Week 1

This week was full of getting organized and figuring out how things work for my courses.  I was most challenged with using Blackboard. This is the first time I have ever had to rely so much on the Blackboard interface and it has been a little confusing.  All of my professors are using it as the main means of communication in our class and it appears that they have had practice!

By the middle of the week I finally figured out how to access the information that I needed for the assignments and unfortunately that is also when I came down with pinkeye and strep.  I was going to try and read the chapters online, but have chosen to print them out instead.  I do like online learning, but reading for me is something that I like to do wherever I go, so having hard copies of the chapters is much easier for me.  I think I might just buy the book for this course because I like to have the texts that I might refer to in the future.

For our first assignment we used Flash to create a Humpty Dumpty video.  I feel like I did a good job learning to draw and put in both shape and motion tween.  I ventured further to import a photo of a wall for Humpty as well which is what I learned by watching a tutorial that Dr. Moore put online for us.

I think that what I learned the most over this past week is that I reAlly need to stay on top of things.  Now that I am feeling better, maybe this will be easier for me.  I need to take the time and really digest the course syllabus and expectations.  Sometimes I feel like the assignments are all over the place because of the nature of online discussions, threads, posts etc.   I hope that I become more efficient in using these tools so that don't get overwhelmed.  So that is my goal for this week besides the required course work - to organize the information so that it makes sense to me.

I did accomplish several things this week: I learned how to use blackboard, Flash, blogging, and even how to order printing from Staples online.  From what I can tell, I am going to be very busy this quarter!