One of the best features of the online workshop is the Forum. This is where students can communicate with other students and their teacher regarding their class. At Ebearz, the forums are all located in the Agora. Once you've logged into the Agora, here's what you'll find:

The Shoutbox: The shoutbox is located in the upper left corner of the main Agora page. The shoutbox is not a forum. This box is used for announcements intended for all students to see. Everyone is welcome to use the shout box, but please do not use it for posts specific to your workshop.

The Forums: To find the forums, scroll down the left side of the page navigation and click on LIST FORUMS. A list of all the ongoing classes will appear. Choose the name of your class to enter the discussion pertaining to your class. There may be more than one page of classroom forums listed, depending on how many classes are running at a given time. Go to page 2 (located at the bottom of the list) to see further listings of classroom forums. All of the forums are listed in alphabetical order within the Faculty. In the forum, you can post questions, photos and chat with your fellow classmates.

How to post in the Forum: Once you've accessed your class forum, you'll be presented with a list of topics, such as welcome to the class, introduce yourself, or progress reports ... among others. Click on the topic you wish to read or reply to. Scroll down to the bottom of the posts in the topic and you'll see a text box. You can type in your reply in the box and then hit POST. It may take a few seconds for your post to appear. Do not navigate away from the page while your post is processing.

Adding a Photo to your Post: To add a photo to your post, you'll need to use the ATTACH field just below the reply text box. Click on the BROWSE button. Navigate to the photo on your computer that you wish to upload to your post. Double click on the photo and it will immediately be entered into the attach field. Now, when you click POST, the photo will be added to the bottom of your post as a link.

Adding Multiple Photos to your Post: At this time, you can only add one photo at a time to your post. To add multiple photos, click on the Edit icon in the upper left corner of your post. It looks like a paper and pencil. Now add a photo just as described above. The second photo will appear as a link directly below the first photo. You can add as many photo links as you like using this method.

Photo Size Restrictions: Each forum has a size restriction on the photos that can be uploaded. If your photo is too big, it will be rejected by the server and you will not be able to upload it. You will then first need to resize it in a photo editing program before uploading it to the forum. To learn how to do this, please refer to our Photo Editing Tutorials here in the Library. (Tutorials coming the week of February 1, 2011)

The forum is one of the best features of the online workshop, so please don't be shy in using it!