August 10, 2009
FACILITATOR NOTES
Color Key:
Idea to convey – you are welcome to read or summarize and elaborate
Demonstrate
Hands-on
Notes for Facilitator
You may want to turn all computers on and go to the school website you’re going to use so that screen is up when people come in. If people will be using their laptops, you may have to take a minute for them to get their computers to the right place.
Put a copy of the session handout at every station. These copies are “lab copies” only and need to remain in the lab at the end of the session.
Copies of the “follow-up activity” details for Workshop C. SharpSchool should be distributed to each participant at the beginning of the session. These are copies for them to use to make notes during the session and to use when completing the on-line form at the end of the day. The online follow-up / evaluation will not be available until 2:30.
When you get to the point that teachers are logging into SharpSchool, you’ll need to communicate problems to “login issues” via groupwise. Send the message to “login issues” (no quotes). In the subject line, put the school name and “SharpSchool”. In the body of the message, give the user’s first and last name and the login name. When the account is fixed, the default password “password” will be used.
I. Introduction
II. Workshop Overview
SharpSchool is the new web hosting system for Darlington County School District. When the request for proposals for a new system was issued last spring, SharpSchool won the bid and will replace eChalk. The committee of school website managers, technical staff and administrators charged with the review of options submitted is excited about the opportunities available and the ease of use of the new solution.
We recognize that this is a new system to all of us. We’re learning a lot along the way. While we’ve worked through many things that come up when implementing a system like this, we know there will be more to come before things work exactly like we want them to. Please don’t hesitate to let us know when you have questions, concerns or suggestions that will help our web presence be the best that it can be.
At your school, you have a “school website manager”. He or she (or I, if this is your group), will be providing additional training sessions and support throughout the year.
During this session, we will have an overview of the new system and how the navigation works. Today, we’ll verify your login to SharpSchool and CustomerNet, review basic calendar functionality, review “page types” and the role(s) they play as you post content on the web, create your own page and discuss the expectations for your use of the web.
Before we actually begin, I’d like to point out the items that we’ll cover in the follow-up evaluation for this session at the end of the day.
When you came in, you received a copy of the follow-up / evaluation items for this workshop. I encourage you to make notations to provide feedback at the end of the day.
III. Review Front Page Components
Let me point out a few items about the front page. After I show you a few things, I’d like to give you a few minutes to explore one of our school sites on your own.
Select one of our school’s websites (the one that you are most comfortable talking about) and point out these features:
“The Header” – contains school name, school logo or picture, the drop-down to switch to a different school, a search option that allows searches of the entire site, the district logo which serves as a link to the district website and the login link you will use to login to edit content.
“The “splash” / banner section” – this section should contain items such as your school motto, pictures or flash movies of your students
“The Navigation Bar” – the navigation bar has been standardized for all schools and the district
“The Bottom Section” – is divided into three “columns” – you’ll notice a space for “quicklinks” which are links to very commonly used places on your website and are there to keep users from having to navigate through the menus to find them – you’ll see a section for “News & Events”, one for “general information” and a place for the school calendar. Note that events coming up soon are listed below the calendar in the “upcoming events” section”
Now, let’s look at the calendar in a little more detail.
IV. More about the calendar
The calendar on the front page is called the “mini calendar”.
< and > symbols allow you to scroll forward and backward by month
Dates in bold indicate that there is an event scheduled on that day. Users can click on the date to see the details.
The “Go to Main Calendar” link at the bottom will open the full calendar.
Now, let’s walk through a few calendar features together and then I’ll give you a few minutes to explore on your own.
Click on the “Go to Main Calendar” link
You should now be looking at the Main Calendar.
Click on the “Go to Main Calendar” link
You should now be looking at the Main Calendar.
CALENDAR NAVIGATION
Let’s start with the different “Views” available:
Views:
Are changed using the group of icons or with the dropdown box
View options are:
Monthly Grid View (default)
Day List
Weekly Grid
Yearly
Event List
Individual Items on the calendar are called “Events”.
Spend a minute to try the different views and click on an event or two to see the additional information available.
(allow 2-3 minutes for this activity)
The calendar function available in SharpSchool gives us a lot of opportunities to share information. The last items about calendars that we want to review today are the concepts of “merge” and “publish”.
Merge
Calendars within SharpSchool can be “merged” thus eliminating the need to enter the events more than one time. When a calendar is “merged” with another one, events changed on the original calendar will be subsequently changed on the secondary calendar. For example, Darlington County School District has the “District Calendar” that is approved by the Board of Education every year. You’ve all seen this one. It gets distributed a lot at the first of the year. It has the holidays, staff development days, testing days, report card days, etc., on it.
Therefore, all school calendars are “merged” with the district calendar. This means events on the district calendar are pulled into the school calendar. Consequently, if anything on the district calendar changes, the corresponding event on the school calendar reflects the change too.
Publish
Events may be published on multiple calendars. For example, Parent Night at Hartsville Middle School would be entered on the Hartsville Middle School Calendar and “published” to the Hartsville Area and District-wide Events Calendars which exists to help schools plan events without conflicts in area schools and to provide an overall picture of events happening in the school district.
It may help to think about it this way, “merging” applies to entire calendars, and “publishing” applies to single events.
V. CustomerNet Login
Now, we are going to go to a special website that is used by SharpSchool for Customer Support.
Go to the website: customernet.sharpschool.com.
You should arrive at a login screen.
Click the red “Signup” link.
Enter Information Requested
Screen Name = login name (you might want to use the same name you login with at school)
Leave the two drop-down items at “use server default”
Type the letters that appear at the bottom in the space provided. This is an additional security measure that is supposed to help prevent people intercepting your information.
Click “Signup” to complete your application
It will take a while (as much as 24 hours) for your account to get set up.
I’m going to login to show you a little big about the site.
At CustomerNet, you have access to a variety of support options. Look at the right side of the screen. There’s “Live Chat”, submit a ticket, e-mail and telephone.
Another section you may find useful is the “Manuals”. The link to the SharpSchool Manuals is in the “quicklinks” section. After going to the manuals page, you’ll see the list of manuals available at the bottom. I do want to say that we have found some of the manuals to be less than adequate. Content is not as strong as we would like to see it and there are spelling and grammatical errors. We have communicated this to the company.
However, we have found the other options to be EXCELLENT - E-mail and live chat in particular.
Please spend some time familiarizing yourself with CustomerNet once your account is active.
Now, let’s get into SharpSchool!!
VI. SharpSchool Login
You should now go to your school’s website. You can get there by typing in the URL (xxx.dcsdschools.org) or by selecting it from the dropdown list or by clicking the back button if the page we were previously on was your school.
I hope that everyone’s login is in place but if it’s not, we can fix that.
To login, click on the word login at the very top of the page. It’s beside the words “welcome Guest!”
Your username should be the same name you have for e-mail and. The password you should use for the first time is “password”.
Try it now.
If you have any people who cannot login, please e-mail “login issues”. In the subject line, put the school name and “SharpSchool”. In the body of the message, give the user’s first and last name and the login name. When the account is fixed, the default password “password” will be used.
Several people on the Technology Department Staff are monitoring that mailbox to allow us to respond ASAP. We’ll respond to you to let you know it is finished. If you would, please check your e-mail every couple of minutes.
In the mean time, don’t wait, ask the individual to work with a partner until we can get them going.
VII. Change your password
Our first item of business is to change your password.
Find the place where you see “Welcome, your name!”
Click on your name and your profile window will appear.
Click the “Edit User” tab.
Enter a new password twice and click “Update User”
Use the “breadcrumbs” to get back to the main page.
That’s all we’re going to do in this section today but you’ll know that this is available for you and you can come back later to explore it.
VIII. Logged In View
When you log in , you’ll notice two significant changes.
The first is a very small menu at the very top of the page. “My Classes” “ Discussion Board”, etc., We are not using many of those features at this time but do plan to take advantage of them in the near future.
The second is a grey menu above the area we just discussed. This menu appears when you have access to make changes on pages. If you do not have rights to make any changes, you will not see this menu.
If you’ll click on “Departments”, you should see this menu. If you do not see that menu, let me know. I’ll need to get someone to adjust your rights. (if this happens, send another e-mail message to login issues – w subject SchoolName, SS Rights – in the body, give the username)
IX. Teacher Webpage Creation
It is important to spend some time planning your Teacher Page. The most important part of your page is the organization of the content. Think about who will find the information useful and how they will use the information. Spend some time searching the web for other teacher pages to get ideas.
Today, we’re going to concentrate on creating your page and placing the basic information on it.
It is also important to understand the tools that SharpSchools offer to allow you to organize your information easily. “Page Types” are the first tool to understand. A “page type” will set up certain things for you automatically. There are lots of page types but today, we want to focus on the following:
Content Page Calendar Page Photo Gallery Document Container
If you want a nice place to show examples of these page types, go to the dcsdschools.org and follow the links to Departments / Food Service.
A Content Page can be thought of as a “traditional” / HTML webpage. The editor in SharpSchool helps make the creation of these pages very easy. You can think of this page type as the “wide open to possibilities” page. It can be anything you want it to be.
A Calendar Page is a page that actually has a calendar on it. The calendar functions just like we experienced earlier. You could have a page that includes your personal calendar, another page that includes events for your class, etc., If you would like, you can have a calendar page for each of your classes / subjects. Middle and High School teachers might want to consider the separate calendar per subject / class.
A Photo Gallery is a collection of pictures. You should organize your pictures in albums. The albums should include pictures with a common theme – such as “Field Day”. Photo Galleries can exist at all levels – school level, department level, teacher page level.
The Document Container provides an easy way to organize files or documents that you want others to access.
Now we’re ready to start your page.
Teacher Web Page Setup
August 10, 2009
(adapted from Training Manual)
Items Teachers Will Find Helpful in Developing Their WebSite