Getting Ready for ATS 113!

Hello, ATS 113 students!

As you may know, the ATS 113 course uses a lot of electronic resources, like websites and course CD. Rather than spend a bunch of time on the first day of class trying to make sure that everyone understands what's going on, it seems like a better idea to do this using the course blog this year.

Course CD. I'm currently putting the final touches on the course CD, so it will definitely be ready by the first day of class. Every student is required to have a copy of the course CD. However, you are under no obligation to BUY the CD; you can borrow a friend's copy, or you can check the CD out from the library. If you choose to buy the CD, I'll bring a bunch of copies to class on the first day and they are $5 each. (The proceeds from the sale of the CD go to Weather Break, Creighton's daily radio program about weather, climate and the environment.) You can run the CD directly, or there are installation instructions with the CD that will help you copy the disk to your hard drive, which will result in much smoother performance.

What kind of stuff is on the course CD?

• Outlines of every lecture. (These are not NOTES; they are outlines.)
• Many of the figures and handouts for each lecture.
• A daily video called the "Reading Coach". On each Reading Coach video, I walk you through that day's assigned readings, pointing out the most important (and least important) parts of the reading.
• Several dozen short videos produced here at Creighton for use in ATS 113.
• Many PowerPoint files and related materials.
  
• And much more!
  

Course Website. This course has a website that is maintained in two convenient locations. You can either access the course at ats113.com, or you can use Blueline. The same content is available on both sites, although grades are only available on Blueline this year.

What kind of stuff is available on the course websites?

• All of the daily outlines and the Reading Coach videos.
• Most of the PowerPoint files and related materials.
• All "news" and "announcements".

In other words, the course websites have largely the same content as the course CD. However, because of possible copyright conflicts, many of the images on the website have been disabled; those resources are only available on the course CD.

Course Wiki. Electronic participation is a small but important part of your total grade in ATS 113. One of the ways in which many students choose to participate electronically in the course is to add to the course wiki. I'm guessing that most of you know what a wiki is; wikis are made of web pages that users can modify. We maintain two kinds of course wikis in this class:

• "Group Lecture Notes Wikis" are written by students based on their notes from the lecture.
• "Group Reading Notes Wikis" are similar, but they are based on the readings from each day.

Now, maybe YOU will NEVER contribute to the Wikis, and that's okay (maybe you'll get your participation points some other way, as we'll discuss in class). But even if you don't ADD to the wikis, you'll want to be able to ACCESS them, because they will be a good source of notes and information before each test.

Blueline has the ability to make wikis, but they don't work very well, so we are going to be using a different piece of software called "Moodle". Our "Moodle Server" is called "stratocumul.us". If you navigate to http://stratocumul.us, you'll be able to create an account there. Play-by-play instructions about how to create this account are available by watching this video.

Online Participation. A total of 5% of your grade comes from your "online participation" in the course. There are a number of ways to participate online. Probably the best way for you to learn about this is to watch this video.

Okay, I hope that I haven't "overwhelmed" you! I think that you'll find that this stuff turns out to be a lot of fun. See you on the 10th!