Frequently Asked Questions

 
First FAQ: How to I access the tutorials? To veiw it you will need to register at my online college. Chuckle it is not hard go to https://happinessislearning.myicourse.com/user/register to open your account, after you have submitted your account information your enrolled courses screen will pop up. Look over to your left and you will see the navigation bar. Click on the course catalog button and all the currently available courses will be displayed. Choose the course you want to take by running your mouse over to the right and check the enroll box. Directly below is order now button, click and on the next screen the course will be displayed. I have set up each course so that after you have enrolled you can comeback and veiw the course anytime in the future.
 
Second FAQ: Best viewing? For best veiwing set your computer display at 1024 X 768, at this size the instruction parts of the window will fit neatly in your screen. You will need to scroll down on the far right to reveal the clickable button that advances you to the next page. You are allowed a generous amount of time to veiw each page; it will logout once 30 minutes have past. Students are welcome to come back and revisit the course as many times as desired.
 
Third FAQ: Privacy issues? I have had quite a few people worried about possible spamming, phishing etc, so I went to the guru in charge of the hosting service about the  privacy issue, quoting:
 
" The e-mail issue is always there but it is helpful for us as it is a unique identifier for a user name. You can refer people to the MyiCourse privacy policy at www.myicourse.com/welcome/privacy. It states:

Privacy Policy:

"We are like you, we don’t like “Big Brother” and we don’t like having people take our personal information only to constantly market to us via spam and pop-up advertisements. Myicourse.com does not disseminate any information to third parties for marketing or commercial purposes.  While personal and private information is gathered and maintained by Myicourse.com, we are committed to having all of this personal information remain private. Period."

     The other issue is the care of the e-mail address by our site owners. You may find it useful to include your own user agreement with the site registration or with a "Privacy Policy" button on your site. This way they user can click the privacy policy button and read both our and your own privacy policy. You can take that opportunity to quote ours and also state that you will not distribute or sell their e-mail address to any third party. Let me know if you need any assistance either setting up a user agreement with registration or in making the custom privacy policy menu button."
 
Fourth FAQ: Why did you go to this method of teaching? I have taught in person ( problematic as very seldom did all the students actually work at the same pace), pdf with question and answer chatroom follow ups ( as I am a hunt and peck typist and long winded, this did not work well for me), posting pages on my site ( made my site way too big and hard to get around and if a page had a problem I was stuck with trying to fix it ), free videos posted on Google ( was not happy with the quality of the broadcast as they tweak your videos to make them download faster ),  and finally using the free online college hosting by http://www.myicourse.com/news.  They provide the software, host your college for free, and provide you with extremely fast and friendly technical assistance!
 

I do think that the photo essay technique of making a tutorial , with only the occasional video thrown in to represent a certain motion as it flows from one step to the next is absolutely the best way I've ever found to relay information over the computer. Unfortunately , it seems to take forever . This may be just the fact that I was learning a new program and I have had to redo quite a few steps , which hopefully the next time around, I will be able to get it right from the get-go; but it took over 47 hours to make the Gabbi tutorial . If I'm going to be able to give them away for free, I am going to have to cut that time down. What I may end up having to do is one free tutorial for every two to three paid tutorials , simply depending on the amount of time it takes to make each one. Like I said , I'm really hoping to get a lot faster, but at the moment; I'm pretty darn slow.

Fifth FAQ: I want to open my own college! How????  Go to http://www.myicourse.com/news and sign up they will host your site for free and even provide with an online store complete with shopping cart. Do realize this is set up for more "corporate type" use to make a more informal type course you will need to adjust some of the parameters. If you would like to create your own course, the software did have to be tweaked in the settings to make it friendly for a fun class, after I have completed a couple of more I will make a tutorial on creating a photo essay course as I really want to see more artists utilize this service.

Sixth FAQ: Belle, where is Belle?  Unfortunatedly the new format means I will have to start over from scratch with Belle. I am going to do one on dressing the half scale girl Bea next, then go back to Belle.