OVERVIEW
1. Join Up ... To post and participate in this site, you have to register to be a member.
Click on this "Create New User" link (or the one on the left), fill in the form and submit. Your username will be created and you can log in with it immediately. By joining, you can create new topics, post on topic threads, and post comments wherever you see a 'comment' link.
2. Set a Profile ... After you log in, please fill in the information for your profile by clicking on your username.
If you're an ATDP course instructor, a teacher's assistant (TA), or an internet TA (iTA) for a particular course, please note it by giving yourself the appropriate title. Feel free to set a signature and upload an avatar.
3. Introduce Yourself ... Join in the TVA community by posting on one of the forums.
If you're a student, introduce yourself in the official "introduce yourself" thread and have a look around all the other forums.
If you're a parent, guardian, or ATDP teacher/staff, introduce yourself in this thread.
4. Check out the Headlines ... read (and bookmark!) the TVA weblog.
Headlines is where you'll find the latest news and comments on ATDP matters high and low and everything in between.
TVA ETIQUETTE
The Virtual ATDP is an academic site. Common-sense internet etiquette -- or 'netiquette' -- is expected of all participants here. Civil discourse in all postings or comments on these pages is also expected. However, here are some specific instructions, in no particular order:
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Use inoffensive account names.
Account names cannot contain objectionable strings of text. What is 'objectionable'? The usual: words or phrases that are x-rated, lewd, insulting, hateful, etc. We will definitely expunge inappropriate names from the User List, as well as block the IP addresses from which those user accounts have been set up. -
Practice civility.
Objectionable postings will be similarly dealt with (see above). -
Don't spam.
Spam postings will be deleted. -
Practice reasonable linkage.
Postings with links to objectionable sites will be deleted.
SITE SPECIFIC
The content manager system we use here at TVA is Io Community Manager (IoCM) and it has unique capabilities that you've probably never seen on other sites before.
The first thing is the Activity Tracker. This page shows you all the latest posts, edits, and additions that have happened on the site and is very useful for seeing where all the action is... without having to burrow or browse through the various forums.
When you're traversing the forums, you may notice that certain posters have unique background colors for their posts. This indicates that they have some specific job in the whole Virtual ATDP schema. The colorcoding works as follows:
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yellow - TVA Instructors and Associates
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red - ATDP course instructors and ATDP staff
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green - TVA students and TAs
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blue - internet TAs for various courses
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gray - regular member
Finally, IoCM has its own method for styling your posts and comments. If you know a little bit of HTML coding, it will be very familiar to you.
If you would like to add links, images, or apply text styles (bold, italics, underscore, color etc.) to your posts, see the Forum Code guides:
Tech note: IoCM was developed using the Evlan programming language and virtual machine, created by Kenton Varda (now of Google), a friend of one of this site's founding organizers, Cynthia Nie.