Please pardon the stream of consciouness formatting...

I have enjoyed the lectures in their formats so far. I think I find trying to systematically work my way through the readings to be a little intimidating; so what I have done is to skim the reading and then head straight to the videos and links and then come back and actually do the readings. Additionally, I'll try to work my way through the assignments and come back and re-read the readings afterwards. A lot of time I find that I am intimidated by the subject matter until I can actually get my hands on it. Admittedly, this week I felt intimidated by a lot of the information mainly because I didn't really have to do much as my home networking system is already in place. I will be interested to see what next week's assignment looks like, I think I'm building it up to be more than it is in my head. My approach to this week's material was to skim it literally every day and then towards the end of the week I had my husband read it too and then we started discussing it conversationally and comparing opinions as to what the requirements are and discussing what next week will bring, explaining my take on the readings really helped clarify things in my head. I've been doing that with most of the lessons; boring my friends or family members by trying to explain what I'm doing in this class in my own words. I would say my two favorite formats for the lessons have been the videos and the VTC online software tutorials. I find myself going back to the VCT tutorials quite a bit and have even watched a few that weren't relevant to the class but piqued my interest. I find Professor Fulton's "conversational" approach to the lectures to be quite enjoyable and they often make intimidating material more approachable.