• Clicking on Profile allows you to view your profile how others see it when they click on your name on their home page.
• You can change your password or write messages from here.
• Edit Profile allows you to customize your profile and keep your information up-to-date. In this section you can:

o Change/Edit your name, email address, city and/or country

o Decide whether you wish other users to see your email address or not

o Change your preferred language

o Add/Edit/Change your description, picture and/or list of interests

o Change your information

Edit Profile also gives you the option to change advanced settings by clicking one or both of the Show Advanced buttons. If you know what you are doing for any of the otherof these advanced settings you can customize away, if not, these are already pre-set to allow for optimum usage and do not need to be adjusted if you don’t feel comfortable altering them.

• Educate Together courses don't currently require you to use the Blog tab, but this allows you to create blogs and view your blogs or blogs you are currently following.

At any time, clicking on the word educatetogether in the top left hand corner of the screen will take you to your home page.

During the course you may need to make posts to the forums.You should automatically be subscribed to all the relevant forums when you start the course, but if you are not you can subscribe to a forum by simply clicking the ‘Subscribe’ button. Go to Forums in the Activities block to subscribe.

If you are finished a course and no longer want to receive notifications of new posts, you can unsubscribe, by clicking the ‘Unsubscribe’ link or clicking the button under the Subscribed column. Go to Forums in the Activities block to unsubscribe.

When you click the link to your course and once you’ve entered your enrolment key, you should be directed to your course home page.

At the very top of the page, you will see your “breadcrumb” path e.g. educatetogether > IntroETLearnTogether. This works much the same way as your computer will when you go into your files (i.e.: C://user/mydocuments/sampledocument.doc) to show you where exactly you are in the site. You can go back to any point in the pathway by clicking the word of the place you want to go. Clicking educatetogether will take you back to your home page. This is an easy way of jumping to a particular section without having to constantly press the ‘back’ button on your browser, which may not always take you where you want to go.

The boxes you see to on the right and left of your screen are called blocks. While the layout of these blocks may vary slightly from course to course, the following blocks will usually be available.

• Contact your tutor: This usually appears on the top left. It will let you know the name of your tutor this week and if you click on the link below their name you can send them a message.
• Activities: This usually appears under the ‘Contact your tutor’ box. Here you can see what assessments and assignments you have, see the forums relevant to your course and have a look at the list of resources available to you.
• Course Menu: This is for navigating within a module. This can be used to jump to certain topics within a module.
• Educate Together News: This is updated with the latest posts from the http://www.educatetogether.ie website.
• Online users: shows you who is online in the last five minutes and who you can talk to.

The center section is where your course information is displayed. This section will include the content and activities for your course.

You can show and/or hide different topics by clicking on the ‘box’ icon in the top right hand corner of each topic.

At the beginning of the first module of each course, there will usually be a Forum for General News and Announcements. Information about general course administration, dates, etc. will be posted here from time to time.

Read down through the material clicking on any linked items when they come up and remembering that you will need to turn up your sound or put in/on your earphones/headphones depending on what type of item you are accessing. You can tell the type of item by the symbol beside the link e.g. audio or presentation.

To register on the site click on 'register on the site HERE' on the home page. You will be taken to the registration page, where you must enter information in the fields marked in red.
• User Name*: Enter a user name. You could use your first and last name, for example.
• Password*: Create a password. This must have:

• Minimum of 8 characters
• At least 1 digit (0-9)
• At least 1 lower case letter
• At least 1 UPPER CASE LETTER
• At least 1 non-alphanumeric character (!,?,*,#,£,€,<,>,^,&,$, etc.)
• Example: Leitrim2012!
• (*NB: It may be helpful to memorise or record this password somewhere as you will need it every time you log in.)

• Email address*: You enter this twice
• First Name*: Enter your first name
• Surname*: Enter your last name
• City/Town*: Enter the city / town you live in
• Country*: Select the country you live in from the list.
• School / Organisation*: Enter the name of your school or organisation. If you do not want to be associated with a particular school or organisation, type n/a.
• Site Policy Agreement: please follow the link and read this information about how we will manage the information you give us, and our policy for the site. Then tick the box to indicate that you agree to this policy.

This is all the information you need to enter at this point, although you can choose to enter more information, or upload a photo, for example. If you sign up for a particular course, you might be asked for more information – for Board of Management courses we will need your school’s Roll number, for example, and primary school teachers enrolling in summer courses who wish to claim EPV days need to enter their Teaching Council number. If you do not have a Teaching Council number, please enter N/A. 

After you have registered on the site, you can log in at any time by going to https://learning.educatetogether.ie from any computer and entering your username and password in the box on the right hand side of the screen, near the top.

We have designed our courses so that they are easy to navigate, even for people with limited experience in using computers and the internet, and basic equipment. To access all of the content in Educate Together online courses you will need:

· Broadband Connection to the internet

· An up-to-date internet browser (Firefox works best with Moodle, but Internet Explorer, Google Chrome or Safari should also be fine)

· Adobe Reader

· Adobe Flash Player (Version 9 or later)

· Windows Media Player / Quicktime / VLC player for viewing video content

· Access to YouTube and other internet sites

· Speakers (Either Built-in to your PC/MAC or external ones that have been plugged in) *To test if you have built-in speakers, play a piece of music on your computer. If you have no music on your computer already, try this website http://www.live365.com/stations/john262?site=web and click play in the left hand column. If this doesn’t work within a minute then you probably don’t have inbuilt speakers and will need to get some. (NB: Double check that your volume is turned up!)

· Headphones (these are optional to improve the clarity of the audio items)

· Microsoft Word (or other similar program, eg: Open Office)

If you don’t have any of the above, please see the list of solutions below.