All Bark, No Byte

Biting off more than you can chew can be a good thing.

All Bark, No Byte

Lotus Notes Features

August 17th, 2009 · No Comments · How-To

Managing email can be an extremely time consuming task. But, there are several features in Lotus Notes that can help keep you organized and allow you to skim through your email more easily.

First, is the ability to create “groups” that you can use to send specific emails to, instead of sending it to the whole campus.

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Our latest Lotus Notes upgrade has a “Message Marking” feature that will color code your Inbox so you can easily see if a VIP has emailed you. It also lets you see whether or not an email was sent with you as the only recipient, with you as part of a small group, or with you as part of a mass email. Lotus Notes also has a follow-up flag that will remind you to respond to a particular email within a set amount of time. The latest update has a quick flag feature that allows you to set default settings and set up a flag in one click.

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How do you manage your email? Do you have any tricks or tips to share with us as a comment?

Here are some previous posts that look at different Lotus Notes features as well.

Adding a text only signature to Lotus Notes

Adding an HTML signature to Lotus Notes

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Webcams in the Classroom

April 22nd, 2009 · 3 Comments · How-To

At the beginning of the year, I purchased 3 webcams to use as a pilot program in a few classes. We purchased Logitech 9000 webcams and teachers are using them as document cameras as well. The major benefit with the webcams is price… a document camera costs over $700 and the webcams cost about $70. (Ten for the price of one is ALWAYS a good deal!)

After talking with the administration, we decided to buy 25 more webcams for teachers to use in their classrooms. As I’ve started distributing, teachers are coming up with marvelous ideas on ways to use them with their students. Here are some of the basics, please share other ideas in the comments section.

    As a document camera

  • manipulatives
  • class demonstrations
  • to show student work
  • teacher led notes and examples
    As a video camera you can record

  • instructions when you’re going to have a sub
  • project presentations
  • tutorials for FAQs
  • yourself using an avatar to grab the attention of the class

Here’s a very cool video I found while researching webcams… try it in your classroom!

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TeacherWeb- New Themes Available

March 26th, 2009 · 2 Comments · How-To

My teachers are getting excited with all the talk about TeacherWeb enhancements coming soon. Some of you have already started to play around with the new themes, and some of you have asked for some guidance in getting started.

So, here’s a short video that’ll walk you through how to access the new themes.

 

For those of you that would rather have a list of steps, here you go!

  1. Go to your TeacherWeb site. Click on the bottom divider to go to Update Index.
  2. Scroll down and click on the button that says, Color Themes/Styles/Fonts.
  3. Click on the button that says, New Designs.
  4. Input your password.
  5. Choose a Design Style and Color Theme.
  6. Click Update Look and Feel
  7. Check out your new style.

IMPORTANT!

To update pages with a new theme, instead of clicking on the top and bottom borders, you’ll want to click on either the Last Modified Date, or the © 2009 TeacherWeb, Inc.

 

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Giving an Incomplete Grade in GradeSpeed

March 4th, 2009 · 1 Comment · How-To

I just added a video to the RRISD Teacher Guides Wiki, and thought I should let you know about it here too.
At middle school we’re submitting grades for this six weeks’ grading period and a couple of teachers have asked how to give a student an “incomplete” for their grade. Here’s a handout and video that explains how.

enter an incomplete grade for a cycle.pdf

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Teacher Guides available on Wikispaces!

February 26th, 2009 · 2 Comments · How-To

I’ve been meaning to blog about this excellent RRISD resource for quite some time. A group of ITSs have gotten together to create how-to videos for your use. They are accessible from any internet connection and cover a wide variety of topics. Check them out!

How do you access them? Good question!

There are 2 easy ways…
1)From the Cedar Valley homepage.

2) Type the website into your web browser.
https://rrisd-teacherguides.wikispaces.com/

If you’re in RRISD, and there’s not a link from your schools’ homepage- contact your webmaster and ask them to add it.
What other video tutorials would be helpful to you?

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For the Blog-o-maniacs

February 9th, 2009 · 6 Comments · How-To

This post is especially for one (or more) of my “Blog-o-maniacs”- they’re my group of bloggers for the online basic blogging course that we’re offering for eCampus credit. Keep an eye on your e-mail for future offerings…

The question I’ve seen in several places is, “How do I add a picture to my blog?”
There are a couple of steps. First, I’m going to assume you want to add a picture to a specific post. So the first thing you want to do is start writing a post from your Dashboard.


Find the “Add media:” toolbar. To add an image, you’ll use the first icon:

  • Click on “Choose files to upload,” or if that doesn’t work, click on the browser uploader. (I use both depending on which works faster at the time.)

  • Browse to the file you want to use.
  • Hit upload (sometimes this may take a while, it depends on how large the file is you’re uploading)
  • Then you choose the allignment and size for the image and click on “Insert into post.” (More often than not, it’ll place the code at the beginning of your post. Just move all of the code to the location you want your picture to show up.)

  • Save your post, preview it, and publish it when it’s ready!

Some of you are visual learners and would rather see a video. Check it out, it’s about 2 minutes.

Anyone can blog, are you interested?
Already blogging? Need help with something in particular? Just let me know! I’ll help if I’m able.

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TCEA-

February 3rd, 2009 · 2 Comments · informative

Today I attended a session by Tammy Worcester called Math + Technology = Learning. There were two Excel related tips that I wanted to share:

The first is creating a pictograph from a basic bar graph. The video has no sound, but I hope it’s self explanatory enough…

 

The second actually takes place in PowerPoint. You can change the animation effects for a graph so that each bar of data or category of data enters separately.

Can you see yourself using either of these for a presentation for your class? or teaching your classes to create a pictograph?

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Background Music

November 11th, 2008 · 5 Comments · informative

Can the use of background music improve the behavior and academic performance of middle school students?

For the past several decades, researchers have hypothesized about the effectiveness of using background music in classes. Studies range from Mozart to Pop/Rock music, spelling to math, and elementary to undergrads. Of course, the results vary, but I believe that you, as a teacher, can make the decision of whether background music has a positive affect on your class.

This blog is to share a online resource that can bring background music to your classroom. There are a multitude of online music stations available to chooose from, but I recently discovered Pandora, and I love it!

It’s so easy to use. Type in a song, artist, or composer and Pandora will play it, or something that is musically similar. The Music Genome Project works to find music that has attributes or “genes” that you like. If you register, you have the ability to create stations for your different moods, and give a thumbs up or thumbs down when it plays a song you particularly like or dislike.
Check it out!

Do you use Pandora already? Have you discovered features that I didn’t mention?

Are you more interested in the research behind background music in classrooms? Check out the links below:

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Election Day 2008

November 4th, 2008 · No Comments · informative

Election Day 2008

What would you fight for?

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Using tabs in IE7 (Internet Explorer 7)

October 30th, 2008 · No Comments · How-To, informative

This is a very short blog with just a couple of tips for using Internet Explorer 7 more productively.

Tabs- Instead of opening a new page and having a crowded taskbar at the bottom of your desktop, you can open a new tab instead. Also, if there’s a link on a webpage that you want to look at but don’t want to lose the page you’re on, you can right click on the link and choose to either open it in a new window, or open it in a new tab.

Quicktabs(Highlighted in red on the picture)- Now that you have a bunch of tabs open, how do you quickly find the page you’re looking for? It’s easy with quicktabs. Just click on the quicktabs icon and all of your pages are displayed as thumbnails so you can “quickly” find the one you want.

Favorites (Highlighted in yellow)- You can add to the favorites or navigate to a page that you’ve already saved as a favorite.

Homepage(Highlighted in orange)- Tabs can be grouped and saved into logical categories, so you can open multiple tabs with a single click. A Tab Group can easily be set as the Home Page Group so the entire Tab Group opens every time Internet Explorer is launched.

And, for those of you supporting my Jing habit… Here’s the video that walks you through the above tips.

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