:Tech Liaisons’ Blog

I was browsing around some of the emerging blogs on our new blog server and found a description of a simple but powerful vocabulary lesson using word on the New School Tech blog.  It reminded me of an ELD lesson that I used to do back in the day where I had students create words out of images.  After finding the image and then imbedding it in the word using wordart I found that they learned the word easily.  It also allowed us to print them all out and create a very colorful word wall.  The kids loved it.  So I send Dawn an e-mail and showed her an example.  I knew once she saw it I had her hooked.  I planned to write up a little how to and send it to her, but then I realized that there may be other liaisons out there that would like to try this one with their studnets.  So I am posting it here.  You can use this lesson for a lot more than ELD.  It is a great way to combine images and words for various reasons.  I also used to do this with student faces in their names.  I actually did this with my wife’s class a few weeks ago.  It is a great beginning of the year activity, and always helped me to remeber student names.  Anyway here it is.  This was done in Office 2003 because I figured that is the version that most of you are using.  If you use a Mac or if you have another version of office, it is pretty much the same process. If you use it with your studnets, send me a few examples of their work. Here is the How-to doc in PDF format. -D

First download the picture to your computer that you want to embed in your WordArt

Open a new Word Document and change the layout to be landscape in “page setup” from the file menu.

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I sent this out to the Liaison distribution list a few days back, but I thought that I would post it here as well.

We are working on getting the default settings the way that they should be for all blogs, but until we do, there are a few really important settings that need to be changed before anyone can submit a comment or question on a blog.  We went over some of this at the May meeting when we first started working on the tech blogs, but many people were no at that meeting, so I wanted to make sure that you all got this info.  Also many of you are now working on your own classroom blog page that will need these settings.  So here is the deal. 

1.       Login to your blog

2.       Click on the Options tab

3.       Click on the Discussion tab that appears in the second row after you click on options.

4.       There are a few different options on this page.  The critical ones that will ensure that students and parents can post comments, but that the comments must first be approved by you are shown in this picture.  If both boxes are checked in the e-mail me whenever section, you will receive two e-mails whenever someone posts a comment.  So only check one.  In the Before comment appears section, you will want the first one checked and the other two unchecked, this way anyone can submit a comment or question, but they must be approved by you before it goes on the web.

Let me know if you need any help with this. Thanks. -Dan

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Hey there Liaisons,

Here is my first post on my Tech Liaison Blog.  The meeting last Thursday was a wild ride, as usual. There is never enough time to cover things in the detail that I imagine when creating the agenda.  So I am hoping to use this blog to make things a bit clearer and to expand a bit on the information from tech liaison meetings.  I am always willing to meet with any of you that are feeling overwhelmed or that just want a bit more time to go over anything related to liaisons.  I am meeting with a few new liaisons on 9-20-07 after school to go over some of the information covered in the meeting.  Let me know if you want in on this session.

We received our Proscope right before the liaison meeting, so I did not have a chance to play with it at all. I can’t wait to plug it in and explore the microcosmic universe.  I was describing it to my kids yesterday, and they were begging me to bring it home so that they can look at their tongues magnified on the big screen.  I told them that I would bring them into the lab to check it out.  This site has Mark Hoffman’s contact info for all of you that were interested in purchasing or borrowing a Proscope.  http://schooltr.com/Contact_STR/index.htmlIt seemed as though many of you were excited about using Recipes4Success with staff and students.  I used Recipes quite a bit last year when making handouts for many of the after school classes last year.  I found that, especially for the tech phobic teachers, they prefer a printed step by step document that they could hold onto while confronting their fear of tech, as opposed to the Atomic Learning style video tutorials.  So the accounts that we purchased for you all will last one year from the day that you activated it.  You can use the student login with as many people as you like (staff and students) but only 30 can login at one time.  A few teachers mentioned that they have 32 or so students and would love to get that increased a bit.  If you are one of those teachers let me know and I’ll do some begging on your behalf.  Also if you are interested in a demo of some of the other tech4learning software let me know and I can arrange it. If enough people are interested, I can set something up in our lab and invite you.  They have some great project based tools for creating web-based multimedia projects with students.  The best part of their software is how easy it is to learn and use.  I have been thinking about getting a hold of their Clay Animation Kit for my daughter who happens to be a high tech kid that loves to work with clay.  I bet she could astound with Claymation if I got her started.  This link will take you to a site with Joseph Machado’s contact info in case you want to contact him directly. http://www.tech4learning.com/aboutus/contact.html

I worked hard on Friday making sure that all of the Analyst accounts in HelpBox were set up correctly with the correct privileges to allow everyone to see the tickets for their sites.  You all now have the ability to create the report showing all open tickets at your site now.  The only thing that I was not sure of was whether we managed to reset all of the passwords for those that had trouble loggin in. So if you forgot your password, or never had one to begin with, send me an e-mail and I will reset your password.  This should make it easier for you to work with your technicians and your staff to identify the priorities and to make sure that the your tech’s limited time is spent working on the most important issues at your school.  Let me know if you need more help with this process.  Maybe a How-to doc will make things easier.

I knew that the password process at the liaison meeting was going to be chaotic, it always is, especially for the new liaisons who are still trying to figure out what login works where and why.  If you are still having problems accessing your blog site, ed1stop, or any of the resources that we covered, let me know.  I will get you the access that you need.  I am hoping that giving you access to the ed1stop administration for your school will make it easier for you to support and train you staff to use the ed1stop.  I have received many requests from liaisons who have shared this resource with their staffs to get them access to creating accounts, and reset passwords for Ed1stop.  Once teachers see how easy it is to use, and begin to access some of these web based resources (especially United Streaming) they are hooked. It is an easy and very powerful place to start in terms of training your staff to make use of the technology available at your school.  If you would like to get a pro to come out and work with you on  training your staff to use Ed1stop, contact:

County Curriculum Advisor
Kelly Wade
477-5456

Alright that is it for now. I have a little girl pulling on me and telling me it’s time to take the pooch to the dog park.  More to come.

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