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=Welcome to the Queens College Hybrid Boot Camp Wiki for January 2012!=

Here is your pre-course Wiki Assignment
Here are the 4 steps to complete your pre-course assignment. This shouldn't take you more than 30 minutes. The most important thing is to create a page and write a short piece about your experience with and interest in Learning Management Systems (LMS, e.g. Blackboard, Moodle, Sakai, etc.) for organizing the activities of your courses. If you are not familiar with the LMS landscape, feel free to read up on them in your course resources (then go to the resources tab) and here on the wiki.

For the following steps, use the links to help guide you along the way
 * 1) Review the Learning Management Systems information on the Reference page.
 * 2) Please create a page following the linked instructions. Title the page so that we know whose page it is. A good model is to use the first letter of your first name plus your last name as the title, e.g. Barack Obama's page would be "bobama", Karl Marx's would be "kmarx" and Jaron Lanier would be "jlanier". During the creation process, please tag your page with the term "LMS".
 * 3) Edit the pageby writing about 250 words on what you feel are the most important aspects of a content management system for your teaching. LMS functions include but are not restricted to: posting a syllabus, grading, communicating with your students, having your students collaborate, making course materials available, structuring and delivering assignments, etc.... Let us know what is most vital to running a smooth and effective course. Try to talk about the LMS as a tool to achieving your teaching goals.
 * 4) Things you can think about when writing:
 * What are the learning objectives of the course you want to make hybrid?
 * What are the essential things you need to communicate to your students? Your students to you?
 * What kinds of things do you want your students to //do// in your class?
 * What do your students need to do to show they have learned the material in your course?
 * What kinds of things have you wanted to do in your course but not been able to?
 * What are you most concerned about losing in the transition from the classroom to online?
 * What are your good and bad past experiences with Learning Management Systems?
 * Feel free to list and rank whatever you think should be listed and ranked.
 * 1) Once you have created your page, link it to your name on the Class Members Page. Specific instructions are there.

Assignment in Brief
 * 1) Create a Page
 * 2) Tag the Page
 * 3) Write your short Essay
 * 4) Link the Page

Feel free to consult my page and your colleagues pages for ideas on how you want to answer the question of what's important to you in an LMS. For the adventurous and/or skilled, try referencing others' essays and making links to connect your ideas.

The intent of this exercise is to get you thinking about how a wiki might help you in your teaching, get you oriented to the way you think and others think about using online teaching tools and to give us all some fuel for discussions and group work at the boot camp.

Take a look at the course readings for more ideas, inspiration and explanations of wikis and their use in the classroom.