Student Responsibilities

Students are responsible for the following:

• Handing in assignments on time. Late work will not be accepted or will be discounted relative to grade--A grade point for each week late
• Backing up materials stored in your class workspace on the server. The College DOES NOT back up the computers in the lab so it is up to you to do that. This can be done in two ways.
• Purchase a two (2) 250 Meg Zip disks (NOT a 100 Meg disk since the machines in the course Lab in baker cannot write to these!) 2 are better than 1!
• OR
  • Purchase a USB flash memory stick of at least 128 meg. 2 are better than 1!
• These are used for backing up your work and the smart person would buy two of each since it is reletivly easy to trash the contents of either - especially the zip disks. The best way to work is to create a new project folder (workspace) on the C: drive of the computer and do your work there. When you are done then copy the workspace from C: to the zip disk or Flash Drive. To work on an existing project copy it from the zip or flash to C: and proceed. Note that ArcGIS does not like it when you move data files around. The system stores paths, not data, so if you start working in a workspace on C: and then try to continue work later from your zip disk, the software will not be able to find the data. So always work on C:!
• How to trash a Zip or Flash. It is easy, just eject the zip disk manually or pull the memory stick or a USB zip drive out of the USB port! As with most computer systems, XP keeps material that is to be written to a disk in a memory buffer until the buffer is full. It then does the write. If you yank out the stick or manually eject the zip disk the buffer is NOT written and you have just trashed something! XP also keeps a copy of the table of contents of a zip and probably that of a flash in memory and if you just pull either memory device out the next person to plug in a zip or flash will become very confused because they will see your table of contents. Agggh! Lucky they can't find you - probably.
• How to NOT trash a zip or stick.
  • Non USB zip: Go to windows explorer and click on some drive other than the zip drive. Now right click on the zip drive and select Eject.

  USB Devices: Must be stopped! If the Task Bar is not visible at the bottom of the screen then move the cursor to the bottom of the screen and it should appear. Click on the icon shown to the right and you will get a list of USB devices that can be removed. Click the one you want to remove.

• BACKING UP AFTER EVERY SESSION!!!!!
• Keeping all returned graded items in your portfolio (this is a requirement for the portfolio anyway). Grades for the course are kept on a computer and if it should crash AND we lose our backup we will need your portfolio to recreate the grades.
• Never, ever bring food or drink into the MSL!!!!