The text of the 'Welcome' letter

Dear Student,

Thanks for applying to the Oral Production course - we’re looking forward to working with you this term. This mail is intended to give you some practical information before the course actually gets going on 7th February, and to supply you with some more details about what’s planned for the Course Launch day on 7th February.

To start off with, there are now some places you can go to get some more detailed information about what’s going to happen on the course.

The course web site can be found at:

http://www.humsam.hik.se/distans/existstud/op/index.htm

You’ll see that some of the links on the home page are already active. If you click on the ‘Blog’ link, you’ll come to the course blog, which already has a couple of posts on it. The ‘Podcasts’ link also takes you to the place where you can listen to the Pre-Course podcast about the course. I’ll be making a podcast each time there’s a major course event.

(A podcast, by the way, is a kind of radio programme on the web. You can either listen to it directly from your computer screen, or click on the ‘Subscribe’ button on the podcast page to download each podcast automatically to iTunes on your computer. You can then transfer the podcasts to an iPod, or burn them to CD. There’s a ‘Refresh’ button in iTunes which will automatically search for new podcasts and download them automatically too.)

The Course Launch links and the Meeting links will become live when we need them, and you’ll find pages, information and downloadable files relevant to each course event there.

Most importantly, you’ll see a link called ‘To Kamimo Island’. This is a ‘SLURL’ - it takes you to a web page with a button on it, which will automatically open the Second Life program on your computer and take you directly to Kamimo Island, Kalmar’s island in Second Life.

I’ll mail you separately about the exact procedure for Course Launch day. However, the big picture is this: you’ll come along to Kamimo Island at the time allocated to your buddy group (which buddy group you’re in is part of the ‘exact procedure’, which I’ll notify you about in a while). I’m going to ask two buddy groups to come along at the same time, just in case someone can’t make it. If everyone’s there, I’ll just ask the second buddy group to wait for about ten minutes, whilst I work with the first one.

I’ll be there as Davric Rinkitink (OK, I was watching a lot of Aristocats at the time!). I’ll take each buddy group on a quick tour of the facilities we’re going to use, and then introduce you to one or two American students, who’re studying at the University of Central Missouri (one of the Kamimo Islands partners).

The Americans will then take you to somewhere in Second Life they’ve been doing some research into. They’ll want to ask you some questions about that location for their own course, but you’ll need to keep your eyes and ears open (virtually!) because you’ll be making a presentation about it at our Course Meeting 1 (there’ll be more information about how to do that on our web site next week).

This is what you need to do before 7th February:

1. Download the Second Life program, create yourself an avatar and visit Kamimo Island.

2. Then make sure that your audio chat is working (we’ll be talking to each other on the course), and have a look at the island. If you go over to the huge metal dragonfly that’s in the Welcome area and click on it, your avatar will get in and be taken for an aerial tour of the island!

3. Last, but not least, let me know what your avatar’s called (if you haven’t already done this). It’ll make things a lot easier for me on Course Launch day!

If you have any questions, or if you need help with any of the technology, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

I’m looking forward to working with you this term.

Yours,

David Richardson
Högskolan i Kalmar
HV