Discovery Education (formerly United Streaming) has tons of really wonderful resources for teachers and students! One of the participants in last week’s training said that it was the best training she’d ever had (Thanks, Angela J.!)!

With that in mind, for those of you having trouble accessing this great resource, here are the steps:

1. Go to http://tech.hylton.groupfusion.net and log in.
2. Under Links, click Discovery Education/United Streaming. If this is your first time using Discovery Education Streaming, be sure to write down the access code located just below the link.
3. To sign up, use the access code and complete the registration form. If you already have a username and password for Discovery Education, log in.
4. Once you are logged in, click “Streaming” in the upper left corner and have fun searching!

Now that grades are in and report cards ready to go home, it is just about time to switch your gradebooks to the new Marking Period. In order for the grades to show on Edulink, the new Marking Period spreadsheet name must be displayed in italics. That is what tells Edulink to “grab” those grades each night and post them online.

To make this change:

1. Select Setup/Classes. The Classes window displays.
2. In the Classes window, in the field for Current Grade Spreadsheet, select the new marking period from the drop-down list.
3. Repeat this process for each of the classes listed on the left side of the window.
4. Click Close.

Since report cards go home tomorrow, I recommend waiting to make this change until we return to school Thursday. That way what parents see in Edulink will match what they see on the report card.

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.

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.

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.

Monday is our first official day back at school. We have a week to get everything in order before our students arrive. I love this time of year. Although I am sad to see another summer break come to a close, I love the “fresh start” feeling that comes with a new school year.

As you arrive back in your classrooms, one of the first things most of you want to do is boot up your classroom computers. However, the computers, which have been sitting idle for eight weeks, may not be overly cooperative. If you have trouble, please be sure to create a Help Request asking for assistance. Of course, you will have to find a working computer to log the Help Request. The computers in the IT Lab are up and running for just that purpose! Our amazing TSSPEC, Teresa H., will be running around all week fixing things up, but it’s important to document the problem(s) so they are fixed as quickly as possible.

When you fill in a Help Request, be sure to include the following information:

• Detailed description of the problem
• County inventory tag # (it’s on the yellow sticker)
• Serial # (if you can find it)
• Your name
• Classroom number

Welcome back!

The final 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 Mr. A. 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!

One of my favorite things about this job is that every year you get to start off fresh — new classes, new students, brand new shiny school year! However, one thing that won’t be “fresh” next year is your classroom computers. Those won’t be “refreshed” for at least another year or two. Knowing that, now might be a good time to “defrag” your computer. You’ll be too busy to even think about it at the start of next year, so do it now as part of your end-of-year clean up.

What does defragging do? It cleans up and re-organizes the files on your hard drive, speeding everything up.

So, to defrag:

1. Go to Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Disk Defragmenter.
2. Make sure the C: drive is highlighted.
3. Click Defragment.

Defragging can take a while, especially if you haven’t done it before. You can work on other things while it’s defragging, but it will slow things down a bit as it processes. I recommend doing it when you have a long break — maybe during lunch — and won’t be needing your computer.

Recently we’ve had a number of reports about thumb drives not being recognized by school computers. You plug the drive in, go to “My Computer” and……nothing. The thumb drive is not listed. The problem is that the drive that would be normally assigned to the thumb drive is already being “mapped” to something else. The result is a very confused computer. To alleviate this confusion, our wonderful TSSPEC, Teresa H., has added an icon to your Novell desktop called USB Drive.

If the thumb drive is not being recognized, just click this handy icon and choose a different drive letter (I like “U” for USB).

I really try to keep my inbox organized – deleting some emails, filing others – but all too often life interferes and the result is an overflowing inbox. Of course, because of Murphy’s Law, this is exactly the time when I will need to find an important email within the hundreds of emails that are waiting there. For times like this, the “filter” feature can really come in handy. I wish they called it a “search” field, because that’s what it does. Just type in something related to what you are searching for, and GroupWise will filter the information and return only those items with that search term. Once you are finished, though, be sure to delete the search term or GroupWise will continue to filter everything and you’ll end up wondering where all your mail went!

Believe it or not, the end of the year is in sight (Yippee!)! The last marking period is upon us and it is time, again, for a reminder that now is a GREAT time to backup all your files and make sure they are secure. Your files can be saved to a thumb drive, a cd rom, or even an external drive if you have it. To backup your files to a thumb drive:

1. Go to Start/My Document (Note: if you have your files stored somewhere else on your C Drive other your My Documents folder, then use these steps to copy those, too)
2. In the My Documents window, highlight all your documents and folders.
3. On the left pane, click Copy the selected items. The Copy Items window displays.
4. On the Copy Items window, select your Thumb Drive (this is usually your E: drive). Click Copy

SOLs are approaching very quickly! I remember when I returned to education in 2004 I was a bit taken aback by the World Geography pacing guide which had me finishing instruction by April 21. It did not make much sense to me since the last day of school was not until June. And then I remembered – SOL End of Course exams are actually given in May, many weeks before the end of the school year. (I still have issues with this, but that’s a topic for another day)

With that in mind, I know many of you are getting ready to delve into SOL preparation and review for your students. There are several resources available to help with SOL test preparation. First of all, the Department of Information Technology Services has placed an icon in our Novell desktop for the SOL practice tests, or ePats. If you have not already checked them out, they are a great place to start your SOL review. Secondly, we have many wonderful online resources bookmarked on Hylton’s Delicious site. The Jefferson Labs links are there as well as links to many other resources for each of our four core areas.

All Hylton faculty should be receiving daily “Activity” messages that are generated by SchoolFusion. Parents and students who have emails documented in the system receive similar messages.

These are a wonderful tool to remind us of what’s coming up in the next few days, but have you ever wondered where the information for these reminders comes from? Log in to the Hylton’s website and click My Calendar. This calendar rolls all the events and assignments from all your class and faculty pages in to one location for you! This is your “one stop shop” for all your faculty events!

Very often I am asked what is the best way to print out a webpage from within our learning management system, SchoolFusion. Even in our 21st century digital age, there is something to be said for the crisp whiteness of a newly-printed document. Teachers and students especially like to print off the personal and classroom calendars so they can, at-a-glance, see all the upcoming events and assignments.

To make this easier for you SchoolFusion provides you with the “view printer-friendly page” option at the bottom of most of the pages.

It isn’t easy to see, but it’s there. Using this link, you can print to your heart’s content. And, if you are like me, “hole-punch” the document and put it into one of your shiny notebooks!

Keep in mind, however, that the webpages you are printing change often, so you shouldn’t rely on the printed copies. Go to the webpages themselves for the most up-to-date information.

There are times when the desktop printers you have in your classrooms will “go down”, either because they are out of ink or because they are simply broken. When this happens, be sure to complete a Help Request about the problem and then, so that you can still print, you can add one of our many networked printers to your printer list. That way, you will still be able to print what you need even though your local printer is out of commission.

To add a printer:

1. Go to Start/Printers and Faxes.
2. On the left, click Add a printer.
3. Click Next.
4. Select A Network printer, or a printer attached to another computer and click Next.
5. Select Browse for a printer and click Next.
6. Browse to NDPS Printers/NDPS Controlled Access Printers/HYLTON.HS.PWCS/C100-HPLJ4200-ITLAB and click Next.
7. Select No for default printer and click Next.
8. Click Finish.

The next time you print, be sure to select File/Print and then select the C100-HPLJ4200-ITLAB printer. Your print job will print out in the IT Lab where it will be taken out of the printer and set aside until you can come down to pick it up.

To print color, add the printer ITLAB-HPLJC3800.HYLTON.HS.PWCS and be sure to select that printer when you go to print your job. Again, it will be taken out of the printer and set aside until you can come down to pick it up.

If you are printing something sensitive (like a test), call ext 4273 to give us a “heads up” that it is coming so that we can secure it for you.

If you know of another networked printer that is closer to your room, you can add that one instead of the one(s) in the IT Lab. However, please remember that the ink for printers in the main office, 4th street office, and Guidance are not covered by the Instructional Technology budget. For that reason, you should probably NOT add printers that are located in any of those areas.

Recently, I’ve received a lot of calls from folks telling me that they are missing icons from their Novell desktop or that ClassXP won’t launch. When this happens, it usually means that your computer has dropped its network connections. Specifically, there are two ways to “see” if you have a dropped network connection:

• After logging in to Novell, you only see 3 or 4 (ClassXP, GroupWise, ePats, and/or Presentation) icons in your Novell desktop where you usually have dozens.
• When you “double-click” an icon in your Novell desktop, you receive a “system cannot find the path specified” error message.

If this happens to you, you need to re-establish your network connections. To do that,

1. Go to Start/All Programs/Novell(Common)/Novell Login. The Novell login window displays.
2. Login to Novell.
3. In your Novell desktop, go to View/Refresh. If you have successfully re-established your connections, all the icons will appear in the Novell desktop.

Or, just re-boot the computer. It might take a little longer, but it will usually do the trick for you, too.

This year we have been installing ceiling-mounted digital projectors in a lot of your classrooms. Whenever new hardware is added, we inevitably have new hardware problems. If you are having trouble with your projector, here are a few of things to try:

• As always, the first thing you should do if you are experiencing difficulties, is reboot your computer.
• Make sure your VGA cables are connected securely.
• Unplug/replug the projector from the ceiling outlet.

If none of the above corrects the problem, submit a Help Request and one of our friendly Tech Support folks will be by ASAP to help you out.

I’ve had a lot of calls recently asking how to make your computer displays “larger for old eyes”. To change the desktop settings:

Right-click anywhere on the desktop and choose Properties.

Click the Settings tab.

Under Screen Resolution, move the slide rule to the left. The smaller the numbers, the larger the print and icons will be.

Click Apply.

Wondering where you might find other teachers on Twitter? Here is the beginnings of a nice Wiki that lists folks who teach the same subjects as you do.

http://twitter4teachers.pbwiki.com/

And a video on Twitter.

I know a lot of you are already introducing our new students to SchoolFusion, and that is AWESOME! Our freshmen will be receiving training on it through their library orientation, but for many of them that is still weeks out. To help you all out, here is a video tutorial that gives a brief, five minute, overview on how to log in and use the system.

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