Week 10: Letter to Future Students

Dear Future Students of this Class:

Hey! If you know a little bit about some of the programs in the Microsoft Office Suite, you will learn a lot more about them in this class. You’ll also learn about your computer and your work space, more about web pages and game programming. I guess it’s been said before, but keep up with your weekly assignments. Don’t let them pile up. If they are posted early, get going on your blog and exercises.

For newbies who don’t know much at all about computers or software applications, it may all seem a bit overwhelming but you are going to learn so much! Knowing the Office programs will help you a lot through school for assignments and projects. Give yourself enough time (I ended up spending between 10 and 16 hours each week on lessons,) keep up with the assignments and follow the book step by step, making sure you understand each thing you do – the book is very good at this. If you have time, do the extra exercises at the end of each section also. If Tutorials are made available for a project, make sure you watch and follow those – they will help you a lot!

Also, Ms. Bagent has made herself available each week for an Elluminate session which has been great when I’ve had questions. She goes over every part of the assignment, so this is your opportunity to touch base with your instructor. If you can’t make the session, make sure you go back and listen to it, someone may have asked your question, and you’ll find out the answer! The more who participate in the session though, the more questions are answered and the more ideas are tossed around. I am surprised how few of us took part in this valuable part of the class. Use the Discussion Board to ask questions too… often another student will be able to help, or the teacher will answer you. She wants you to learn what you are doing, not just get a grade.

Many parts of this class are actually fun, so enjoy! I will be keeping up my blog… my family gets a kick out of it. Going over HTML coding has inspired me to create a business website, and the gaming part was something that really intrigued me also.

I wish you well! Don’t get overwhelmed, just tick off the steps so you don’t miss anything, have fun and “learn lots of things” as my dad used to say to me :)