Tech eNews 11-28-2012

Topics for this Tech eNews 11-28-2012

1. Register for Tech PD Classes

2. Labeling Personal Property as Yours

3. K-5 Progress Report Window Open

4. Prep for Mid-year Surplus

5. Turning on Video Mirroring

6. Internet Research Strategies Class is Thursday!

7. Turn on icon labels in Google Mail

1. Register for Tech PD Classes

Teachers and other staff are welcome to register for this year’s Technology Professional Development Classes.  A full list of classes is on the Technology website, and you can sign up using an easy online form.  Click here to sign up!  (Requires that you have a WashougalSD.org e-mail)

Classes this year include options for a shorter series of courses where you can still get clock hours (10 Websites in 2 90 minute sessions, Google Sites/Docs/E-mail/WESPaC Gradebook), new topics (Prezi, Digital Cameras & Photo Management), and some familiar favorites (iMovie, Excel, and the Document Camera class).  A full list of the course descriptions is here.

2. Labeling Personal Property as Yours

During the district wide inventory, a common problem that we run into are personal items not marked as “personal” equipment.  Tech staff have some small white labels you can affix to your equipment to help make sure it doesn’t get accidentally tagged during a future inventory.  If you have equipment you keep in your classroom, particularly items that are similar to equipment already owned by the district, it is helpful if you would label it.

3. K-5 Progress Report Window Open

The fall progress report window for K-5 teachers is open.  Teachers in K-5 can log in at https://www.edusoftdev.com using their first.last and their password to enter grades.  Make sure you choose “Washougal” as the district name.  If you have forgotten your password, contact your building tech support person, and they can help you reset it.

Some important dates for K-5. 

The end of grading trimester is 11-30-2012. 

The cut off date for Teachers to enter grades - 12-10-2012 at noon. 

Printing either by Teachers or Tech people - 12-11-2012

Report cards back to Teachers for proofreading - 12-12-2012

Report cards go home with students - 12-13-2012 (Kindergarten every other day) & 12-14-2012 everyone else

The window for Winter & Spring terms is posted here.

4. Prep for Mid-year Surplus 

If you have old, unwanted equipment in your classroom that you no longer have a use for, you can use the surplus process to get rid of it.  Your building’s inventory designee (Deana Degrande at CCMS, Deborah Mansfield at Cape, Marlene Leifsen at Gause, Kathy Stanton at Hathaway, Debbie Leifsen at Jemtegaard, and Misty Young at WHS) can help you process paperwork to dispose of the item appropriately, and remove it from your classroom’s inventory.  There will be a surplus run in January, near the end of the month, so work with your inventory person now to get items taken care of before break.

You can read more about the inventory and surplus process here, including finding forms to dispose of equipment.

5. Turning on Video Mirroring on a Mac

Sometimes when you turn a projector on or off while it is connected to a computer, the computer’s video mirroring setting will get turned off.  Here are some short steps to turn it back on:

For Mac:

Open System Preferences from the Apple Menu

Click Displays

Click the “Arrangement” tab, then check the box for “Mirror Displays”

6. Change Google Mail icons to Text Labels

Do you find yourself wondering what the icons in Google e-mail do, and are unsure which to choose for common tasks?  Tech Support Staff person Sean Elkinton wrote these steps for turning on Text labels, which can make the e-mail interface easier for some people:

Click the sprocket to go into Google Mail Settings

Find the option for “Button Labels”

Click the Radio button to set it to Text instead of Icons

Scroll to the bottom and click Save.

To view a set of directions with screen shots, click here.

7. Internet Research Strategies Class This Thursday

Join WHS Teacher/Librarian Kim Dillon for a lesson that will model research strategies to use with your students to help them find and recognize high-quality, researched, free, student-friendly websites on the Internet, and how to avoid citing biased, non-factual websites in their assignments. 4-7 PM; WHS Library lab on Thursday November 29, 2012.

Block e-mail as junk messages

One of our staff people had a large volume of unsolicited e-mail, or junk e-mail, coming into her account.  She was disconcerted by the e-mails, which were coming in at a pretty high rate over a couple weeks.

How to teach your google e-mail to treat messages as junk:

Please use the junk e-mail option to "teach" your e-mail that these are junk mail

It looks like a small stop octagon with an exclamation point in it. (see attached picture)

If you teach it that a few of them are junk e-mail, it'll start hiding them from you.

Add a link to a Google Site webpage

Go to the page on  your Google Site where you want the link.

Click the pencil in the upper right to "edit" the page

Type in the text you want the link to look like - this can be something like Math resources for 4th grade or whatever

Highlight the text

Click the small link button (looks like a chain link) in the row of tool bar buttons:



If you are linking to a different site, click Web Address in the left column of the box that comes up, then Paste or type the link into the box that says "link to this URL."

You can check the box to have it open in a new window if you want it to do that.

Make sure you hit OK, then save changes.

Tech eNews 11-7-2012

Topics for this Tech eNews 11-7-2012

1. Upcoming Tech PD classes - Research Strategies 11-29-2012

2. Userbox on the Konica copiers

3. Steps to disable "re-open at login" setting on 10.7 Mac computers

4. Inventory reminder - moving equipment

5. Printing timecards - please ask for help if needed

6. Getting rid of old equipment

7. iPad Pilot in 5th Grade Classrooms update

8. K-5 Report Card Window

9. Flickering Monitors Make you Crazy

10. Using SchoolDude Helps Us Help You

11. Update Notice Never Goes Away

1. Tech Professional Development Classes Starting November 29, 2012

The first Technology Professional Development Class will be Thursday, November 29th, in the WHS Library from 4-7 PM.  Kim Dillon and Les Brown will be presenting the Research Database & Strategies Class.  This 3 hour class (clock hours approved through ESD) will cover both free and paid online research databases that are available to you and your students.  Some are provided through the Fort Vancouver Library system, which makes them available to residents and teachers in Washougal to use with students.  Come explore these high quality sites, and find out about strategies to help you teach your students about how to discern worthwhile sources of information online.  E-mail les@washougalsd.org to register.  The complete list of Winter classes will be posted soon.

2. Userbox on the Konica Copiers

Tech support person Sean Elkinton provides these instructions on how to use the "Userbox" on the Konica Copiers.  

  

The UserBox is a folder on the copier that stores your documents that you want to print.  It can hold

all your print jobs you send there until you are ready to print them.  Once the UserBox is setup on your

computer then it functions the same way as a printer so when you print to the copier it is automatically

copied to your UserBox.

To use it:

1) login with your code

2) push user box button

3) push 2nd item in menu "Use Document"

4) push "Search UserBox"

5) select your UserBox icon and select OK

6) select document and push Print

7) push start button

If you don't know your code, please contact your building's Tech support person, who can help you reset it.

3. Steps to disable "re-open at login" setting on 10.7 Mac computers

Does your Mac re-open about a billion windows each time you log in?  Is it making you wait 10 minutes to be able to do anything productive while it drags out every file you've ever looked at?  Tech support person Linda Henderson provided these instructions to disable the "re-open at login" option on the new Teacher Macs, running 10.7 or higher, which have this annoying (to some) feature turned on by default:

Open the System Preferences

Click "General"

Un-check the box at the bottom of the screen for "Restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps"

Close System Preferences

To view the directions with screen shots, click here. 

4. Inventory reminder - moving equipment

Help us keep the inventory up-to-date!  When you move equipment from room to room, please contact your building's inventory designee to let them know you've moved it.  They may ask you to fill out a transfer form.  You'll need to know the room number of the new location, along with the tag number from the equipment.  Click here for a list of Inventory Designees and a link to the forms.

5. Printing timecards - please ask for help if needed

The Tech Support Staff want you to know you can get help if you need it, when you need to print your timecard.  If you don't regularly log into your user account, you may need help adding the printers to your account.  Please ask them for help, and they'll get you "hooked up" to the copier nearest to you.  If you can, please try to use the same computer each time you print your timecard.  Once the printer is configured on that computer for your account, it will stay "set" from month to month!

6. Surplus that old unwanted/unused equipment

Do you have old, unwanted, or unused equipment in your classroom that you don’t want to keep? Ask your building's inventory person where to have it moved, and let your building administrator know you want to get rid of it. The deadline for identifying items as surplus is January 18, 2013.

7. iPad Pilot in 5th Grade Classrooms update

Three Fifth Grade Teachers and a Special Education Teacher are participating in a pilot of iPads in their classrooms.  Erin Hayes from Hathaway, Erin Maier from Gause, and Chelsea Meats and Stephanie Closson at Cape are using iPads in a "one to one" pilot, helping the district Technology Team evaluate and collect data about how tablet devices can help students!  This project is funded by the WSD Tech Fund, and will produce comparison data around test scores, attendance, behavior, and other metrics which will help the Tech Team decide whether to expand this into more classrooms next year.  Stay tuned for more details as we gather data about how these devices impact learning.

The Pilot was featured in a great story written by Jodi Thomas, and published in the Camas Washougal Post Record.  Click here to read a short excerpt from it, or look in this week's Post Record for the full version.

8. K-5 Report Card Window

The cut off date for entering grades into the K-5 report card system will be December 10th, 2012, at 12:00 Noon.  Please contact your building support person if you are having problem logging in.  The link for the report card site is on the For District Employees Page, in the left sidebar. 

9. Flickering Monitors Make you Crazy

A number of the black cables that connect the new monitors at WHS to the PC computers have failed.  This bad batch of cables has affected about 15 or more staff people.  If your teacher computer at WHS is flickering, jumping around, or going black spontaneously, please put a work order into SchoolDudes, and Kenneth will get you a replacement cable. 

10. Using SchoolDude Helps Us Help You

Speaking of SchoolDudes -- Besides keeping your tech staff happy (and who doesn’t want that?), using SchoolDude to report problems with your technology helps you! Once you’ve put in a request, you’ll get an automatic e-mail response letting you know it’s been entered. The system will update you whenever Kenneth, Sean, Linda or Les makes any changes to the work order. You can log back into the SchoolDude system to view the status of all of your tickets, which can be helpful if we’ve given you steps on how to resolve something. The SchoolDude system helps the district track time spent on problem machines.  Problem machines are identified by the number of tickets assigned to them, and get replaced when we have the opportunity.

To get started, visit the “For District Employees” page on the WSD Site, then click “Technology/Maintenance Requests” in the sidebar. If you need the password, please contact your building's tech support person.  Note that the login uses your old e-mail address (with the k12.wa.us ending) unless you updated it using these directions.

11. Update Notice Never Goes Away

ADOBE FLASH NEEDS AN UPDATE!  Windows has found critical updates for your computer.  Your computer will burst into flames if you don't install this important update from company b!  Many staff are complaining that they're getting almost constant reminders from just about every software application saying that they need updates.  If you are experiencing this, please enter a work order into SchoolDude (directions above) and your Building's friendly tech support person will install the updates, buying you a reprieve from these dire update warnings.

Disable "re-open at login" option

Instructions for turning off the feature

“Restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps”

Open System Preferences and click “General.”

Un-check the box at the bottom of the screen for “Restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps.

Close System Preferences by clicking the red dot in the upper left corner.