ENG 260 syllabus > main parts of the course > Announcements

I will make frequent use of the Announcements tool in this course. Specifically, I'll put up new announcements whenever I add anything to the Calendar (and I will be adding all assignments there gradually over the course of the semester rather than putting everything I'll assign there all at once, but all the assignments will be posted well before they're due) or whenever there's any important course news like a new day for a quiz or exam. You can view the latest announcements by clicking on the Announcements link under the Course Tools menu, and as with most eLearning tools you'll see a little green asterisk icon to the side of the Announcements link if there are any new ones since you last logged in:

what the Announcements link looks like if there's been a new announcement

And there are other ways you can keep abreast of any news with our class, without even logging into eLearning (which might be a convenience if no or few other of your classes have rooms here):

  • I can send you text messages to your cell phone or mobile device whenever I've posted something new to the Announcements. If you'd like to sign up to receive such text alerts, click here.
  • I can also have an e-mail sent to you alerting you about new posts to the Announcements. If you'd like to receive these notification e-mails, click here.
  • You may know about RSS, which is a technology through which you can get automatic notification through the Web about news items or changes to sites. I offer RSS updates whenever I post anything to the Announcements; to get these notifications through RSS, click here to add this "feed" to your RSS reader or aggregator, or to your Web browser if it's set up for that. For example, here's what it might look like if you add the feed for our class to your Internet Explorer (the name of our feed will be in bold type whenever there's a new item):

  • what it might look like if you add our feed to Internet Explorer

  • Similarly, if you have your own Google page or use Google Reader, you can get our feed for that as well:

  • your options for getting our RSS feed through Google

  • And if you use My Yahoo! or myAOL, you can have our RSS Announcements feed sent there as well; click here or here for these respective options.

Finally, I want to stress that it is this Announcements tool and this part of our eLearning room only that I will use to disseminate any important class news; I WON'T put course announcements in the Discussions board tool. This Discussions board I want to reserve solely for my mini-lectures on our works and your postings about the readings. For more about these class discussions, you can click here, or you can go now to the next page in this section, all about the Calendar tool.