PreCourse Activities —
Welcome to Eyes in the Sky II!
Congratulations!!!
We had over 400 applicants for this professional development program. We are very excited to welcome each of you!
Course Structure and Navigation
The Eyes in the Sky II Web Course is divided into 3 Modules, consisting of four weeks each. Module 1 will be available on Friday, January 29, 2010. You can access different pages within the course through the left navigation menu bar. Because we have so many of you in the course, we have grouped you into six discussion sections. Click on the Share and Discuss page each week to navigate to your discussion section.
Course Design
This course is designed to help you learn geospatial technology by working through prepared activities. Our primary goal is to help you and your students use NASA data and geospatial technology to investigate global and local issues in environmental science. Each week, you will be given a set of weekly goals and tasks to complete by the end of the week. The week begins on Friday and ends on Thursday. In general, we typically ask that you make an initial posting, often with an image or a screen shot attached to it by Tuesday and that you discuss with others in your section from Tuesday through Thursday.
Course Expectations
Eyes in the Sky II is a professional development program. We recognize that you come to this course with a wide variety of skills and experiences. Some of you may already be familiar with one or more of the four geospatial tools we'll use in the program and some of you may be novices. We are not looking for you to master each of these tools. However, we do expect that each of you will improve your skills by participating in this program. We ask that you participate in the course each week, making the required postings and sharing ideas with your peers. Currently, we have accepted more people into the course than we can accommodate at the summer workshops. Consequently, weekly participation is required in order to be eligible to attend a summer workshop.
Course Support
The discussion section will be the place for you to ask questions of your peers and your instructors (e.g. Carla McAuliffe, Erin Bardar, Larry Kendall, Anita Palmer, Roger Palmer, and Betsy Youngman). We will be monitoring the discussion sections, contributing to the conversations, and fielding questions. Because there are over a hundred of you, it will be very difficult for us to answer questions via email in a timely fashion. The best way to reach us with questions about the course material is by posting a question to your discussion section.
Weekly Goals
- Get to know your colleagues and instructors by engaging in an online discussion
- Help us find out your prior technology skills and experiences
This Week's Tasks
- Find out which discussion section you are in.
- Create an account in the SERC CMS so that you can create and access discussion threads.
- Introduce yourself to others by posting to your discussion section a brief biography and picture of yourself and/or your interests.
- Read and respond to other biographies posted in your discussion section.
- Take the PreCourse Survey before you begin working through the course material.