Two Habits to Protect Your Time and Your WorkMNOHS – Habits for Online Survival Updated: 2/8/11 Page 1 of 6 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share

MNOHS – Habits for Online Survival Updated: 2/8/11 Page 1 of 6 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. Minnesota Online High School grants non-commercial use of this content in exchange for attribution of the original to the author and Minnesota Online High School ( www.mnohs.org, [email protected] , 1-800-764-8166 .

Two Habits to Protect Your Time and Your Work Things happen in the digital world. A little time and effort invested NOW can save hardship, stress, and pain LATER. People who make their living on the Web - professional web designers, bloggers and other “digerati” have developed habits to protect themselves if:

Software and websites don’t work correctly.

A hard drive crashes and you lose EVERYTHING.

The power goes out or your Internet connection drops at just the worst time.

You click the wrong button by mistake. Here are two habits that as an online student you should start to practice today.

Habit 1: Work OFFLINE and SAVE Problem: Even though Blackboard has that handy text box you can type right into, your work isn’t saved unless you click submit. But what if you close the browser window before all the data has transferred—or your Internet connection drops at that very moment? Result: You’ve lost all that work and you have to start over!! Solution & Habit: Work OFFLINE and SAVE. 1. Type your response using your operating system’s plain text editor (simple word processor). Use NotePad for

Windows or TextEdit for Macs. For Windows, You can find Notepad in the “Accessories” folder. Pin it to your Start Menu or Taskbar so you have it available all the time. To find Notepad, go to Start Menu > All Programs > Accessories

For the Mac, TextEdit in is the Applications folder. Drag it to your Dock so it’s always there.


2. Type up your response in the text editor.

3. Save your file…often! Develop a pattern for naming so you can find it quickly like “US History B – week 1 – assignment 1”.


4. After you’re done typing your response and you’ve saved your file… … copy all of your text.

5. Paste the text into Blackboard’s text box.


6. Use the text box’s controls to add formatting if needed.

7. Don’t forget to click “Submit”!

Result: All your work is now saved, backed-up, and submitted! You can sleep easy!


Habit 2: Trust But Verify: Did it go through? Problem: You click the “Submit” button and then you go off and work on something else. Result: A week later you go back and check your grade. Wait! My assignment isn’t there! Now what do I do? Solution & Habit: Trust but verify: take five more seconds and check “My Progress.”

1. After you click “Submit” on an assignment, wait for the Blackboard to display a confirmation message in a little green bar...

2. Click on the “My Progress” main link and scroll down and find the assignment you just submitted.

Look for the green exclamation mark. If it’s there – everything is fine. Your assignment is waiting to be graded.

If you don’t see the green exclamation mark, you should re-submit.


3. If you’ve resubmitted the assignment and you still don’t get that green exclamation point…

o Email your teacher with the assignment text you saved to your hard drive. o Submit a tech ticket so we can investigate the problem.

Result: This simple check will save you potential headaches later! You wouldn’t send money to an online bank without checking! Do the same with your school – trust but verify.

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Two Habits to Protect Your Time and Your WorkMNOHS – Habits for Online Survival Updated: 2/8/11 Page 1 of 6 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share