Welcome to all students studying with us this term. The following is important information you need to know before starting class. Anyone wishing to do their own timezone conversions should check out http://www.timeanddate.com. The academy runs on Perth Time in Western Australia. Orientation day's will be advised. This Initial lecture 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. Discovery 1 lecture is at 8 P.M. eastern time in the US, 9am Perth time, (1 am universal) Wednesday (Tuesday Night for Americans.) ITE1 lectures are on at four P. M. Eastern, 5 A.M perth, (9 P.M. universal, and 8 P.M. Eastern, 9am Perth (1:00 universal) Thursday (Wednesday Nights Americans.) Your ITE1 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 the lecture; audio will be downloadable from the http://www.cucat.org website sometime after the 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. As 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. This is a requirement of studying with us; and as many students have not subscribed to both the announce and discuss lists a bulk subscription has 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 and 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 I would 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. Search for *** for the other section. *** Local students: Local students should be at the Association for the Blind by 9am on the day of the course they are studying. This means Discovery students are in on Wednesday, and IT essentials students are in on Thursday. 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 café 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 café at no charge. Take away food is not to be brought into and consumed in the café 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 students: You 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. Note that you will have to wait until your ventrilo account is created before trying to sign in to the server 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 firstname 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 lecture theatre when 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 confidentually 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/ and there are Jaws scripts available 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 asignments have 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 afterwoods. Most 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. 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 bennifits all if you ask it on list. Each 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. A counts will be created before the start of class on Feb 10. When your account 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 bennifit 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, and 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 pressidence over converted material. Payments for your courses are accepted via paypal. Please visit www.ciscovision.org and click on the donate link. Click on the link to add special instructions and note the courses you are paying for. The due date for payments is September first. 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 necisary. Those who do not pay by the deadline risk there accounts on the Cisco server being deleted, and losing Ventrillo access. Updates may be made to this document as required and it will be made available for students from the cucat website. From the whole CAVI team we look forward to studying with you in 2010. Regards, the CAVI team.