Joining the Community
Faceless classmates hovering in cyberspace reaching out to learn together--how do you get to know one another? Just as with the face-to-face classroom, you can have conversations with your classmates to get to know more about them.

Introduce yourself in the Classroom within Course Space to your fellow course members. Here are some hints for doing just that:

• Whatever you want to know about them, tell about yourself.What do you want to know about the people you will be teaming with for this course? Do you want to know if they are good spellers? (You'll know soon enough!) Do you want to know what they're good at or how they teach?
• Introduce yourself by giving your basic information (location, teaching assignment, interest in the course, goals) and adding the things people say about you (e.g., really well-organized, always late but worth it, loves technology). You can include information about where you grew up, where you went to college, and what your personal interests and hobbies are. Be sure to describe your connection to education (i.e., Grade 2 teacher, 25 students; or taught fifth grade for several years…now teaching third grade).

Express your personal style
If you wish, you can bring your personal style into your academic communications with "emoticons." Learn to express emotions--those smiley faces and frowns that bring intonation to text. Or use the <> to code asides such as <grin> or even <chagrin> to express emotion. Make your responses in a conversational tone rather than formal reporting. In cyberspace, you can take written communication in new directions.