Technology Tips

Reading on a computer screen

There is a lot to be read online for this course and I encourage you to do that rather than print things out, for convenience and to save you money.  Adjusting the font size in a browser can make that easier for your.  PDF readers also allow you to change the magnification in the document you are reading.

VPN

Get the CITES VPN service installed on whatever computer you will use to do the work for the course.  This will allow you to access the electronic reading materials that are in one of the Library's databases.

http://www.cites.illinois.edu/vpn/download-install.html
CITES :: VPN Downloads and Installation - U of I via kwout

Taking Notes Online

A convenient way to take notes is to use a social bookmarking tool.  I've used both delicious, which is very simple and straightforward, and diigo, which is more full featured.  You can make your notes private or public.  And you can organize your notes via tags.  If you share the same tag with your teammates, then you can see the pooled set of posts via that tag, which affords some interesting possibilities you can't get with paper based notes.