Course Communication

Meaningful interactions among students and instructors are the hallmark of an successful online class. Our courses support several kinds of communication, as described below.

ANGEL Communications

The ANGEL course management system supports several modes of communication, including discussion forums, course mail, announcements.

Discussion forums are a kind of public email known as "threaded discussion." Everyone enrolled in the class can post messages of their own and can read and respond to every other message. A series of messages that make up a conversation is called a "thread." Discussion forums are included in each chapter and project folder (under the Lessons tab). A few others are available as well -- for Personal Introductions, ANGEL issues, etc.
- In general, questions and comments about project assignments, and about topics in the course text that pertain to more than a single page, should be shared with the entire class via the discussion forums. That way, everyone can benefit from the discussion.
- For more information see ANGEL Discussion Forums for Students ANGEL Discussion Forums for Students
- GEOG 583 uses four general types of discussion forums:
  - (1) The Lounge - This is a forum for personal introductions and other social (not course-related) discussions.
  - (2) The Conference Room - This is a forum for course-related discussions that don't pertain to a particular Lesson or Project.
  - (3) Technical Issues - Post technical issues here.
  - (4) Lesson specific. Post your replies and comments to the discussion questions here.
Course mail is private email; only the recipients you designate can read your messages. Course mail is also internal to ANGEL. Links to "Send Course Mail" and "Read Course Mail" are provided under the Communicate tab.
- Please use course mail only for private messages to instructors or fellow students.
- Many instructors prefer to keep course mail within the course management system, except for emergencies.
- Whenever you post a message in a forum or send course mail, please entitle every message with a descriptive subject line. Subject lines that include the gist of a question or comment increase the chances that students and instructors can retrieve the messages we're looking for. Poor subject lines, such as "Question" or "Lesson 1", are useless as search keywords.
- For more information see ANGEL Mail for Students
Announcements are occasional messages from the instructor that appear each time you enter the course and, if your ANGEL profile is properly configured, under the Announcements bar in your profile page. Announcements highlight assignment due dates (also published in the course Calendar) and include benchmarks by which you can tell if you are on track in the course.

Communications via the Course Web Site in Drupal

Registered students can post comments, questions, and responses to Drupal pages. You can also request to be notified of subsequent posts by "subscribing" to Drupal pages.

Comments to pages of the course text are preferred for observations, anecdotes, questions, and responses to other comments and questions that pertain to one or a few pages of the course text.

You can find the latest comments on the lower left hand side of each course page in the box titled "Recent comments".

Try this

Take a moment right now to post or reply to a comment to this page.

To post a comment, scroll down to the text box under "Post new comment" and begin typing in the text box, or you can choose to reply to an existing thread. When you are finished typing, click on either the "preview" or "post" button (post will actually submit your comment). Once your comment is posted, you will be able to edit or delete it as needed. In addition, you will be able to reply to other posts at any time

Jing Communications

Jing allows you to capture and
share images and videos easily.

Credit: © 2008 TechSmith Corporation.
Source: http://www.jingproject.com

What is Jing? It is a program that is always ready to instantly capture and share images and videos from your computer to wherever you want.

To begin, download Jing from http://www.jingproject.com. Once you download the software, run it. You will be prompted to create a Screencast.com account, which is a website that allows you to share your images and videos. Once all installation steps are complete, there should be a “sun” at the top of your screen. This allows you to capture images or videos at any time.

Once the “sun” has been identified at the top of your computer screen, scroll over it. Three rays will come out: capture, history and settings. The first one (far left) is capture – this is how you start your capture. The one in the middle is history – this is where copies of your captures are located. The last one (far right) is more – this is where you change settings.

How to capture

Select an area to capture.
- Select a window
- Part of a window
- Click and drag cross hairs to set a custom area
Choose whether you want to capture an image or a video.
- If you have a microphone, you can narrate your video. Videos can only be up to 5 minutes in length.
Decide what you want to do with the image or video.
- Name the file
- Share to Screencast.com and get a URL you can paste anywhere
- Save the file to your computer
- Copy to your clipboard

These videos from the Jing Blog can help you as well:

References:

How will we use it in this course?

In this course, you can use Jing to present material for assignments.