My toolbox for distance education would include:
My Laptop which I adore more than you will ever know as it is very handy if you have to travel and take online classes. Laptops are used primarily for traveling but can also be your home computer. I also have a desktop but I didn’t get my laptop until last year. You can use a laptop to work in any Word Program, Photoshop Program, Add Internet, and Adobe Reader to do work for classes or work.
My Internet connection through AOL and Insight Broadband. You can use the Internet for unlimited possibilities especially with research. While I do enjoy the old fashioned library research but I enjoy the Internet for researching libraries and material that is out of state that I would otherwise have no access too. You could use the the Internet to access classes, school information, your bank, email and I could go on and on.
My personal email accounts would certainly be one. I think I have a total of 8 different email accounts while this may seem crazy to some it actually works out quite well for me. I only use a certain name for school work only and if receive other mail there I usually will delete it. I think having more than one email account can be handy. For example, I have one for school, one for online games I like to play, one for family and friends to locate me on, and the rest were ones I collected on the way and never really got rid of because they are just apart of my online experiences.
The Listservers for my course. It gives me instant access to everyone in the class without having to go through a quite of bit of places on Blackboard or having to look up every account. I can simply send it to the listserver and wham everyone gets a copy. For example, when we want to discuss when we will meet for class you simple email in your part of the discussion and everyone quickly receives a copy and can reply all if they wish to let us know their responses as well.
Blackboard and the Discussion Board are in mine. I use them for everything in school and I have taken many online courses as I am currently in Lexington. I think Blackboard is a great asset to my online education and distance education as well. It is used as an access board for all courses and allows you to access your classes and all the information. For example, each class you add will have your syllabus, assignments, grades and discussion board automatically listed every time you sign on.
My Microsoft Word Package- You have to pay extra to have the Office suite put on your computer unless you get a great deal and the office suite even just for students is about 130 bucks. It has been worth my investment as I use it to complete many assignments for class.
What I should take out of my toolbox….
Here I have to agree with Dr. Lowell to a point. PowerPoint use to be a great way to complete presentations and such but is OVERLY used in college and distance education. For the last few semesters I’ve had to complete numerous PowerPoint’s and group PowerPoint’s and overall even though it helped I didn’t find it fully effective.
