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!

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!

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