Monday, January 6, 2014

Week One: Beginning the Course - Monday January 6

Monday, January 6, 2014

My name is Gail Sease and I live in Bakersfield, California.  I have earned BS and MS degrees in geology but have not worked as a geologist for a long time.   My occupations over the last 20 years have included oil company geologist, junior college geology instructor, Spanish student, teacher of middle school and high school Spanish, biology and geology, school librarian and school secretary.  Before moving to Bakersfield in 2011, I lived with my family in Bogotá, Colombia and Tripoli, Libya for 8 years.  

I would like to get back into the oil and gas or minerals industries and need to bring my skills up to date.  GIS expertise is extremely valuable in these and many other fields.  My sister is currently working on her internship at UWF's GIS Master's certification program and her experiences have convinced me that it will be an excellent opportunity.  I am really excited to begin!

I can see that one of the biggest challenges to start with will be to keep track of all of the different web pages and lists and schedules: where to find them in the virtual sense.  At the beginning, I'm going to use this blog to lay out some notes to help me remember where to find everything.   I expect I'll get used to it pretty soon and I'll be able to lay my hands on whatever item I need right away.  It will be much easier to learn the stuff if I lay out the information in one place.

One of the most useful documents when I started is called Prepare Guide.   It's a pdf document with some links to important places.  I got to it through one of the early e-mails:  "Reminder to Apply to UWF Inquiry."

In this e-mail, click the link, "How to Apply Page."
On this new page, go to the bottom and click #5, "Go to Class."
The Prepare Guide link is the first item below.  It has links and getting-started instructions for pretty much everything you need.

 (Note from later: I just realized there's a link for the GIS desktop on the eLearning page.   Under the GIS Links tab at the top right.  That's easier than the way I was doing it.  The more you rummage around, the more you find out.

Below the Prepare Guide is information about textbooks and the e-mail account.
Starting tomorrow, and at least until I get used to the online system, I think I will work on the two courses at separate times of the day and keep them separated to avoid getting things mixed up.
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