CH 586: ANNOUNCEMENTS    Monk Teaching, Medieval illum ms.

WELCOME to the exciting world of medieval church history and spirituality!  This course will be offered in the Spring semester.

FEEL free to investigate the different subsections of this course, especially the Syllabus, Lectures, and External Links.

THOSE who wish to preview this course or begin working with texts and lectures should follow the steps below to make sure you can play audio-lectures on your computer.  Bear in mind, however, that Discussion Forums will not be open until the course officially begins in the fall.

An indispensable part of this course will be downloadable audio-lectures that you may download to your computer or play directly from the Internet, depending on the speed of your connection. 

THIS is a link to the type of file (“.wma” for those who wish to know) that we will be using for audio lectures: AUDIO-FILE  (don't click on it quite yet). This is a music file consisting of the medieval prolix responsory Homo Quidam, and it will serve as a test of your computer's ability to play the kind of audio files we will be using in this course.

THIS is a link to a text-and-image file showing (at the bottom of the page) Gregorian notation of the Homo Quidam: TEXT-FILE .  The navigation panel (the grey panel on the left) will remain visible when you link to the text file, so you can return to this page at any time by clicking on “Announcements.”

THE goal is: (1) to get the AUDIO-FILE playing; then (2) minimize the player so you can see this window again; then (3) click on the link to the Gregorian TEXT-FILE, so you can look at the notated music while you hear the music being sung.  If you are able to do this, all is well; and you will have no trouble using texts and downloadable lectures.

If you have trouble doing this, I strongly urge you to obtain the technical assistance you need. Be aware that the download time for these audio files on a very slow modem may be as long as five to ten minutes.  If you need a new version of Windows Media Player, it may be downloaded from the Microsoft Website (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.aspx?displaylang=en&categoryid=4).  If your computer is so old that it simply cannot be induced to play the audio files, you will need to use another computer for this course. 

ONCE you are comfortable listening to audio while reading from a linked text-file, please click on the SYLLABUS link in the navigation panel, and review the Syllabus.

AFTER you have reviewed the syllabus, (and if it is Monday, August 25 or later) please click on the MOODLE DISCUSSION link in the navigation panel, log on to the Moodle segment of this course, and click on the  INTRODUCTORY DISCUSSION forum to introduce yourself and meet your classmates.

IN general I will try to keep audio-lectures around fifteen to twenty minutes in length.  This is because a twenty minute lecture represents about 2.2 megabytes - a rather slow download for those using modems.  The downloadable lectures and webpage texts for the first week of our course are available now in Lectures and Assignments.

Please use the texts in the Course Documents section of the course in whatever way you wish: some students like to print them out to write on while listening to lectures; others prefer to work exclusively from the webpages on their monitors.  The downloadable texts often contain fuller (although not highlighted) versions of the documents we study as webpages. I would not recommend trying to print them all out, since we will only be using portions of some of them.  If you wish, you may download course documents to your computer without opening them in the same way you download an audio-lecture without playing it: namely, by right-clicking on the link and designating a folder.  Have fun: see you in discussion Forum One!

THIS is just a reminder of the importance of keeping abreast of each week’s work in our course.  I completely understand how difficult it can be amidst the throes of new courses to set aside time for our distance learning work.  But by now everyone should have worked out how to balance time for each course.  In regard to this course, it will be especially important from this point onwards to make sure everyone has listened to each week’s lectures and posted responses in a timely fashion.  As I described in my introductory e-mail, this normally means that answers to each week’s questions should be posted by MONDAY of the following week. 

 PLEASE do everything you possibly can to post responses in a timely fashion from this (FIFTH) week onwards, and to “make up” by posting answers and responses in earlier forums.  Let me know if this is a problem for you, and we will see what we can do.

OUR first discussion forum is now open (Jan 15, 2010), and I would ask everyone to please post at least an initial response to the questions within a week.  Please let me know if you have any questions or difficulties.

....x....  ’ “”.