A blog for instructing Harrington teachers about blogging and educational website use
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This is a VoiceThread sample displaying a piece of work by a 6th grade student. To hear the VoiceThread , click on the image. More info will be available soon on creating your own VoiceThread and uploading digital images to your computer for use in a VoiceThread or other applications.
Promethean and Mimio Help »« Update from the DPS Technology Fair
Recently I had the privilege to attend the DPS Technology Fair as a representative of the Harrington Technology Committee. There were many vendors brought in to show off their individual product lines and I got to try out many of the products in a very “hands-on” experience. As far as I know, DPS is going to decide on which vendors to officially endorse according to the “votes” given to vendors by attendees of this Fair. At the beginning, I was given a survey to fill out stating my “plan” for Harrington technology purchases. Categories on this plan were Interactive Whiteboards, “Clickers”(Electronic Voting Systems), Projectors, and Document Cameras. The vendors brought in were among these categories also, but there were additional vendors also promoting laptops (Apple and Dell), NComputing(PC only), and Caliphone(audio/visual aids).
At the bottom of the survey, we were asked to rate each of the 4 Document Camera vendors in order of our preference. I was most impressed with Lumens and gave them first preference, even though they were the highest priced docu-cam. If you’d like to know more about my choices, please come ask me. I picked up many brochures and wrote on them, and will be sharing this info with the technology committee when we meet again.
Though I voted, I’m not sure what the protocol will be next for selecting these vendors. I was told to keep an eye on the DPS Technology Purchasing website to get the most updated vendor and pricing information. Please don’t hesitate to ask about any information I received at the tech fair. I would be happy to talk to you about my thoughts on any of the equipment I “played” with or saw at the fair.
~S
DPS ET services has offered a new link to training videos for users of Manila. I have provided the link here and will also list it in the blogroll for you to check out. If you’re looking for more detalied info on how to add photos, create stories or new items, or maintain the Harrington website, please check out these great tutorials! ~S
Update from the DPS Technology Fair »« 403 Error and Manila problems
Today I encountered an error when trying to Create a New Story using Manila (The Harrington Website interface). I was trying to create a page for the RIF photos Leah had uploaded and when I clicked on “Post New Story” I kept getting a page that said “403 Error: Forbidden”. Everything I’ve read on this topic says that this error is caused when the permissions are changed on the server end causing users to lose access priveleges to certain paes and featres that they previously had access to. This happens when software is updated or changed, as I’m assuming DoTS did with Manila. Though I have a hotline in to try to fix the problem or get more information, I am asking all website team members to “test the system” by logging in and trying to create a new story with their accounts. I know we are all on vacation, but this has to be up and running before Jan 5th so I can run my salon! Ok deep breaths……
Web Team, Let me know if you encounter the same errors. ~S
Manila Training Videos »« Navigating an Posting News to the Harrington Website using Manila
As many of you now know, Harrington has a website and the first page is basically a “blog” of news items pertaining to Harrington. What you may not know is the YOU (yes You!) can write a news item and release it to be posted on the front page at any time. Below are quick and easy instructions for posting a news item on the homepage. To access the news on the site, all you have to do is type in the address http://harrington.dpsk12.org . The “news” page is automatically set to post the latest 5 news items. These are brief snippets of the actual news story. To access each News item and read it in it’s entirety, simply click on the title of the news item(link) which will take you to the full story.
To create a new “News Item”, you must be registered as a user on the site. To register and receive a username and password, please contact the webmaster. Only Harrington staff and approved parents of Harrington students are allowed to create and post news items to the Harrington website. Once you have a username and password, follow the steps below to create a news item:
1.) Find and Click on the “Members Login” link in the Navigation Menu on the Left column. Log in using your username and password that was given to you when you registered for the site.
2.) Once you log in, a new menu will appear horizontally at the very top of the page. Click on the link “News”.
3.) You will now see a page with a list of pending news items created by other users. You can only edit or delete items that you have created and that are still marked “Pending”. You may not edit or delete news items that are marked “Released”. To create a News Item click the link “Create a News Item” below the list.
4.) You will now see a page that has a WYSIWYG editor. Fill in the required information for your news item. Make sure you have a Title and have selected the appropriate “department” for which the news item pertains. If you do not see the department listed, choose “general” or contact the webmaster to add your department to the list.
5.) When you are finished composing your news item, Click on the button “Create News Item” at the bottom of the page.
6.) The system will give you one last chance to view your news item at the top of the page before releasing it to the managing editor for posting. If everything looks ok, click the button “Release News Item”. If there are changes to be made, scroll down to the editor, edit the news item, and click “Create News Item” again below the editor and repeat the process.
7.) That’s it! You have now successfully created a News Item! Once you have released your news item, an email will be sent to a managing editor for approval, and once approved it should be posted on the website within a week or so.
Please let me know if you are experiencing any problems or have trouble with this process. I will be happy to come assist you!
Happy Posting! ~S
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Navigating an Posting News to the Harrington Website using Manila »« EduBlog Supporter Feature and Wiki
Ok. Day 2 of this exploration of blogging and other stuff and I’ve already brokn the last goal of not staying up too late. Oh well.
So when I logged on today, EduBlog became a little more restrictive, as yesterday I could add bogs and users u to 15 at a time for free and now I must pay to access that feature. They are calling it Edublog Supporter and it costs roughly $40/year. You can read all about the features here. I am considering it just for the mere fact that it offers up to 5G of storage space and promise to more “plugins” as they become available in the future.
I also looked into wiki for teachers tonight and found some interesting places. Wikispaces is a good spot for class wikis and I like the community-capabilities of the wiki. There is also a fee for making the wiki private(only teacher and class can use, not public) but it’s minimal at $5 per month. I am wondering with our new technology donation if it would support teachers subscriptions to the service. Hmmm.
Ok it’s late and I’m going to chew on this a while before I decide how to best go about this training in Jan;)
See ya,
~S
1) Set up an avatar.
2) Work through at least 3 tutorials.
3) Make an “About” page.
4) Set up blogroll and include link to admin site.
5)Try not to stay up too late on school nights doing this!
This is the first post from the tech guru. I will be setting up the blog for use on Jan 5th. In the meanwhile, expect some strange changes occuring frequently as I learn the works…:) thanks for reading! ~S
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