Welcome to EFL537.  I'm looking forward to sharing this online learning adventure with you. I will provide an agenda for each day of class on our class website at EFL537.com. Our agenda is always flexible and can be affected by technical issues, student interest, and/or other unforeseen variables.  Most daily agendas will begin with several guides, videos, and/or screencasts about the tasks to accomplish that day.  I will then be available to provide individual or group assistance via skype or text chat. Because we never know how much progress we'll make each day, it's impossible to provide the next day's agenda until a few hours before class, but you can see a tentative daily schedule on the course overview and weekly assignments here.  If you don't finish everything on the daily agenda, don't be concerned.  You will have time to finish after class or the next day.  The Day#1 agenda is especially ambitious, so I do not expect us to finish everything described below. We'll spend most Week#1 working these tasks, so please don't stay up until 3am feeling like you have to finihsh everything below. 
Unfortunately, I will only be available for live contact from 10am~11am on the first two mornings of class, but will be available later in the day to answer any questions that have been posted. From Day#3~Day#10, I will  available for live contact the entire morning.

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Day #1 Tasks
These are the most important items on today's agenda.

Watch Jeff's Welcome Video (because of limited bandwidth, it might be best to have one person download this file and share it with others. You can also try watching  it on YouTube, but if everyone tries this at the same time, there will probably be bandwidth problems. If there are any problems watching the video, you can skip this and do it later.  Read the  Welcome page  &  Course Overview  Complete EFL537 Entrance Questionnaire (if that link doesn't work, try this one) Look at the EFL537.com website guide.   Check the Login info page, log in to EFL537.com using your assigned ID,  click 'My Account/Edit' and change your password as shown here Register for accounts at: Gmail, Delicious, &  Skype.  (if this takes too long because of connection problems or confusion, you can do this later) Create your Posterous Blog (instructions here) Login to EFL537.com and click  'My Account/Profile'. Update your email address and type a short introduction. Enter information about your Gmail address, Delicious account, Posterous blog, & Skype ID. Don't worry about filling in other parts of the profile page (yet).

Video Welcome

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10a.m.  Jeff will connect with the class using skype. Hopefully his audio and video can be projected on the monitor.  If this does not work for any reason, we can meet for text chat at EFL537.com/chat

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Alumni Thoughts, Skills Training & Sampling the Buffet
    When you've finished everything above (or if you're feeling a little overwhelmed and need some encouragement from past students) take a look below. 

• Alumni Thoughts
  You can see all sorts of work from previous students by checking the profiles page.
  Below are some selected writings from former EFL537 students - overviews of their EFL537 experience and words of wisdom to those who follow.  You don't have to read all of them, but taking a look will hopefully provide some useful insights.
  
  • Van's advice (English and Vietnamese)
  • Hoang Minh's Advice Letter
  • Ha Nguyen's Advice
  • Hoa Dong's Words of Advice
  • Duc's Advice
  • Thom's Final Thoughts
  • Quy's Reflections
  • Ngoc's EFL537 Thoughts
    
    

• Start Exploring  the CALL Buffet
  If you want to see more example of CALL, please take a look at the CALL Buffet Page .
  A number of websites and online resources that can be used for language learning are listed there. Please explore these sites during the next few days at your own pace. You DO NOT need to look at everything.   If a site is loading slowly, not working properly, or just not interesting, move on to something else. If your explorations lead you to a site that's not on the list below, that's fine.   When you find something you think is useful, please bookmark it with Delicious (if you know how) or at least take note of the site name and address.  Please feel free to share information with your classmates as you make interesting discoveries.
  
  
• Begin working on Week#1 Skills  -  If you're eager to start developing CALL related skills, take a look at some of the Skill Training pages below. Eventually, you will need to complete the tasks at the bottom of each skills page, but nothing is due today. If fact, if you don't have time to look at any of these today, that is fine. We will be working on these skills and tasks all week. 

• Posterous
• Social Bookmarking
• Skype
• Audio
• Presentations
• Activity Creation

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Assignments

Continue working on any of the in-class assignments you were unable to complete during class.

• This week's readings:
  
  • Tomasz  Szynalski's How I learned English in the pre-Internet age and why you can do it faster
    
  • Emily Chen's Introduction to CALL, Unit 1  - you do not need to read any of the other readings linked to on that page or take any of the quizzes (but feel free to if you like).
    You need to complete your first Reading Review by Wednesday and your second  by Friday. The Reading Review should be posted on EFL537 by clicking 'create/blog entry'. You may also post them on your posterous.com blog if you wish. 
    Do NOT email  these directly to me.
    
• Write a daily reflection on your Posterous.com blog by sending it as an email to post@posterous.com  (Posterous Guide Here)
  Share your  reflections on Day#1 of EFL537. What did you think of the first day?  Interesting discoveries, challenges, frustrations or anything else you'd like to share.
  
  
• Post any questions in the How do I  forum at EFL537.com or plan to ask them during tomorrow's class.

Again, you will not be able to complete everything on today's agenda today. Please don't get stressed. We'll spend the rest of Week#1 working on these tasks.