Cisco Academy for the Vision Impaired
Cisco Academy for the Vision Impaired
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CAVI is a project of the
Curtin University Centre for Accessible Technology  |
New Student's Information - Semester One - 2012Note: this Document has been marked up with three levels of HTML headings. It has also Named Anchors to create links within this page. use either your Screenreader's HTML Headings or hyperlink navigation commands to navigate this page. For your convenience, the headings in this document are also provided in the list immediately below as hyperlinks.
Time ZoneStudents wishing to do their own time zone conversions should check out http://www.timeanddate.com. The academy runs on Perth Time in Western Australia, Which is 8 hours ahead of UTC. OrientationTimes of our next orientation sessions will be advised in July 2012. These Initial orientation sessions will be for setup purposes and to answer questions. It is highly recommended as many students attend orientation as possible in order to iron out any problems with their Ventrilo setup etc. All lectures run for 2 hours. All times will be given in both Western Australian and Eastern American Time zones. Session to be Advised
Discovery 1, with Elise Lonsdale & Jackie McBride
Other classes to be advised in July. Your class time depends on the class you have been assigned to. You are welcome to attend any and all lectures regardless of your class as long as you are not disruptive to students who are assigned to the lecture you are attending. If you can not attend your lecture; audio will be downloadable from the http://www.cucat.org Website sometime after your lecture is finished. It is important that where possible you attend the lectures; this will give you the ability to ask questions in real time. Mailing ListsAs many of you will have noticed by now; all students that we know of have been subscribed to both the CAVI-announce and CAVI-discuss mailing lists. Subscription to these lists are a requirement of studying with us; and as many students have not subscribed to both the announce and discuss lists. A bulk subscription has now been performed. The mailing lists are a key tool in our course delivery so it is extremely important that all students especially pay attention to what is posted to the announce and discuss lists; and where possible utilize the list archives which are referenced in the headers or at the bottom of each posted message, and on the list information page. General discussion should occur on cavi-discuss@gotss.net Only important announcements are permitted on the moderated cavi-announce@gotss.net mailing list Students are not usually permitted to post to the announce list, except in special circumstances. Announcements will be made on tutorials available from our primary website: http://www.cucat.org. We strongly urge all students to have a look around on this website; and familiarize yourselves with the class notes section; and ensure you can listen to and download some of the audio available from this important resource. All students should also opt in for receiving communications from cisco.netacad.net when they configure their profile, otherwise you can not receive exam feedback emailed to you and you can not receive emails for a password reset. The following is split into sections for local and remote students. Local studentsLocal students should be at the Association for the Blind, 61 Kitchener Avenue, Victoria Park 6100 by 9am on the day of the course they are studying. The day runs until 3pm, however if students have completed all their work, they can leave early after checking with an instructor. There is a cafe at the association, or students can pack and bring their own lunch. (No fridge or kettle is provided for clients). Water is available at the cafe at no charge. Take away food is not to be brought into and consumed in the cafe area, however is permitted in the client lounge. All local students are expected to have their own headset and microphone, or at minimum a method of accessing a computer that does not rely on audio that would disrupt others. Headsets without microphones are available for students to borrow on a temporary basis. All local students should check their email regularly for important announcements and information related to the course. Remote StudentsYou will need a few more tools and tricks than local students however most of these are free. If you wish to listen live to lectures, you will need to download and install Ventrilo from http://www.ventrilo.com. there is a tutorial in general instructions under student resources on the CUCAT website that will give more information on how to set it up however the following is a summary: Note that Ventrilo does not use menus, it uses buttons activated with the spacebar. This is easy enough once you get used to it, and Ventrilo is accessible with NVDA or similar once the default hotkey is changed if desired. (it defaults to left control which can cause your microphone to open when you silence speech). username should be your first name dot last name in lowercase for example "grace.king". An email will be sent out when all accounts are created. Server hostname is v47.darkstarllc.com port 4031 your password is your last name in lowercase. The Ventrilo server is available at all times (assuming it hasn't crashed) for the use of students both for work and socializing. We have a 50 user license. Usually when people join they arrive in the lobby, you can then move to the lecture theater when your lecture begins. All lectures are recorded, encoded to vbr mp3 and posted on the sight soon after lecture is complete. It is important that you check your audio levels before trying to talk in class, historically skype would mess with the microphone levels. Also note that if Microphone or suitable recording source has not been chosen, Ventrilo will not choose it for you. There is a test with test button inside the setup dialog which you can use to test your level. Note you will have to shift tab back around to it or you will become stuck in the hotkey field when tabbing. Skype is also used for person to person communication when a student wants to talk confidentially to an instructor, or 1 to 1 communication is desired. It is required for all students to obtain and know how to use skype, and provide their skype ids to the instructors. Skype is available from http://www.skype.com/ There are Jaws scripts available for Skype if desired at, http://users.visi.com/~dgl/skype/ Please email cavi-instructors@gotss.net with your skype ID so that the instructors can add you to skype. Once we receive this email, you will be told your class time. Please do not write and request a specific class time as class assignments may already been completed. Please note that if the class time is not convenient you may attend the lectures for the other Class or download lectures afterwords. SupportMost of the CAVI staff are volunteers. The paid staff are only paid to work on this project 2.5 days a week. These days (Perth time) are Wednesday, Thursday 9AM till 4pm. and 9am till 12Pm Friday morning, (Perth Time). Instructors can arrange to be available at other times on request, however know that you are taking up personal time, please keep this in mind with your dealings. Email is far less disruptive out of hours than skype chat, msn etc. Your question might only take 10 seconds to ask, but much longer to answer. If your question is relevant to more than one student it benefits all if you ask it on list. Cisco Learning AcademyEach student will have an account created for them on cisco.netacad.net. This account will be used for taking online exams, and will track your progress through the courses as you study. Once you have completed a course, you can register for the alumni, which will allow you to access curricula that you have previously studied after you leave the courses. AccountsA counts will be created before the start of class on Febuary 10. When your account on the cisco.netacad.net web site is created, you will be emailed 2 numbers. Log in with these, and set your profile. Ensure that you choose "provide content in accessible format when available" so you will benefit from the diagram descriptions that will show up on the academy with this setting enabled. Also, change your username to something that is easy to remember, set your password likewise. Note that choosing a unique name on the academy is difficult as there are many users. Curriculum is available both from our website, and the Cisco learning academy. Students are encouraged to read the academy notes, as well as any converted material that may be provided. Academy resources will take priority over converted material. PaymentsPayments for your courses are accepted via PayPal. Please visit www.ciscovision.org and click on the donate link. Each course costs $500 so if you are taking both courses you will need to pay $1000 in total. Scholarships are now available for people who are on low incomes and are funding their own education. If you are granted a scholarship, then you will be asked to contribute $150 per course. There are further arrangements that can be made for people in developing countries. Fees are based on current funding and may be reduced if pending grant applications are successful Please let us know if you require a payment installment plan before this date. If you have already paid, or other arrangements have been made for you this step is not necessary. Those who do not pay by the deadline, (new deadline to be advised), may have their accounts on the Cisco server being deleted, and losing Ventrilo access. Updates may be made to this document as required and it will be made available for students from both the Cucat and CiscoVision web sites.
From the whole CAVI team, we look forward to studying with you in the second half of 2010. CAVI Brochures & Application Forms
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