Getting used to how learning happens here

Overview

This course requires a significant amount of engagement with social technologies. Indeed, this site is a good example of social software in action. This component of the course is intended to make sure you have set things up correctly, to give you practice in using the main technologies on which the course is based as well as helping to link the ideas that we will be exploring with your interests, experience and aspirations. This is a vital component of the course - don't skimp here.

Tasks

Note that this sounds like a lot but is actually not that onerous! It is, however, very important that you do these things.

• Make sure you have set up your profile on our system(s), adding as much information as you feel comfortable revealing,not forgetting to add a photo. Ideally, this should be of yourself but, if your are shy or otherwise unwilling to share this, provide an image that is meaningful to you, by which others will identify your postings. Browse the profiles of others on the course. Get to know your tutor as well this way.
• Post a comment to the posting by the tutor on the course blog that asks about your use of social software
• Post to your own blog to explain why you are doing this course, what you expect, what you hope to get out of it. Don't forget to add relevant tags to your post (separated by commas). You can keep it private while working on it but, once it is done, make it available to the course community (at least - feel free to make it more public if you like).
• Read others' posts - comment on them, if you have something to say.
• Browse through the course bookmarks - follow any that sound interesting. If you know any interesting sites or pages relating to social software that are not already there, add them! Don't forget to tag them and to add an informative and helpful comment so that people know what to expect/why they should be visiting the page.
• Browse the course wiki. Use the sandbox page to practice editing content. The other pages contain some deliberate errors (and maybe some that are not). Try to find one (and only one - give the others a chance!) and change it so that it is not inaccurate any more.
• Explore the rest of the me2u site. Get used to the navigation and the functions available - it is not always friendly and easy but it is worth pursuing as there are lots of things to do here, people to meet and knowledge to be gained.
• Write your reflections on the week's work in your blog. See below for some help with this process.

Warning

This course requires you to engage at several levels - personal, group, network and collective (more on that in the theory section). Most significantly, it requires you to reveal things about yourself not only within the group but also (sometimes) to a far more public audience, beyond the confines of the closed university space. Wherever possible we will try to reduce the dangers of doing this but, and we must emphasise this, you will be working and interacting with people and locations that are not under our control and there are inherent dangers here. We offer some guidelines below, but mostly this is just common sense - be wary at all times!

A few guidelines

Use of public sites outside AU

• On our own site you can choose exactly who sees what - choose wisely. In general, the more public you make things the more interesting it will be, but be careful of posting things for the world that you would not want the world to read. This is often true of external sites too - look for settings for privacy and authorisation whenever you engage with external sites.
• Always act ethically, legally and responsibly
• Always be sensitive to the needs and beliefs of others
• Reflect on what you are revealing and to whom: if there are access controls in the systems you are engaged with, use them wisely.
• Always read the privacy statements and terms and conditions of sites that you are signing up for. If you are concerned about these, do not blindly leap into it. Talk about the issues within the course's private space if you are unsure.
• Remember that external sites are beyond our or your control. External sites can go down, change their conditions, limit access to other people and so on. Remember to keep a copy of engagements that you have had and work that you have done that you wish to retain for the portfolio or further discussion - screenshots, saved HTML pages or even (less usefully) simple copy & paste would be appropriate.

Discussions within the course setting

• When offering critiques of others, concentrate on being helpful and constructive, highlighting strengths at least as much as flaws. If you want to draw attention to a weakness, do so in a manner that will help the author to make it better.
• If you disagree with something someone has written feel free to argue the point, but avoid any personal comments about them - argue with the points with which you disagree, not the person.
• Connections can go down, sessions can time-out: it is a good idea to work on longer posts offline using your preferred word processor or other text editing software. Alternatively, consider using Xinha Here! or something similar (if you know of an alternative, add it to the community bookmarks), which gives you a WYSIWYG HTML editor embedded in your browser that can be used to fill in forms and that allows you to save work locally as you go.
• When contributing to course discussions, make sure that you visit the discussion at the very least twice in the week - near the beginning and near (but not too near) the end. Ideally you should check at least once a day, but we understand that you may not always be able to make the time commitment. It is generally a good idea to sign up for notifications so that you can track conversations - you can do this globally via your Account Settings link.
• Remember that the main evidence for engagement with the course that we will be assessing is your own blog, in which we ask you to comment on how you have engaged online, far more than the actual contributions you make themselves (though we reserve the right to consider these both to verify what you have written and as a potential means to reward you for significant engagement that you do not recognise sufficiently in your blog). It is therefore not necessarily a disaster if your level of contribution is not that great, as long as you are able to discuss this (and the reasons for it) intelligently and reflectively. Note that 'lack of time' is not an excuse that you should use too often.

Reflections

You are required to reflect on the work you have performed in your blog each week. There are many ways to reflect and you are welcome to explore a variety of approaches and adapt them to the task at hand. A reflective blog entry is not about simply describing what you have done: although that is probably an essential element, keep descriptive blog entries as short as possible to convey the task. The main thing we are interested in is your thoughts, feelings and (above all) learning that resulted. If you are stuck for ideas then these leading questions may help you to find aspects of the experience to reflect upon:

• What aspects of these tasks were most difficult for you, and why?
  
• If you had to do the tasks again, what would you do differently, and why?
  
• How did your previous experience help and/or hinder you in completing the tasks?
  
• What was the most surprising thing that you learnt?
  
• What was the most useful thing that you learnt?
  
• What did you learn about yourself as a result of completing these tasks?

Readings

By and large, particularly as you start to contribute your own resources, you will find that there is far too much reading specified here to keep up with. Don't panic! You do not have to read everything, and many things can be skip-read. Read what interests you and what helps with the task in hand. Use the notes and descriptions provided to decide how useful a particular resource might be. Listen to what others in the course have to say too and follow the buzz - find out what is being talked about most and read about it.

When reading, try to have some means of note-taking at your side. Paper works well, but you may prefer an electronic note taker (I like EndNote, because it lets me store and re-use references, though Zotero is a good free alternative. I also like Evernote, which comes in free and premium versions, and which lets you index words in images and other non-text formats)