The message here — even those who are very different can still be the best of friends. Enjoy!

The first Marking Period export of the year is upon us! The final step in the export process is to check ClassXP and make sure the grades you see are correct. However, you can’t check that until our SASI administrator imports your export file into SASI. So, if you think you exported your grades, but you’re not sure and you want to check:

1. Go to Start/My Computer.
2. Scroll down until you see Network Drives and double-click on the “N” drive.
3. In the “N” drive, open the “sasixp” folder.
4. In the “sasixp” folder, open the “IGPRO” folder.
5. In the “IGPRO” folder, open the “IGPData” folder.
6. In the “IGPData” folder, open the “071” folder.
7. In the “071” folder, open the folder with your teacher number.
8. Select View/Show Details.
9. In your folder, look for the file starting with “MK” and check the Date Modified and confirm that the date and time is when you exported. If it is, your export was a successful!

Since I’m filling is for the SASI Adminstrator right now, I’ll contact everyone once I’ve pulled the grades in to SASI so that you know when you can check and confirm that not only did the export file “fly”, but that the grades are all correct.

New technology here to clean your screen internally.

Click here to start this process.

Happy Friday!

(I really hope this isn’t blocked!)

At the start of the school year, during the Technology Kickoff presentation, I challenged teachers to take their Professional Learning Communities to the next level – beyond the walls of the building and the boundaries of the school district. I thought that now, right before our PLC Professional Development Day, it would be a good time to re-issue that challenge and provide an idea on where to start.

I wrote about Twitter.com last year. This is a GREAT place to start. I know some folks will say, “What? Why on earth would I want to know what other people are doing during all hours of the day, every day of the week, and in 140 characters or less?!?!” Well, the key is in WHO those other people are. In Twitter you “follow” people with similar interests and backgrounds. They, in turn, “follow” you. It may sound like one big stalkfest (I know stalkfest isn’t a real word. But this is a blog and not even remotely close to anything resembling literature), but Twitter has proven to be the most valuable online tool I have used during the past year. After logging in to Twitter, within minutes tips, tricks, and resources come flying in.

If the key is in who to follow, how do you find the people? Twitter4teachers provides lists of educators on Twitter by subject area. Once you find folks that post information that you find useful, check out who they are following and follow them, too. If you know of others in your field, you can search for them on Twitter. It’s amazing how many people are tweeting–authors, professors, politicians (and, yes, Ashton Kutcher is tweeting, too, if you are into that sort of thing). Or, you could check out who your friendly-ITRT is following and start there. You will find me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tekkieteacher.

Once you have started setting up your online PLC, the next step is to actually post something. For those of you who are a bit shy, try “re-tweeting”, or just re-posting someone else’s post that you found useful. Be sure to include the “RT” indicator and attribute the post to the original person with the “@” symbol like the example below:

When working within an online PLC, you will get more out of it if you are a contributor to the conversation rather than just a bystander. Before you know it, people will start following you, too! I recommend always screening your followers and blocking anyone that you aren’t sure about. However, I have to admit that it was also very cool once some of the big names in the the Ed Tech world who I was following started following me, too!

Our PLCs are about helping and learning from each other to improve ourselves and the instructional process. There are 195 people in my Ed Tech PLC and I am much better at what I do because of them. Come join me!

With the end of the marking period upon us, it’s important to make sure all our students are receiving credit for the work they have done. If you had a student who has transferred out of your class and gone to another teacher’s class, please be sure to forward that student’s grade to his/her new teacher. If you are no longer seeing that student’s average in IGPro, here’s what you do:

1. In IGPro, in the Show drop-down list, choose Tasks/Students/Notes.
2. At the bottom of the spreadsheet window, make sure Show Inactive Students IS checked.
3. Click the transfer student’s name. The date the student transferred out of your class and his/her average at the time displays in the Notes window at the bottom of the screen.

If a student has come to your class from another school, please check with guidance for that student’s grades.

For some “Feel Good Friday” chuckles, here are 20 of some of the best one-liners I’ve found on the web:

1. I want to die peacefully in my sleep, just like my grandfather. .not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.
2. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
3. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.
4. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
5. Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. They both should be changed regularly, and for the same reason.
6. Did you know that dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity, they can train people to stand on the very edge of the pool and throw them fish?
7. The sole purpose of a child’s middle name is so he can tell when he’s really in trouble.
8. I used to be indecisive. Now I’m not sure.
9. Knowledge is power, and power corrupts. So study hard and be evil.
10. Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.
11. Why is it that most nudists are people you don’t want to see naked?
12. If Bill Gates had a penny for every time I had to reboot my computer…oh wait, he does.
13. Dogs have masters. Cats have staff.
14. The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
15. What if there were no hypothetical questions?
16. What is the most important thing to learn in chemistry? Never lick the spoon.
17. A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
18. If Wal-Mart is lowering prices every day, why isn’t anything in the store free yet?
19. If everything seems to be coming your way, you’re probably in the wrong lane.
20. I’m in shape. Round is a shape isn’t it?

So….which was your favorite?

 For those of you who are interested in one of the 10 SMART Boards we are purchasing, here is a great site with resources for SMART educators. This might be a nice place to start for your lesson ideas!

Smart Educator Resources

I want to thank all of you for your patience. This has been a very busy start to the school year this year and consequently I have not kept up with my weekly posts. Many of you have told me not to worry about it, that you know how busy I am with the extraneous duties I’ve picked up, and I appreciate your understanding.

The reality is, though, that we in education are traditionally overtasked. Back in my consulting days, when my colleagues would complain about their workload, I would tell them that teachers work more in 9 months than they ever would in a year’s worth of consulting. They never questioned me about it. I like to think that was because they knew I’d done both, but it was more likely because they were afraid I would assign them more tasks if they did.

With as busy as I’ve been, I still know that I do not work as hard as a classroom teacher. I do not have to take home papers to grade and although I try to collaborate with teachers on lesson plans, it’s nothing like what I had to do when I was in the classroom all the time.

So, I’m going to do my best to keep up with these posts. The extraneous duties I’ve picked up have to take a back seat to my primary responsibility of helping teachers. Teachers are the stars in education. The rest of us are  just support personnel.

Now for today’s mini-byte….

Many of you are still having trouble logging in to Novell in the mornings. Over the summer, how users are set up in Novell was changed by the Department of Information Technology Services. The “context” was reset for everyone. However, for some reason, your computers aren’t always  ”remembering” your context and it has to be set by hand.

If you aren’t able to log in to Novell, please try the following:

1. On the Novell Login window, click the Advanced button.
2. Click the Contexts button.
3. Navigate to PWCS/HS/Hylton and select Employee.
4. The Server line should be left blank.
5. Once these settings are in place, try logging in, again.

You should be able to log in once the context is set correctly. However, if this continues to be a problem, please submit a Help Request indicating that your computer will not “hold it’s context and has to be re-set”.

Several staff members have asked me where in the world their SchoolFusion Message Center has gone?!?! There used to be a link beneath where you now see “FusionTools”. With this summer’s upgrades, that link was removed, probably because it was redundant. You see, your Message Center is located on your profile page, and since there was already a link for that I suppose the engineers decided to do away with the other.

So, to get to your SchoolFusion Message Center, click FusionTools/View My Profile. Your Message Center is located just below your profile picture.

Although all of the messages sent to staff members through SchoolFusion are also delivered to your GroupWise inbox, it is still a good idea to check the Message Center every once in a while to make sure nothing was skipped. Also, even if the sender does not have an email address in the system, you can still respond to their message through the Message Center. Britt B. has found that feature especially handy lately!

I posted this last spring and thought it might be a good time to re-post it. If there was a week when we all needed someone to stand by us, to give us a shoulder to lean upon, this was probably it.

Grammar Girl’s Quick & Dirty Tips is a site is sent in by our very own Jennifer H. According to Jen, “This website is a fantastic way for students and/or teachers to brush up on grammar.  It is styled after Gossip Girl – a tv and book series.  The quick and dirty tips are amazing.”

Have you had a student transfer out of your class and now the new teacher or school needs that student’s grades? In the past that information was hard to recover in IGPro. With the later versions of IGPro we are now using, it’s much easier!

1. In IGPro, in the Show drop-down list, choose Tasks/Students/Notes.
2. At the bottom of the spreadsheet window, make sure Show Inactive Students IS checked.
3. Click the transfer student’s name. The date the student transferred out of your class and his/her average at the time displays in the Notes window at the bottom of the screen.

Please remember, NEVER delete a student from your gradebook. Instead, wait for the auto-update to inactivate the student. Once the student is deleted, their records are gone forever. There is no way to recover them.

Welcome to Friday!

This video is for any one who may be, like me, finding themselves wondering “who’s on first, what’s on second, etc.”

The whirlwind of the kickoff to a new school year has me spinning!

Our school has purchased Scantron’s Achievement Series to make the administration of common formative assessments easier. Tech Team member Marc S. will be heading up the implementation of this “web-based assessment solution” with assistance from fellow Tech Team member Jason F. Many thanks to both of them for graciously volunteering for this duty!

For those of you interested in learning more about this assessment tool, check out the website at http://www.achievementseries.com/!

Please don’t forget that our faculty calendar is officially online this year! You should all be receiving daily email notices about all the upcoming events. These events “pull” from every webpage that you are associated with, including your class webpages, the faculty calendar, and the IT webpage. If you are not receiving these messages, please contact your friendly ITRT.

To see everything that is on the Faculty Calendar, login to SchoolFusion and click My Calendar on the left. You can search for specific group events by checking/unchecking the boxes below the calendar.

If there is anything missing from the calendar that you believe should be included, again, please contact your friendly ITRT.

The first week of school is behind us now and, unless there are some hidden casualties I don’t know about, we all survived! We may feel battered, beaten, bruised, and definitely exhausted, but we have successfully kicked off another school year!

This week’s Feel Good Friday is short and sweet. Now….go get some rest so we can do it all again starting Monday!

Since last week’s Technology Kickoff presentation, a number of you have asked about the tool I used to create the opening slide, http://wordle.net. Wordle is a completely free tool that allows you to create a word cloud out of any text, including poetry, literature, speeches, etc. All you have to do is copy/paste the text into the create field and viola – a personalized word cloud. Wordles can be used to introduce a lesson and spark discussion, or in our Language Arts classes to convey the main ideas in a piece of literature. This site created Wordles for every presidential inaugural address since Washington!

To get started, I recommend copying/pasting your favorite poem or a couple of paragraphs from your favorite book to see what kind of Wordle is created!

I’ve posted this one before, probably more than once, but I just love it and I think it’s a great video to watch right before the first day of school!

Enjoy!