The class starting March 14, 2012 is full! It is likely that two or more members will not participate or will drop out quickly, so we will probably be OK in allowing a couple of extra people to join. 

Since this will be the first organized class on the cone6pots network, it is critical that it be taken to its conclusion with strong agreement that it was worthwhile. With your committment to participate, to do the reading, giving your feedback to questions and exercises, and helping each other, I can guarantee that we will all learn a lot, and we should each have a much more solid foundation for keeping our books electronically.
If you haven't already, please set up your workspace as a discussion in the group discussion area. Just follow the examples that are already posted. There is preliminary information already posted here in the comments area of the group's main page and in the group's discussion area. 
Unless the majority wants to purchase one of the books, I think we will be well served by working through online tutorials, to learn the basic accounting principles. I will start posting their URLs a couple of days before the 14th of March.

To avoid confusion I am going to close the Accounting 101 discussion over in the Continuing Education Discussion Forum, so no one accidentally posts over there.

All communications regarding this class should be posted here in this group, broadcast as messages to the group, or by one-to-one messaging through the ning message system.

To send a private message to someone click their name and you will go to their profile page. In the left column under their profile picture you will see a link "Send a Message". Click it and you will go to a message composing window. Give it a subject, add your message, go to the bottom of the window and click "Send" Your message will go to their home email account as well as their ning Inbox.

Thanks,
George Lewter

This is a private group, meaning that non-members can't see anything about this group except the generic information at the top of this page. What we do here is for our own benefit.  When we finish, we can decide whether to open the class materials for others or not. You will have an opportunity to delete any of your own content, if you don't want it left open for others. So if you want to talk about your own business, you can do it, and delete any privileged information after you get the responses you seek.

Still getting used to how to communicate in this activity. Changed my profile picture and somehow entered a comment. Could someone let me know the difference between my workspace (and its purpose) and this discussion forum? Thanks.

Reply by George Lewter 3/9 - This is not a discussion forum at all.  It is a comment wall. Each posting stands by itself and does not link or thread to any other comment. It is like notes thumbtacked to a bulletin board - not a good place to have a running conversation.

The discussions for this group are threaded conversations stemming from an original posting. They link to the posting they are in reply to. I may reply to your discussion at its top level, or I can reply to Ann's response to Ted's response to your original posting. 

Your workspace is simply your starting discussion for this study group, where you will start posting your conclusions about the study materials, your questions that arise as you study the materials, and where you should receive responses from others about your questions. Similarly you should check the workspaces of the others frequently, to find out what they are thinking, and to see if you can help them with questions they may have.

I am still trying to figure out how this works. When will we know what workbooks to get?

Reply by George Lewter 3/11 - We will be following online tutorials. Any handwritten excercises will be simple enough to be done on plain lined paper, or you can print blank columnar sheets that are available for download from the Class Logistics discussion at the bottom of the main panel.

Group,  In reading the material and taking the tests today, I found it helpful to copy and paste the information to a word document and printing to refer back to during the quizes.  Just wanted to put this out there to help others if need be. 

Have a great day, June

Good tip!  Thanks, June!

Present

I am here!

Am on board.

I finished the lessons this morning. I have never really put much thought to accounting. I will need to reread these first lessons just to get it better stuck in my head.

Chat starts as a little window in the lower right corner of the cone6pots windows. If you click the little gear it will give you the chance to connect or disconnect from chat. When you are connected the main room is always open. Click its header to expand it and then drag the header up or down to the size you prefer. 

If you are looking at the discussion forum with other people online at the same time, you have to refresh the page frequently to see the latest replies. Chat, on the other hand, will refresh automatically every time someone says something.

If you would like to use a spreadsheet application and don't have Excel, you can use google docs online by simply registering for a google ID. Or you can download the free Open Office software to run it locally on your machine.  Both work nearly identically to Excel.

George there are a few different types of accounting spreadsheets available to me on google docs. What am I specifically looking for?

Reply by George Lewter 3/27.  I will be posting a file with Joe Potters accounts, transactions, and T-accounts in Excel and PDF format. I think I can put them on google docs, and I think I can get you access to them.  But I don't know if you get to use copies that you can work on on your own or if you will be working on my originals.  I will look into that and get back to all of you.

Generally you can set up spreadsheets to do whatever you want them to.  There are a whole slew of preformatted sheets on the supplemental sources page for this group.

I am on Skype now, and would like to test the conferencing capability as a better alternative than chat for our weekly meetings.  Skype can be downloaded and used computer to computer for free. You need at minimum a microphone and speakers, and a Webcam for video.  Most newer laptops have these features built-in. My Skype ID is geoglaznclay.  The only downside to Skype is that we won't have a transcript to post. I guess I should check into recording the session.

Wes Stack and I just visited via Skype.  It was the first Skype call for both of us.  We did quite a bit of fumbling around to get the video part to work correctly, but succeeded. Then we fumbled around some more and were able to see each others computer screens and the open applications.  He showed me an Excel spreadsheet he is working on for his business and I showed him the google docs sheet I'm working on for the balance sheet exercise. 

Other than being another computer application that you have to learn how to use, Skype is far superior to chat for our communications needs. We will continue with a chat session for this class, but I think a weekly Skype session should be available for anyone interested, even if we cover the same material.