RESA staff will be performing server maintenance this Sunday 11/15 from 8AM to 4PM. During this maintenance window there will be no access to Wayne RESA applications including SMART, PolyPlot, eEmployee, RESA Web site and MISTAR. During some portion of the time period you may not be able to sign into e-mail (passwords hosted here at RESA).
MicroSoft Update Blackens Screen
A MicroSoft update last night is causing an issue where computers that have a touchscreen will experience a black screen upon start up. Since Promethean Boards are considered a touchscreen, this is impacting a large number of our computers. We have immediately put a fix in place. The fix requires a restart of the computer.
Cisco Unity Connection Notification
For any phone with a discrete number, whenever a phone message is left, that message is sent to email. That phone message also stays on the phone. In the past, users would check for messages on their phone and then delete them. Or, when the message was deleted in email, the message would also be deleted from the phone. With the change to Google Apps, it was no longer possible for us to delete the message from the phone when the message was deleted in email.
In an attempt to make sure everyone knew what was going on, we were informing users that the messages on their phone would be deleted after 30 days. The message looked something like this:
Your message from WIRELESS CALLER, received on October 6, 2015 4:04 PM will be moved to the Saved Messages folder in 2 day(s).
Messages were moved after 30 days to be deleted. Another email was being sent that stated the message would be deleted in 0 days. This has led to more confusion than clarity. Thus, we will stop the email notifications.
Voice messages will be delivered to your email. Voice messages will remain on the phones for 30 days. After 30 days, they will be deleted automatically. The messages will be in email until the user deletes them. Hopefully, this will work better for all involved.
RESA Maintenance
RESA will be undertaking server Maintenance
Sunday -November 15th from 8:00AM – 4:00PM Infrastructure Maintenance
This will impact accessing MI-STAR.
MI-STAR Access
Yesterday, RESA experienced technical issues with our installation of MI-STAR. This led to MI-STAR being unavailable for a certain period of time on Sunday, October 18th. RESA has resolved the issue and is looking into their procedures to make sure that the same situation doesn’t occur again.
How’d they do that? Mrs. Walsh – iBlog and Google Docs
https://iblog.dearbornschools.org/kwalsh/
In this guided tour we will look at how Mrs. Walsh at Woodworth Middle School designed her brand new classroom website using iBlog. Here is a run-down of what she has done so far.
- Theme: Anarcho Notepad
- Custom Menu
- Static Homepage
- Posts are moved to Announcement Page
- Links to Monthly Google Presentation which contains bellwork, agenda, and learning targets for each day.
What makes Mrs. Walsh’s website stand out is how she has maximized her communication workflow for both students and parents by utilizing both iBlog and Google Docs. The website sports a static homepage and all blog posts appear on a sub-page titled “Announcements”. Currently there are two additional links in the main menu which point to Google Presentations. These presentations are the same docs used during class for bellwork, agendas, and learning targets. There is no double work of posting daily homework. The Google Presentation does that! By using a presentation and linking it to the website, Mrs. Walsh is able to add new slides for each day and keep a monthly archive of everything they covered.
Adding Links To Google Docs
The first thing to do is to allow anyone with the link to view your Google Presentation. This is done through the sharing button inside Google Drive. Copy the shared link and go into your iBlog Dashboard > Appearance > Menus. Here you can create a custom menu. To add a link to your Google Presentation you simply paste the ling into the “Custom Link” area and add it to the menu.
The menu can be arranged however you like and can include links to pages, posts, post categories, and other websites. This give you the ultimate control over how your website navigation works.
In the next step you will be creating two new pages- Home and Announcements. You will most likely need to come back to the menus page to re-arrange and add in the new pages you create next. Be sure to click the checkboxes at the bottom of the page for Primary Menu and Automatically Add New Pages.
You can take a look at what here powerpoint looks like as a download in PDF here:
Language Arts Agendas October 5th – October 30th
Using a Static Homepage
Typically, websites on iBlog have all the posts appear on the homepage. You can move the posts off of the homepage and utilize a normal page as your homepage. To do this you must first go to Dashboard > Pages > Add New. Create a page and title it “Home”. Publish it. Create another page and title it “Announcements” and publish it. Now you can head over to the reading settings and let iBlog know you want to move your posts to the announcement page. Go to Dashboard > Settings > Reading and make the changes seen here.
If you have a cool website and want to share please send an email to kennibc@dearbornschools.org
How’d They Do That? ELL Department Website
In this guided tour we will look at how the wonderful staff in the ELL department designed their brand new department website using iBlog. Here is a run-down of what they have done so far.
What makes this site stand out is the clean design, custom menu, use of Google Drive, and static homepage. Read the rest of the tour to learn how you can implement some of these concepts in your classroom website.
- Theme: ePublishing
- Widgets: Subscribe by Email, Links
- Custom Homepage
- Custom Menu
- Documents Page which links to docs in Google Drive
- Contact Us Page
- Websites and Resources
Homepage
Did you know that your iBlog website doesn’t have to show the posts on the homepage? Yep! You can have a nice clean homepage and have all your blog posts appear on a different page within your blog. That is exactly what the folks in the ELL department decided to do. To make this happen on your website do the following.
- Create two pages: Home and News
- Go to Dashboard > Settings > Reading. On the Reading Page change the Front Page Displays “Your Latest Posts” to “A static page”. Then from the drop down pick “home” for frontpage and “news” for posts page.
- Be sure to scroll down the page and Save your changes.
Custom Menu
The custom menu allows you to organize links on the site. You can add links to pages, post categories, and other websites. The nice part of the custom menu is that it is all organized by drag and drop. You get to determine the order and can even create drop downs by simply moving a link to the right. Here is an image of what a custom menu looks like.
Notice the indented menu items? These are the drop downs that are generated when viewing the website. To build your custom menu you select items from the right column and add them to the menu. Once in the menu the item can be moved around simply by dragging it from place to place. Each theme is a little different so you have to tell your theme to use the custom menu. This is especially true when switching themes.
Summary
That’s it. iBlog allows you to have control over the user experience. You can customize your site as you want. Each department and teacher has the ability to create a fantastic experience for the viewer.
Document and Calendar Sharing
Every once in a while, life provides opportunities to test our patience, our learning and our trouble shooting skills. We’ve discovered another of these opportunities.
Essentially, we had a database file go asunder. This file syncs with our Google Groups. We were able to locate the database and recreate it. The file sync was rerun. However, the groups ended up being recreated.
The end result of this is that the groups are now “new”. They have the same names. They have the same individuals in them. However, they now have new identifier numbers. These new identifier numbers are crucial.
Calendar Items and Documents that are shared will most likely need to be shared again.
The exceptions are calendars and documents that are public. These will remain public. We have put some additional procedures in place so that we can maintain the same identifiers should this ever happen again.
Until our next learning opportunity…
iOS Calendar Issue
Please note that if you have updated to iOS 9, there is a calendar issue with Google Calendar. The issue involves items created on an iOS device. The new events will NOT sync to the Google Calendar. The fix is relatively simple. Follow the directions below.
On your iOS device, go to Settings:
1. Settings > Mail, Contact, Calendars > Scroll down to CALENDARS section
2. Under “Sync” change it to All Events
We are investigating if you can change the setting back to Sync “1 month” or not.
iLearn Experience
One of our coaches is working with a group of Chemistry teachers. The coach was able to create a quick 4 question quiz in iLearn. The students then took the quiz on their phones. The teachers used the results of the quiz to divide the students into 3 groups. One group is working with the content teacher, one group is working with the co-teacher, and one group is working independently.
It is terrific to see the technology supporting excellent instruction.