First, the students were told how to turn on the computer and open Netscape (from the Start button; we don't have shortcuts to Netscape on the screen).
A handout about e-mail was passed out to each student. The single sheet was printed on both sides with the four pictures (see the pictures: 1, 2, 3, 4).
The students also recieved a list with the names, e-mail addresses and POP3 User Names of each student in the class.
We proceeded through the setup instructions, opening Mail and News Preferences from the options menu. Some students were typing in my information (name, address) instead of their own.
IMPORTANT: Make sure the students do not
change their mail folder information. Depending on the setup of their
individual computer, the folder setup could be different.
The setup necessitated a lot of running around the room on my part to
keep everything running smoothly.
Before class, I'd sent each student a simple
message saying "Hello (name), this is Bill. How are you today?"
After they'd set up Netscape with their account information, they were
told to hit the "get new mail" button. (I drew a picture of it on the
whiteboard.) The dialog box opens up asking for
their passwords. A few students thought there was something wrong when
their passwords came out as a string of astrixes (***) rather than
letters or numbers. It would have been better had I told them about this
beforehand. None of the students forgot their passwords, mainly because
we had told them to request passwords based on the same information
(e.g., "father's initials and the last two numbers of your telephone
number" or something like that will ensure that if students forget, they
can be reminded of the formula to help them remember the password
quickly).
After they'd read the message I'd sent, I asked
them to send replies. They were told to send simple, short replies, and
hit the "send" button
To close the class, students were shown which
button was for new mail. They were told to look at the list of names,
and send an e-mail message to the student whose name appeared after
theirs on the list.
At the end of the lesson, they were told to erase their POP3 name and
e-mail address from the Mail and News Preferences.
This summary is misleading in that the class appears to have been an
orderly, lockstep lesson. In fact, all of the students were at different
places in the sequence at different times, at different paces. For me,
it was a busy time, but afforded opportunities to talk with each student
individually. If you have large classes, I'd strongly recommend either
having teaching assistants or using handouts and a lockstep method.
The next class will be a review, and there
are web pages for the review.
(c) Bill
Pellowe
All rights reserved.
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billp@gol.com