Entries Tagged 'PISD' ↓

The 406 lab is open until 5:00 every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and some Wednesday’s til 6:00.  May 16th is the deadline for you to get your hours in and have a nice four day weekend including May 23!

We have access to wonderful web-based tutorials and I can sign you up for an account.  Bring your headphones if you have them and finish up your credits - we would all rather be home having a BBQ than sitting here in a computer class!

I’ll be sending out emails to you to let you know where you stand so come see me and lets get this done!!

How do I get to the internet using my Mac?The Mac comes with it’s own internet browser called Safari. Look for the icon that looks like a compass. Things will look very similar to any other time you have gone to the internet. Whether you have used Internet Explorer or Firefox you will see the webpage, a box that contains the URL or web address, and buttons for maneuvering around. Here is a screenshot that is typical of what you will see:

On the left you see the three little round buttons that let you close/minimize, or maximize. Just below them you will see arrows for going backwards or forwards. A button to refresh the page (looks like a circular arrow) and a plus sign which lets you add the current website to your bookmarks (favorites)

Down on the right bottom corner there is a little triangle with lines across it. You will notice that when you click the maximize button in Safari it doesn’t fill the entire screen. You can drag that triangle to make the window even larger.

If you are like me and even the bi-focals are not quite enough anymore there are a couple of key shortcuts that you will love. Command (apple) key and the plus sign makes the text on a webpage bigger. You can press the key combination several times to get things large enough to read. To go back to the normal size just press command (apple) key and the minus or dash sign. If you don’t like keyboard shortcuts you can do the same thing by going to view on the toolbar and clicking make text bigger or smaller.
There is another way to make things easier to see. First practice scrolling by using two fingers on your trackpad. You can drag two fingers towards you or away from you on the trackpad to scroll. If you do this (or use your mouse scroll wheel) while holding down ctrl you will be able to zoom in to particular areas of the screen. Just move the wheel or scroll with two fingers, away from you.
To go back to normal just scroll towards you.

This zooming technique works on everything - not just Safari.

As in everything on the Mac - you can always click help on the toolbar and find answers to your questions there.

There is a box to the right of the URL where you can type words to search for.

If you decide Safari is not your cup of tea you can install Firefox for the Mac. Next time I will talk about how to install an application so you can do just that!

I will be posting on using the Mac for the next few weeks and if you have a question I will be glad to try to find answers for you.

I didn’t get to attend this presentation - it was one of those time-slots when I needed a few clones to attend several sessions at the same time. Through the magic of technology I can still hear and “see” the presentation! After “attending” online I am very excited about the real event!

If you will go to Mrs. Alsup’s web presence there is a link on the sidebar to 2008 TCEA Presentation which will let you download the entire PowerPoint. You can view the PowerPoint and listen to the presentation at the same time -there is also a Podcast online - just click this link and put on your headphones - the Podcast lasts about 40 minutes. Writing Safari Podcast

There were only five presentations up at Conference Connections from TCEA so kudos to some of our own for being up there!

• Double click in the box where the student’s name appears and using the back arrow, move to the tilde and delete it

• * This makes the student “active” again

• Now you can highlight the student(s) you have just made active and go to report/individual report

• Print out report(s) to give the teacher they have transferred to

• Close gradebook and re-open and the tilde’s should be back making the student “inactive” in your gradebook

• You can give those reports to the new teacher so they will have a copy of the student’s grades - when a student transfers from one teacher to another their information moves with them but not their grades.

Thanks to Mrs. McCuen for the steps to do this!

Next week I am planning on attending TCEA 2008 in Austin. Dale is doing well and I will be a cell phone call away. I am looking forward to learning some new things and meeting some folks that I have till now known only through blogging.

I plan, as I did last year, to blog my notes. If you do not blog and are going to be attending this year from PISD, I would love to have you as a “guest blogger”! Just let me know if you are interested and we can arrange for your notes/reflections on the conference to appear as a guest post by you to share with the rest of the district.

If you are a blogger I have a few tips for you. Take good notes making sure you have the session name, presenter name, and school district if applicable. Check out HitchHikr - a site that will aggregate posts that are tagged for specific conferences. There is no tag yet so you might want to check back - it will be something like TCEA08. If you tag our post with the HitchHikr tag it will make it easier for people who didn’t attend the same sessions to find your notes. As conference attendees start posting and tagging, the posts will show up on the HitchHikr site and there will be an RSS link so you can subscribe if you like and read other posts. This is a great way for all of us to get the most out of the conference and share the information with folks in the district who couldn’t attend.

There is a great post at Lunch Over IP on tips for conference blogging with links to other articles if you are interested in reading more about this. They have even created a PDF booklet you can download. There are two versions and I have included one here.

conferenceblogging_zuckerman-giussani_a4_color_booklet.pdf

Stop by Lunch Over IP blog and leave a thank you comment if you find this useful. I’m excited about the conference and can’t wait to tell you all about it!

Also posted at Thoughts Have Wings

If you have plugged in your flash drive and opened My Computer and found that it is not in the list of drives then chances are I can help!

Right click on My Computer - Click manage

Double click Disk Management

Right click the flash drive and click Change Drive letter and paths

Make sure the drive letter you assign it is not one that is mapped to something like your gradebook drive or your documents on the server.

Done!

I am in the 406 lab at Paris High School. We are having a class in blogging and wikis as I write this. This is a practice post to show the class the process.