Some Notes about the Visual Workshop Assignments

You all have a few assignments under your belt and hopefully you have discovered that Directed Studies is not that bad! :)

A few items to note:

1. You may have noticed that not everyone used the same colour scheme in the Angie's Sandwich Shop assignment. This relates to the discussion you had with Chuck regarding screen differences. The document will look different depending on your screen settings. Your eyes also have an effect on your colour choice too. Questions to consider: Did you try applying other colour schemes to the document? Are there any that look better?
2. I think you guys have figured out that there are no right or wrong answers for these assignments. It is your interpretation of what the document looks like. I am looking to see if you used the tools discussed in the unit though so please make sure you try them.

So far you are all doing a fantastic job so keep up the good work!

RSS Feeds

It can be really time consuming to keep going back to a website to see if they have posted new information. To save time you can subscribe to an RSS Feed for that website.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and the feed basically brings the information to you through a reader. A reader is a site that you use to collect this information. There are a number of different readers you can use, for example Google Reader, Netvibes, Pageflakes and Bloglines.

Here is a helpful video from CommonCraft.com to give you a better idea of what an RSS feed is and how to use one.

Please add this blog to your RSS feed to ensure you are up to date in the Directed Studies course. Off to the left of this post you will notice a heading that reads "Subscribe to". You can subscribe to just the posts and the comments using this tool. It will give you a few options of what reader to use. I use Google Reader and would be happy to help you set that up if you like. I believe you also have an RSS reader set up in your Vista Widgets.

ITAP Directed Studies 2009 Week One

Hi Everyone and welcome to ITAP Directed Studies!

Over the next little while you will be getting assignments from Chuck which come from your Microsoft Office 2007 Premium Video Edition textbook. These assignments are to be completed at your own pace and handed in to me (Gillian) when completed. You will have to complete and submit all of the assignments before the end of term but you will not be receiving a letter grade mark for them. This is mearly complete/incomplete style work. As such I will not be grading your assignments just checking to see that you have completed them.

You have probably noticed that there are three periods marked Directed Study on your time table. These periods are Wednesday afternoons between 3 and 4 and Thursday afternoons between 2 and 4. This time can be used for the assignments mentioned above and I have dedicated this time in my schedule for you to ask me for help if you need it.

The textbook is broken up into sections for example Vista, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and XP. We will not be covering all topics just enough to give you a good feel for how these systems work. Most of you will probably fly right through these assignments but I am available to help you if need be.

This blog is set up for a few reasons. The first is to give you information on the assignments mentioned above. Each week I will post a little blurb about them and if you have questions or comments about them please post them in the blog comments. Or if you have a solution to a question/comment please post as well. Another purpose for this blog is to allow you to explore online social resources. Time permitting we will occasionally explore the Internet and uses of the many social tools available.

I have allowed anyone to comment on this blog so we may get people outside the class commenting. But I am moderating the comments so if there is anything inappropriate or not helpful I will not allow the comment. This will give you the opportunity to express yourselves in a public forum with a bit of protection.

I look forward to working with you all and if you have any suggestions of things you would like to try out post away.