Introducing Yourself

		Introducing Yourself

		Create an Online Introduction

		Because an online community is faceless, it is imperative to break the ice as soon as possible. Creating a brief biography with a photo and perhaps adding some information of your interests will allow others to get a sense of who you are. This is helpful in the selection of partners for projects that must be done in collaboration as this is a great way of finding out who you want to work with. An introduction can be in the form of a posting or even a simple homepage. When posting, add in the subject heading the purpose of the posting. In this example, it would be Introduction - Your Name. When attaching a photo, make sure the photo is in the form of a JPEG and small in size (50KB or less). JPEGs will open in any Internet browser and small sized JPEGs will load up faster. Below is a simple, humorous example serves to introduce this student and provide some background about his interests:

	Example	Hello. My name is Guy (that's the French Guy as in Guy DeMaupassant, Lafleur, and Gadbois, not the English pronunciation as in Guy Madden, Fox, or Lombardo) Dugas (the s is silent, as in Dumas and Dégas). Aside from basic French, I will be more than pleased to assist you in eCommerce exploration over the next twelve weeks. I've been an instructor in the IST and CA/P programs at Red River College since August, 1996. My current areas of specialization are XML and eCommerce, though I have shared with students in the past other such esoteric courses as RPG, Operating Systems, Database Management Systems, and Microcomputers.

	Task	Add a posting introducing yourself (short biography including interests and why you are taking an online course). Include a photo and add it into the hand-in section.

	Assignment	Use the above posting and convert it to a web page.

	Next lesson	In the next lesson, we will learn the importance of critical thinking skills.