Go to the IMD section of the forum and locate “Class Specific Forums” near the bottom of the page. Open the link for Class Specific Forums and you will find a new Thread for Fundamentals of IMD. You are welcome to post comments and to begin new threads from within that Thread.
Don’t limit yourself to this one area however, as you should explore what is going on through the entrys in other sections.
The concept of a personal learning environment may seem like a new term and process to you. But consider the many digital tools that are becomming available to you and the new world of interactive media and realize that these tools are now a part of your learning process. So why not figure out how you can organize everything into a developing environment that contains your learning processes, resources, links, weblogs, aggregators, etc. We will begin by exploring some simple environments called portals. You may have a MyYahoo or MyGoogle account already which is a portal type of product. Take a look at netvibes (http://www.netvibes.com/) for a peek at a little more sophisticated style of portal. We will work with this one in class as a way of getting an understanding of how a PLE may be a good process/product for you to begin to develop for your needs.
Questions for the week:
1. Given the descriptions of what a PLE may look like in the article by Graham Attwel, describe your thoughts about how this type of process might benefit your learning productivity. There is no right or wrong answer here, but sharing your thoughts and reading others thoughts may bring some inspiration to all of us. Dig a little and see if you can define what components you might want to include in a PLE.
2. After reading comments in the AID Creative Forums, what are your reactions to this type of communication? Do you think it is something you would be willing to check every few days to stay on top of community activity? How would you contribute to developing a Community of Practice: Would you use a forum or a weblog?
1. Purchase and establish a web hosting account. (If you have any problems, let me know by email.) Information about hosts in the article below this one.
2. Read the Robinson article: “A Recipe for Learning Web Design” and respond with a post in your weblog by Sunday Noon. The post should be your ideas and feelings about what was stated and not just repeating what the author said.
3. After Sunday, respond to at least two other people in the class by commenting on their post about the article. Comment to two different people from last week!
I will email everyone with corrections to the class list of email/blog addresses, and the addition of Quest’s information.
A web hosting account is required for all IMD students. I am recommending two providers, ehostpros.com or godaddy.com, but not requiring you to use this host if you would rather shop on your own or find a free or less expensive hosting solution. However, one of the requirements of the host, is that you will have access to “shared webhosting” (which simply means other people use that same server – but no one has access to the others), with php and mysql services available and you must have access to at least 1 database. The amount of server space should not be a major issue for the projects you will build, and if so you can always add more.
The basic service at ehostpros.com is called the Starter Plan, which is $2.99/mo when you pay annually – which is $35.88 per year. You will also have to have a domain name (this will be the sites address – such as “wayne.com” etc. The additional cost for the domain is $11.99 per year. You can keep your domain for as long as you like and can transfer it to another hosting site, by renewing it each year.
GoDaddy at godaddy.com offers the “economy plan” at $3.59/mo if paid up front as an annual fee and the domain fee is $1.99 plus a $0.22 ICAN fee. This plan totals $45.29 per year.
GoDaddy also offers a free web hosting plan when you buy a $1.99 domain, but the account will have a limited advertising banner on any site you host. I cannot find whether this type of account offers php, mysql, or database accounts, so I cannot recommend it, but it may have these capabilities.
We intentionally chose not to have a textbook for this class, so you could use that expense for your web hosting. The reason we need you to have your own account, is because part of what you must learn is how to manage your own host. We can not give you that opportunity with our servers, although you will be given access to using them, it is not the same experience.
Try and have your domain and web hosting up and running by Week 3. If you have any delays let me know, and I can work with anyone that runs into a problem during or after class next week.
If you have not received comments to your site it may be that the site is trying to contact you to accept the comment. When you go back to the site to accept it, you should have an option to accept all comments, and then the problem should go away.
Another, more private option is to go to the “Users” menu and then the “Authors and users” submenu. In that screen go to the bottom section where it offers “ADD user from community”. Type in the email of a classmate and select “subscriber” and “add user”. Do this for each of the class members and then our class “community” will have access to subscribe and comment to your site.
If anyone still has problems please email me at wayne.batchelder@gmail.com so I can work with you to get this corrected.
1. Weblog: Post the results of your VARK questionaire so the we all learn more about how we each learn best.
2. Weblog: Post a response to the O’Reilly Web 2.0 Article. Describe what you read that was interesting and that you want to learn more about. Were there any surprises that you did not know about? How do you feel about these types of changes and how they will affect your role as an interactive designer?
These posts must be completed by Sunday Noon, so that everyone has time to read and comment on at least two others responses.
3. Read at least two classmate’s weblog responses to the Web 2.0 article, and post a comment about what they said. Did they add to your understanding of the article? Did you see something in their response that you didn’t see or understand in the same way? Assume you are communicating with each other, and you may want to post comments back and forth.
