I know all of you are just as despondent as I am to know that the end of the year is rapidly approaching and that we are faced with seemingly endless summer weeks without our daily dose of classroom wondrousness.

With that in mind, it’s highly advisable to back up your data on a regular basis. At this point in the year, you probably have gigabytes of worksheets, notes, tests, etc., that you have worked long and hard on. If you haven’t been doing it on a regular basis already, now is the time to back everything up to a thumb drive! There are many different ways you can backup your data, but here’s one way for you:

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.

And that’s it!

(Many thanks to Charles D. who contributed this post)

Occasionally, you might try to print a document only to have the printer sit idle, taunting you with it’s quiet defiance.

The year is almost over (yippee!) and computer resources like ink and paper are sometimes harder to find. So, before trying to print again, and again, and, for those of you who are especially determined, even a third time, please check the print monitor to determine the printer status.

After hitting print the first time, the printer icon will display in your task tray in the lower right side of your window. It looks like a tiny, little printer. You probably need clear the queue of all earler print jobs.

To clear the queue:

1. Double-click the print monitor icon in the task tray. A list of items in the queue will display
2. Highlight the top job in the queue
3. Select Document Menu/Pause
4. Highlight the second job listed in the queue
5. Select Document Menu/Cancel
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 until only the first (paused) job is left in the queue
7. Highlight the last last (paused) job and select Document Menu/Cancel

If you are still experiencing printing problems:

1. Unplug your computer for at least 60 seconds
2. Plug it back in
3. Restart your computer

If you still cannot print, please submit a Help Request and our TSSPEC will be there to help ASAP!

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 and you may not know where to find our SOL online resources. At the start of the school year, I moved them all to our web portal. You can find them under the category “SOL Preparation”.

If anyone is aware of any resources that are not included in the portal, please post a comment with the link so that they can be shared with your peers. Then, I will add them to the portal ASAP.

I have heard some murmurs regarding the cryptic passwords that our new Resource Scheduler is generating. There is very little doubt that we all have WAY too many passwords to remember. So, to make your incredibly hectic lives just little bit easier, here are the directions for changing your Scheduler password.

1. After logging in, click My Profile in the top right corner of the window. The Edit Profile window displays.
2. In the Password field, enter your new password.
3. In the Confirm Password field, type the new password, again.
4. Click Save Changes.

There is no confirmation message, but the next time you log in, the new password should work.

The Friday before spring break I received an urgent call from my Day Care provider. I am happy to report my son was just fine. The problem was with her computer. You see, she knows I work a lot with these crazy computers and she was having a problem with a document she had just emailed to all her parents. The problem was that they couldn’t open it.

She was experiencing the same problem that a lot of our students and teachers first started experiencing last year when VISTA and MS Office 2007 rolled out. Microsoft, in it’s infinite wisdom, changed the extension to all it’s Office documents and added a pesky little “x” at the end. Now, instead of a Word document saving as a “.doc” document, it saves as a “.docx” document and earlier versions of Office cannot open the document. The situation made for some very stressful moments when kids were trying to print off research papers…..

We’ve solved the problem here in the building. As long as you’ve clicked the pretty little butterfly in the Novell Desktop to run the compatibility patch, these documents should open up just fine now. However, you might still have some kids who are struggling with it, or you might still be having trouble with it, yourself. I found this site that walks you through several solutions to help you out in time of need.

http://www.walterglenn.com/2007/01/13/save-as-doc-instead-of-docx-in-word-2007/

SchoolFusion’s AfterClass suite of tools allows you to easily communicate with your students — even those without an email address in the system!

In order for students to easily send a message to you, you must first complete your AfterClass profile. Once that is done, students just go to your profile and submit a message through the message center. Copies of the message are then sent to your GroupWise mailbox and to your SchoolFusion Message Center.

When you respond to the student’s message, copies are sent to their message center and email (if they have one in the system).

As we go through the school and connect the classroom PCs to the TVs, there is a question that keeps coming up. It seems that for some TVs the TV has to be turned on first, before the computer, for the PC to TV connection to work.

So, the solution is this — if you are trying to display your computer on your TV and it is not working, reboot your computer with the TV on. That should restore the connection.

Another issue is that some of the older TVs will only work if the desktop resolution is set to be 640×420, which is very large–the icons on the desktop will be huge. You can either keep it at that setting, or you can choose to switch to the larger setting only when you want to use the PC to TV connection. To switch back and forth, I recommend using the video card interface. Here are the steps:

1. Right-click anywhere on your desktop and select Properties
2. Go to the Settings tab
3. Click Advanced button
4. Click Catalyst Control Center tab
5. Click Catalyst Control Center button
6. Click Displays Manager
7. Under the Desktop area drop down - select the desktop resolution you prefer
8. Click Apply

Every year it’s the same — that long stretch between winter break and spring break just seems to drag on, and on, and on. The fact that spring break is coming earlier this year definitely helps, but February, the shortest month of the year, always feels like the longest to me. This is the time of year when I find it hardest to remain motivated and even the most benign irritants will leave me shaking my head in exasperation.

So, rather than bestow some tidbit of technological know-how upon you for today, I am instead re-playing two of my favorite Feel Good Fridays to help remind me (and maybe a few of you who are also feeling the February slump) just how great it is to be an educator.

Enjoy!

Download Video: Posted by tekkieteacher at TeacherTube.com.

Download Video: Posted by tekkieteacher at TeacherTube.com.

The Tech Team is sweeping through the school and installing the video cards in your classrooms. As I come through behind them and configure the software, there is a chance that I might accidentally change your display settings to something other than what you are accustomed to. I TRY to keep everything the same, but there are a lot of video cards and my memory isn’t as great as it once was.

So, if you need to adjust your monitor’s display settings, here’s how to do it:

1. Right-click anywhere on the desktop and select Properties.
2. Click the Settings tab.
3. Move the “slider” for Screen resolution to the desired position (the higher the number, the smaller the icons).
4. Click Apply.

You may not be aware of it, but teachers have the power to change their student’s attendance code in ClassXP for up to three days. For example, if you make a mistake and mark a student absent who is actually in attendance, you can correct your mistake up to three days later.

To make the change, in ClassXP go to Class/Show Class Attendance.

After three days, however, any changes or corrections must be done through the attendance office.

I love the Format Painter function in MS word. All too often when I copy/paste from one MS Word document into another, the formatting blows up. I end up with numbers where I want bullets, bullets where there should be numbers, and indentations all over the page. I’m thinking that as you all finish up your semester exams for submission and approval, you MIGHT be having some of these same problems.

Format Painter can save the day!

Have you ever wondered what that little paint brush was up in your MS Word toolbar? That’s the “painter”. Once you have a few lines of your document formatted the way you would like them, highlight the lines and click the paintbrush button on the toolbar. Then, highlight the area where you want the same type of formatting. The Format Painter will “paint” the formatting into that area, as well. It’s a quick way to fix your document if the formatting goes haywire.

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.

I had a very nice conversation last week with one of our Language Arts teachers, Jennifer C. We were talking about our Learning Management System, SchoolFusion, and she mentioned that she’d been getting some really wonderful responses using the Discussion Board feature. She said that her students’ online writing was generally more thoughtful than what she received from them in class. We talked a little bit about the reasons why and theorized that it may be because our students today are Digital Natives and the online world is very much a part of their “comfort zone.” More so, perhaps, than even the “real world”.

Given this conversation, those of you not currently using the Discussion Board feature might want to give it a try. If you are interested, here’s how to enable and use it:

To enable:

1. Log in to SchoolFusion and go the your class webpage.
2. Click Update Class/Section Configuration.
3. On the right under Class/Section Settings, click the pencil next to Message Board.
4. Adjust your message board settings as desired and click Click here to edit the Message Board Setting.

To use:

1. Return to your class/section webpage. You should now see a section called Discussion Board on the right side.
2. In the Discussion Board section, click start a discussion.

While our student use of SchoolFusion is skyrocketing, there are still some students who have not added their email address to their account information, thus hindering you ability to communicate with them using the system. You can check to see if yours students have added their email address using these easy steps:

1. Go to http://cdhylton.com and login.
2. Go to your class or section webpage.
3. Click Update Class(or Section) Configuration.
4. Click Email Entire Class.
5. Complete the email message and click Send Email.
6. The next window will display a list of all the students who did not receive the email because they do not have their email address in the system.

For those of you extra kind teachers who want to provide students with the steps to add their email information, here you go:

1. Go to http://cdhylton.com and login.
2. Click My Personal Settings.
3. Add your email address to the Email Address field.
4. Click Change Information.

A few weeks ago I posted an entry for Website Wednesday about PortaPortal.com, a social bookmarking utility. Here is a nice video explaining further what social bookmarking is and how it might be beneficial for you, your fellow teachers, and your students. This video showcases another great bookmarking tool, del.icio.us.

Download Video: Posted by leelefever at TeacherTube.com.

Did you know you can create a backup copy of all the information on your class webpage? SchoolFusion makes it easy! Then, you can keep the date as a backup or even import it to any of your other pages.

1. On you class webpage, click Update Class Configuration.
2. On the bottom left, click Export.
3. Select the content you wish to save and click Export to Zip File.
4. Click Click here to download the zip file.
5. Click Save and choose a location to save the file.

Last week I was speaking with one of our English teachers, JJ, about an extra credit assignment he’d given his seniors for their study of the Iliad. JJ asked them to create a “myspace-like” page for one of the characters, writing an appropriate profile and communicating with other characters from Homer’s epic. He did not tell them they had to actually use MySpace to create their page. They could have used another software application or even hand-drawn the page.

What happened? Most students opted for the cyber-approach and the Iliad is now alive and thriving on MySpace!

Most of us have heard about MySpace and Facebook, but do you know what they are? They are social networking sites that many (if not most) of our students are using to find and communicate with friends. 

Download Video: Posted by laurie.king at TeacherTube.com.

Are these sites sometimes used inappropriately, with students making inflammatory comments and posting questionable photos? Absolutely. Are they home to predators hoping to befriend minors for unspeakable purposes? Yes.

When used appropriately, though, these sites are not evil. Humans, and most especially the teenagers we teach, are social beings. Social networking is just another way to socialize. We can embrace this technology and strive to use it to make learning relevant for our students, in the process teaching them how to responsibly and safely utilize this resource. Or, we can ignore it.

But one thing is certain — it’s not going away.

Edulink–love it or hate it, our parents and students are using it to check academic progress online. Ten thousand of our almost 30,000 hits last month came from students and I think that is awesome! As young adults, we want our students to be responsible for their own learning rather than depending on us or their parents to “make” them learn.

With the end of the 1st Marking Period upon us, it will soon be time to switch our gradebooks to the 2nd Marking Period (I recommend making this switch a few days after the report cards go home). In order for the grades to show on Edulink, the 2nd 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.

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last few years, most of us have heard of Wikipedia. Feelings about Wikipedia among educators run the full spectrum, but that’s a topic for another blog….

Today’s Mini-Byte concerns the “wiki” in Wikipedia. To understand what a wiki is, check out this video, Wikis in Plain English from Commoncraft.

Download Video: Posted by leelefever at TeacherTube.com.

Is this a tool you and/or your students might find useful? Probably! If you’re interested, check out pbwikis. There are other wiki sites out there, but I like that pbwiki markets itself as safe and secure–allowing users to easily set their wikis to be private rather than public.

Do you want to save yourself the time of collecting all those papers during class time? How does the idea of saving trees sound to you? Would you like to be able to provide students feedback on their work without printing a THING?!?!

If these ideas sound attractive to you, you might want to try using SchoolFusion’s Digital Dropbox feature. When you create an assignment, simply check the box that says “Allow students to submit homework online”.  Back on your class webpage, beneath the assignment, a “submit your file link” will appear, allowing students to submit homework electronically.

To view the submitted assignments, just click “View the <#> file in the <Assignment Name> dropbox”. Additionally, everytime an assignment is “dropped off” electronically, you will receive an email notification.