Rainy Sundays

So I am sitting in the math office at Diefenbaker High School completing this weeks' assignments and quizzes. My frustration level has dropped dramatically as I am having some more success with my other course web page; much more than I had this morning.
I was just speaking with a friend about Dreamweaver and he did not recommend using it, but I feel at this point I am bound to use it as other programs may not run on my CBE laptop (Maybe I should have risked it and gotten a Mac!!)
I enjoyed the Elluminate session but did not enjoy being bumped out every minute or two because fo the CBE Firewall. However, once I got home the session was interesting and informative. Prior to that seeing as this is a U of C course, I was searching for the Course shell on U of C's Blackboard, then once I clicked on my D2L shell I found it only to further find I was a week behind in discussion forums and entry assignments.
In addition to that for the first week I felt as if this was "How not to teach and learn online" as hiding the weekly readings in the course syllabus was frustrating to find. I went to the weekly checklist and found reminders to do the weekly readings but no links to the readings themselves.
I learned in another course to have assignments and readings posted, placed and linked all over the place, so that learners with different paths of thinking would be able to find whatever it is they are looking for easily. I will try to do this when I set up my own shells and CMS's.

After using the quiz tool, I am very interested in using it effectively for either review for some of my math classes or for TA. I believe the Career Pathways/TA program would be best served not by handing out mounds of paper but having students use D2L effectively to do the assignments, hand in resumes and assignments, complete learning indices and quizzes online. This way I can use my face-face time with them building relationships not handing out tedious assignments.
So far, so good when it comes to learning online. I think I need to reach out a bit more to class mates in the discussion forums and pager to feel a bit more connected to the class.