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!

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.

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.

Our weekly technology training starts this Thursday when we will be learning all about SchoolFusion’s AfterClass tools.

To give you a taste of what will be presented, here’s a really nice mini-byte that should make entering your homework assignments at the end of the day much easier than it used to be! (Please note: The AfterClass tools are only available to teachers who have created their AfterClass profile)

1. Log in to Hylton’s website (aka SchoolFusion)
2. Click the AfterClass Tools link
3. Click Add Homework Assignment

Whereas previously you had to navigate to your class webpage(s) to add assignments, the AfterClass tools give you this shortcut and many others!

AfterClass training will be Thursday, September 18, in the IT Lab from 2:15 until 3:15!

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.

schoolfusion-2008

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).

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.

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.

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.

Here is a video explaining how students can log in to our school webpage (aka SchoolFusion). If you find your students need a refresher, this tutorial might help. Our freshmen will be receiving training during the library orientation they have through their English 9 classes.

SchoolFusion Tutorial 2007