About Course - Computer Skills & Tools

The goal of Computer Skills & Tools is to help you as a student gain the skills needed for utilizing various technology resources both on and off the Internet to help you become more competent and productive in your personal, academic, and professional lives.

Topics include the following:

COOLSchool courses are unlike face-to-face classes in that they are asynchronous; that is, they do not require the students and the teacher to meet in the same place at the same time. Rather, you can work at your own pace, keeping in mind that there is a ten-month deadline to complete coursework.

This course is designed to require 8 to 10 hours of work per week. In order to receive credit for the course, you need to successfully complete all of the lessons. If for some reason life gets in the way, please keep in touch, let me know what's happening, and I will do my best to help you work out a schedule to complete the course. Be aware that spending less time one week may require you to spend twice as much the following week! Please also contact me when you are stuck or need a little extra help, so I can help you keep on track!

This course was designed to be interactive. Rather than requiring that you purchase a textbook, numerous links to sites on the World Wide Web have been utilized. Each lesson has a number of corresponding activities. Most activities ask you to respond in some way, by taking a quiz, by explaining a concept in your own words, by applying the ideas presented in some way, or by completing a project.

It is recommended that you compose, spellcheck, and edit written responses on a word processor and then copy and paste the results into the response boxes provided on the lesson pages, or into e-mail, as the lesson requires.

Since electronic communications have occasionally been known to fail, it is recommended that you KEEP A COPY of all responses (by saving word-processing documents) and correspondence (by keeping a copy of all e-mails). I, as teacher, will also do the same. In the event that either the e-mail system or computer should fail, this backup copy could be crucial! Please don't put this off until later!

Computer Skills & Tools addresses the benchmark standards for technology skills, as suggested by the NETS, or National Educational Technology Standards.You'll find a link to these standards on the Standards page for this course.

Your next step should be to check out the all of the pages in this About Course section. Use the links at the upper right to find out more about the course and what is expected of you as a student.

I hope you enjoy this course and find it useful in your life as an individual and a citizen.

Feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions!