Welcome to Odysseys: a "game of lively discourse" Henceforth, I will use Odyssey to refer to Odysseys2sense. Like all software, Odyssey has a learning curve. This audio-video presentation will help you get started. Open Odysseys-Guide1-Startup-1up. Viewing the 1up version allows you to see more detail on the screen shots. Slide 1: I am Milo. I am narrating the audio track. I've used Odyssey for two years in the classroom. Odyssey is the best tool I've seen for promoting critical thinking online. Slide 2: The primary goal of Odyssey is to promote productive discourse. Odyssey has four benefits for you: * encourages honest evaluations since everyone is annonymous. * provides immediate feedback (no waiting for a teacher to grade your papers) * provides feedback from multiple reviewers * allows you to critique the feedback you get. Slide 3: Go to the Odysseys2sense.com website. Slide 4: In the pop-up window, press the "Register to Play" button. Slide 5: Enter the data for your profile. You must enter your actual name for this course in order to get credit for your work. But only the computer knows who you are when you are giving or receiving comments. Press "Save Profile". Slide 6: To sign in, enter your e-mail address and password. Press the "Login" button. Slide 7:Select the Odyssey for your class. Slide 8: Select the assigned challenge. Slide 9: Read the challenge and the associated attachments. To generate your response, press the "Respond" button. Notice that your overall power is zero. Everyone's power starts at zero. Slide 10: The program opens a textbox. You can type your answer into this textbox. Slide 11 shows a better approach. Type your answer into a word processor, spell-check, save and copy your answer. Slide 12: In Odyssey, paste your answer into the textbox. Press the "Save Response" button at the bottom left corner of the text box. In order for your reponse to be fully entered into the system, you must complete a required number of reviews. Yes, response and review are easily confused. Think alphabetically: Responses come first; reviews come second. Responses respond to a challenge; reviews review a response. Slide 13: To see the full text of a response, press the "See more" button on the right side of the body. Slide 14: To review a response, press the Review" button on the left side of the body. Slide 15: As before, you can enter your comment directly into the textbox. Odyssey doesn't have a spell-check. Enter your review into a word processor and copy-paste your review into this textbox. To rate the response, move the diamond directly above your response. Slide 16: Here are the details of the four-point scale. As you can see, I rated the above response as a 3.1. When you are done, press "Save Review". Slide 17 shows how you rate a review or a critique. Now you have three separate scales: accuracy, helpfulness and civility: A, H and C. These are rated on a scale between minus two and plus two with zero being the default. In this case, gave default ratings for accuracy and civility, but rated the helpfulness at a minus 0.5: slightly unhelpful. Slide 18: This should get you started. Here are two key recommendations. First, spend time crafting your contributions. Your ratings depend on the quality of your contributions. Second, create your initial response in a word processor. Spell-check and save your response (Odyssey can loose things). Copy and paste your response into Odyssey. For additional training on this program, view Odyssey-Guide 2: Play. This tutorial introduces some more advanced features of this program. Enjoy.