criteria are identified in the assignment for each task). You will share your projects and get feedback from classmates before submitting to your instructor. Classmates can help identify typos and missing elements that can impact your grade. In examining the projects of others, you may discover techniques that could enhance and improve your own products. At the very least, you will gain lots of practical ideas and information in your review of other student's work.

Rather than relying on university space, it's a good idea to start developing a long-term storage space on the Web for your assignment. Think in terms of an entry / index page that can be extended to include added pages for all your projects. You may also want to create separate pages for other classes. This could easily be expended to become a part of your professional portfolio.

Project One: Ask that you Not submit your Mediagraphy as a Word or PowerPoint document. Reasoning is that the finished projects often involve / contain graphic images and URL links to online resources. Also the size and scope of the project is such that both MSWord documents and PowerPoint presentations are often clunky, cumbersome;their formatting and layouts can easily be impaired. This impacts the usefulness of the finished product. PowerPoint documents work best as a presentation element rather than as a standalone document. The Mediagraphy is meant to be 'public' project being shared at large with a library community. Prepare it for a global audience. Therefore think in terms of setting up a webpage a a fre service such as Google Sites or a Wiki spaces. Concentrate on the content of the mediagraphy and develop a clean, professional website. You may use the easy-to-follow templates provided by Google or Wiki technologies.

Here are the links to free webspace, setup and use your site for all three projects:

1) Google Sites http://sites.google.com/

2) Wikispaces http://www.wikispaces.com/

Make sure that you select the free and basic services. Explore the help or tutorials that each site provides: Tours at Wiki and Learn More at Google Sites. There are other free online hosting sites that may also work to host your work; sites such as Weebly and BraveNet. You may have knowledge or experience of other such shairing sites; if they will work for you that is fine. I have experience with the two recommended above.

3) Another option for some is the use of your own personal webspace or a website from work location. If you have access to a webserver and the expertise to create / upload your own materials there - - that is fine too.

4) You may also want to use free sites to host needed audio and video files (Both of these can sometimes be large files that exceed allocated space elsewhere). Note that you can request added / expanded space at Oncourse, but this needs to be requested ahead of time - - sometimes takes a few days to be completed. You may find situations where uploading a video to Vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/ or TeacherTube http://www.schooltube.com/ makes sense. A video site such asSchoolTube and YouTube http://www.youtube.com/ allows you to embed the coding into your website making use almost seamless. Sites like SoundBoard http://www.soundboard.com/ and MediaFire http://www.mediafire.com/ can be used for audio episodes.

Once a final project is uploaded and checked to see that it displays properly to the public, you can then 'post' a brief introduction and link to its location at the correct Oncourse Forum section. The instructor will follow that posting to core your work.

Course Readings

A Course Guide will guide you through the materials. You should systematically work your way through the Course Guide. It begins with an introduction and course task, process, projects, and conclusion.

The most time-consuming part of this course will be the exploration of materials. Unlike a book that contains a clear beginning, middle, and end, the course materials are much more flexible.

Reading Symbols

Looks for the following symbols as you move through the readings:

When you see a red checkmark before a bold/green word, this indicates a hyperlink to an example or reading that will be particularly valuable in your learning. You should click on the hyperlink and spend a few minutes thinking about how the example or reading contributes to your understanding.

When you see a red exclamation mark , get involved and think about the question or try out the recommended idea. You aren't required to submit an answer, however it's important to complete the activity for your own learning.

When you see a red arrow before a link, you will be going to an internal link within the course website. Be sure to read each of these pages carefully!

When you see a red smile after a software package or website, it's your instructor's preferred resource.

When you see a red star before an activity, you should complete this assignment and submit it to your instructor for grading.

Reading Guidance

All of the course materials are in a single web project called Multimedia Seeds. We've developed these materials for the general public as well as for the course. I suggest that you move systematically through the materials using the site map on main page. You could easily do endless hours of content exploration. Instead, we've provided some guidelines that will help direct your attention. Please read these guidelines carefully:

You'll find many words in the body of the text highlighted with a bold, green font. These are links to other pages or websites. These hyperlinked materials are optional resources that provide additional information, but are not required readings. Many of these links provide background information from Wikipedia that's constantly changing.

Read. In many instances, the materials will direct you to READ. This means that you should literally read the article or web page. You aren't required to read the links associated with the article, but you should read the article itself. The details are probably not as important as the overall issues presented. In many cases, reflective questions or activities have been provided to guide your reading. Then, ask yourself: Why did he have us read this? What are the key ideas that I should add to my "professional bag of tricks"?

Skim. Sometimes you'll be directed to skim an article. In this case, the details of the article aren't important. Instead concentrate on identifying the key ideas. In many cases, these are alternative sources or other views on issues already presented in the text or other articles.

Explore. In many instances, websites are provided on a single topic. Many of these websites contains multiple pages and links. Rather than examining all the items in-depth, spend a few minutes with each resource and determine it's personal and professional value.

On-site versus Off-site. As you explore the Multimedia Seeds pages, you'll notice that some readings refer to on-site versus off-site materials. On-site materials are those housed at our eduScapes website . The off-site materials are linked to the work of others. If you can't get to an off-site article that says READ, notify your instructor so the links can be updated or removed .

In most cases, off-site links are not marked. For example, you might be reading a sentence and notice a hot link. This hot-link probably connects to an off-site article that expands on the idea presented in the sentence. You may or may not use the link depending on your interests. Lists of off-site links with supplemental materials are also not indicated as on or off-site. If you're not sure, just look at the URL and you can see whether it's an eduScapes or 42eXplore address or not. Note: Our online resources reside at both the eduScapes (http://eduscapes.com) and 42eXplore (http://42explore.com) domains, and when we speak of eduScapes we are often referring to both or all of those resources.

Reading Suggestions

Some people new to the web-based learning environment underestimate the importance of spending time with the course materials. Think of the readings and the linked online resources as a substitute for the traditional class lecture. The time you would normally spend attending class and reading the out-of-class textbook materials, should be used exploring the Multimedia Seeds pages. You will not be driving to class each week; however, make sure that you delve into the material so that you have a solid understanding of the content.

Assignments

In teaching, have you ever gotten assignment names or even different courses mixed up? Activities, assignments, skills-building exercises, throw in a project or three . . . they can all run together sometimes. As a result, this class has a light-hearted scheme for assignment naming: ROOTS, SPROUTs, and GARDEN. Hopefully the use of these names will help differentiate the required tasks.

This course contains a series of activities and projects. A total of 100 points are possible.

Roots Assignments

To ensure that you have the basic background needed to be successful with audio and video, a series of ROOTS exercises have bee created. Each of them will consist of an online short answer quiz. The questions will be randomly presented and you may use the course materials and any other available resources to help develop your short answer response. The quiz is posed as questions coming to you working at a virtual help desk. You may take as much time as you wish, but there is not a way for you to start and return in completing this online activity - - in other words, you can stay online as long as you wish in one computer session. Once the time limit for the quiz has ended (4 day period), an answer key will be emailed. The second portion of the Root exercise will call for you to compare the answer key to your responses, and score your own work. Then the last step is to post your score in the appropriate Oncourse Forum and discuss the questions; i.e., which you liked and didn't like, which ones you would like to throw out - but in the latter instance, you must come up with a better question to take it's place. Your score will be made on the accuracy of your score analysis and the quality of the discussion. A total of three points is available on each Root exercise - - one of those points can be gained by following up a classmate's forum discussion with added ideas, expanded information that expands the discussion, pertinent examples, etc. Possitive feedback is encouraged (same as with reply / responses to Sprout postings - below), but will not garner added point.

These not-to-cleverly disguise objective of these Root exercises is to ensure that you have gained and reviewed the foundational knowledge within the course activities and materials.

Sprouts Assignments

Assignments will focus on building specific skills essential in developing effective projects. These are intended to help you analyze and apply the course content. In the Course Guide, you'll find yellow boxes which contain the requirements for the activities.

The SPROUTs Discussions will give you a chance to share what you're learning. Rather than a single discussion area for the entire class, a series of options have been provided for each topic. First, explore the possibilities for each Sprout topic. Then, choose ONE discussion forum option within the SPROUT that you find personally and professionally meaningful. The numbers and topics will match forums set up in OncourseCL. These can be found in the FORUM area of Oncourse.

You will receive up to 2 points for each of the 12 SPROUT postings. The postings will be evaluated based on the following scale: 2 points = excellent; 1 point = adequate. Partial point assignments are sometimes assigned for postings. One point will also be awarded for providing at least one quality reply to at least one classmate's posting (See Replies below).

Assignment Formatting

It is recommended that you write your assigned postings for Oncourse in a word processor, then paste it into the appropriate Forum section. Oncourse has been known to crash, so it's a good idea to have a back up of your text. Use the practice area to check to see if our document formatting is correct. You can delete or edit your Forum postings.

DO NOT submit projects to the following formats because many students do not have access to this software: Publisher, Word Perfect, Works. Also, DO NOT use the Web Archive (.MHT file extension) option in Word. It does not work with all versions. If you use these packages, please export as a Word file, a web page, or as a PDF file.

In many cases, it's useful to have a "screen shot" to demonstrate how a software package is used. Here are the directions for making a graphic that can be pasted into Word or attached to an assignment.

Macintosh Screen Capture. If you have Mac OSX, it's easy to use the built-in key commands for grabbing a screen.

Press Command (Apple)-Shift-4. The cursor turns into a cross.
Select the area of the screen you wish to capture. The screen is captured and saved as a PDF file called Picture 1 on your hard drive.
If you hold down the Control key in addition to the Command (Apple)-Shift-4 and select an area of the screen, the image is stored on the clipboard.

If you have Mac OSX, you can also use the Grab Utility. This allows you to capture windows that are open.

Open Grab (located in Applications/Utility).
Choose Capture > Timed Screen.
When the Timed Screen Grab dialog opens, click Start Timer.
Click the menu you want to capture and keep the mouse button pressed until the Timer Screen Grab dialog closes and the picture appears.
Use the Grab preferences for option options such as showing the pointer.

Windows Screen Capture. The PRINT SCREEN key allows you to capture the Desktop or individual windows. You'll have to look for this key on your keyboard, it's placement varies with the type of keyboard.

To capture the entire screen:

Press the PRINT SCREEN key. The image will be placed on the clipboard.
Open an application such as Microsoft Word, pull down the Edit menu and choose Paste. Or, press Ctrl-V to paste.

To capture the current window on your screen:

Press the ALT + PRINT SCREEN key. A screen shot your the currently selected window will be placed on the keyboard

Replies

In some cases, you will be asked to provide a "high quality reply" to at least one of your peers.

Below you'll find examples of the kinds of "responses" that will be counted. Feel free to "get into" the discussion with as many comments to your peers as you'd like. However to receive your 1 response point, be sure that your response is insightful and will help others in their learning:

Provide technical support or suggestions. You might provide a tip or suggestion related to Flash that might help a student expand their project or solve a technical problem.
Make a suggestion. For example, after reading a comment from a peer, you might decide to add an example, suggest a website address or other resource, or answer a question.
Add an insight. If you've had an encounter with the topic being discussed, it would be valuable to hear your thoughts and "real world" experiences. This should be more than "I'll use the idea in class." How and why will you use the idea? Would the idea work in another area? How or why?

In addition, it is great to provide positive feedback to a posting. Encourage that you do so when appropriate; however to gain the added score for a reply / response you must extend the 'conversation' with added ideas, information, insights, or examples. You may also post as many replies as you wish.

The Forum postings and responses made at Oncourse are viewed as the class discussions for a web-class. Your participation and contributions can expand this discussion and add to the learning that occurs. The minimum requirements have to be met for the basic score but looking for you to exceed those minimums for outstanding performance.

Garden Assignments

Early in the semester, you'll join the GARDEN patch of your chose. This is an online community where you can share ideas and thoughts related to the course and your assignments. You are required to provide constructive feedback related to your classmates. You may do this during the development process or after the project has been posted. Although most people will posting comments on the discussion thread, you may wish to send personal mails.

Projects

One way to apply the information and ideas that you're reading about is through the development of realistic, practical PROJECTs. Each student comes to class with a unique set of educational background and professional experiences. These projects are intended to help you expand your professional skills. Of course, you could select an "easy" topic that you've done before. However, if you're really interested in professional development, choose a challenging topic in an area where you have fewer skills.