I’ll admit up front that I like tools. I take a certain pleasure in getting my hands on just the right tool or part and figuring out how it works. I am an amateur bike mechanic, I’ve worked construction and food service, I fiddle with computers a bit. More to the point here, I’ve been intentionally playing with language–the mother of all tools–since my college composition instructor warned me in 1982 that “if there is a hell for misspellers, you’re in trouble.” 1982, right. No spell checkers. That’s another tool that I depend on.

While you don’t need to share my interest in tools, you do need to get familiar with some basic course tools quickly in order to participate in the course. Here’s my short list. Some of my courses use only some of them. Writers are aware of all of them.

Password Management Strategy

This may feel like an odd tool. It is a critical one. I manage about 100 online accounts of various sorts. That means that I keep track of a lot of user IDs and passwords. I have a strategy that keeps my identity secure and accessible wherever I am. You need a strategy too. At MATC, your strategy probably starts with logging on to college apps: head for this page. Notice that you will have a number of user IDs and passwords just to get through school. You will need a strategy to manage all fo them. I’m not going to ask you to share your strategy, but I will expect you to have one so that you can access at least the tools we use together quickly. I’m happy to brainstorm strategies with you.

Learning Management System (LMS)

I started teaching with a Learning Management System in 2000 (and it was a hot mess). I now cannot live without one. Our LMS is our classroom in the cloud. Everything we do is documented in the LMS: it’s likely that you got to this web text by clicking on a link in our LMS. Most students check the site daily and become adept at finding and submitting materials, finding and providing support. I have two or three LMSs bookmarked in my Chrome toolbar, and I have LMS apps on my phone. When I’m away from my home or office computer, I head for the college website and click the link to the LMS or just use the app on my phone. To get started, you can access our course site and just poke around–I use announcements and modules to point you at what’s important. The college has produced an Online Learning Support site for students. You can dig deeper by going to the support from our LMS vendor, Blackboard (Bb). Early course assignments will guide you through setting up your profile and notifications. You can always get to me through the Canvas Inbox.

The Class Web Text

You are technically in the web text right now. It’s a PressBook right now. I recommend that you bookmark the PressBook. To use the Pressbooks platform, I browse to it and just pull down the Contents menu (upper left) and head for the Part and Chapter I need, or I search for a phrase. PressBooks has great search.

Google Drive

Here’s one definition of Google Apps: “a suite of office productivity and communication tools that are available to everyone within the institution.” I think of Google as one of my three primary clouds and the one I use most with my collaborators. As a student, you have access to an institutional Google Apps with the same user name and password you use for your school Gmail (username@gmatc.matc.edu). Think of this as your school cloud, a space where you collaborate with peers and instructors on school work. I will ask that you use your school Google account for course projects rather than other Google accounts you have (I have two others accounts). The college offers a nice introduction to what your Google Apps includes. You log into your school Google Apps using your MATC credentials (here’s another reason to be able to access those credentials). Once you are in to your school Google Drive (check the tutorial), you can upload documents and folders from your computer or another cloud account or create folders and documents using Google apps. I recommend organizing your Drive a bit with folders and at least learning about Shared Drives. Early on, you may need to connect Google Drive as a web service in Blackboard. We will work on this in class.

Video Hosting Platform

If you want to do some of your composing in video, you need to find a platform that allows you to move video from a device (likely your phone) to Canvas and other platforms. Your tuition gets you access to Google Drive, and you can set up a folder in your drive to hold videos (my folder for holding videos is called “Video Storage”). You can use a YouTube channel associated with your college Google Account. There are other approaches. If you you want to compose videos, pick yours and play with it a bit.

Comp Apps

The syllabus outlines a few of other apps you need to have access to, notably a word-processor, a PDF reader, and a web browser. You can use a web browser to get to a free writing handbook, another sort of app. Lots of other apps may be of use. Calendars, other annotation tools, phone scanning apps (Turboscan is my go to), dictionaries, and the list goes on. Folks who compose use tools. Expect to try out many, abandon some, get devoted to others.

Caveat

I’ll repeat here my syllabus reflections on the smart phone that you may look at a lot. You don’t need one to thrive in this class. If you have one, it will be a useful device for checking in on Canvas and communicating with me and your peers through Canvas. That phone, as smart as it is, will not be enough. Many Canvas features work poorly or not at all on a phone. Most folks find that phones do not enable them markup documents sufficiently; they also find that composing or revising texts on a phone is slower and less effective than doing this work with other tools. You will need access to a computer or at the least a tablet with an external keyboard. It’s just that kind of class. The college has some devices available for checkout. I am happy to brainstorm options with you.