Announcements

The EdTech Top 40

Welcome Grad Students to EDU6460 Online – Applications of Technology in the Classroom. I am glad to have you in my class. The beauty of online courses is that Anyone can take the course assignments Anytime, from Anywhere!

In essence, this should be the most convenient course you take since there are no actual meeting times or places- as you take this course you set your own day and time each week- I only ask that you discipline yourself and set a definite day and time each week. My expectations are that you stay current each week. Each lesson builds off of previous lessons- so don’t let a week go by and begin to stack up on you. Discipline yourself now.

To start, each of you should have access to a computer for this course. You must have a computer(PC/Mac/Chromebook), not an IPad or tablet- because there are things you will need to do on your hard drive. Students will be required to access a number of third-party resouces as part of this applications course. Please become familiar with the new AIC Webpage Portal at: https://my.aic.edu. When you type this address into your web browser you will see our new AIC Portal. Notice there is a yellow banner at the top and a white LOGIN button toward the top left. To log in you must enter your AIC login name and password. If you do not have this information-please call tech support at 413-205-3402 ( I cannot assist you with this- AIC login information is confidential and I do not have access to AIC servers).

Additionally, here is my YouTube AIC Portal orientation video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHFTS7xgJEA . Watching this short video will give you a basic orientation as to what you need to do in order to access the AIC Portal.

Once you have logged into the AIC portal, you will need to click on “Blackboard” which is located in the “Quick Links” menu on the Portal screen. After clicking Blackboard, you will be taken inside our Blackboard area. You will see tabs at the top of your blackboard screen. Under the “Course” tab, you will find our course EDU6460 Applications of Technology for the Classroom. Click this course and you will be inside our course!

Now that you are inside our course in Blackboard, you will notice the black menu on the left- this is your main menu for all items in Blackboard. Click Syllabus to load the syllabus. Your first assignment is to read the full syllabus- especially the 8 modules which correspond to the 8 weeks of this course. You will also see the 8 Modules in Blackboard which are in the “Content” link in the main menu. I have loaded a lot of help links for you in each Module in Blackboard.

Finally, I want you to know that instructors can only correspond to AIC students using our official AIC email. I cannot respond to outside emails such as gmail, yahoo mail, etc. due to federal FERPA regulations.

-Jonathan Dietz