Over the years, there has been significant effort on the part of students and teachers throughout School District 21 to create authentic instructional opportunities for students, and in many cases recently, these have come in the form of student podcasts. Previous posts on The Modern Pen have commented on podcasting or provided information for podcasting workshops. These posts include:

- Tools for 21st Century Learning-February 2009
- Podcasting Workshop-August 2007
- What’s a Podcast?-August 2007

As we continue to evolve in our use of podcasting, we have more tools available to teachers and students than ever before with which they can produce such podcasts. These include staff laptops and both the iMac and Mac Mini computer labs as well as directly on to devices such as iPods and iPod Touches.

The following article from the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) makes connections between the National Educational Technology Standards and podcasting in the classroom.



Links to actual podcasts recorded in District 21 include:
* Teacher Reflections on Podcasting (Staff)
- Administrators’ Ideas about Relevant Schools (Staff)
- New Staff Members Commit to Relevance (Staff)
- Cooper MS 8th Grade Alcohol Podcasts (Students)
- London MS 7th Grade Immigration Podcasts (Students)
- An Understanding of Marketing (Students) (Names are pseudonyms.)
- Binge Drinking and the Brain (Students)

For teachers wanting to learn more about podcasting, here is another useful podcast to listen to as a resource for learning more about what can be done during a podcast--including the use of sound effects!
- Chicago Public Radio/NPR Re-Sound

Directions for Podcasting with GarageBand

AtomicLearning.com GarageBand Tutorials

Tags: Podcast, Classroom Instruction, Students

As staff members throughout School District 21 begin preparing for the coming school year, lots of time is spent in calendars marking down important events for students, parents, and ourselves.

Of course, all staff members benefit from using your Exchange calendar. Staff members with laptop or desktop computers assigned to them individually can benefit from using Entourage or Outlook as their Exchange applications, and all staff members can also access their Exchange accounts via webmail.ccsd21.org. These calendars are great for sharing with one another and creating meetings in efficient ways that the majority of participants can attend because their schedules have been pre-checked for availability. To learn more about the specific features of the calendars in Outlook 2007 and Entourage 2008

While the calendars in Entourage and Outlook are great for productivity and keeping organized as a professional, these calendars are not designed for specific publication in newsletters or for distribution to parents and students.

So, how do I create a calendar for students and parents?

Microsoft Office 2008 comes with pre-created templates built right-in, and these are a great way to get started in a variety of projects. Included among these are templates for building calendars as pictured below.

Tags: Excel

Like being a star athlete, a great singer, or a super-effective classroom teacher, there are very important fundamentals that must be followed in order for one to be successful in any of these fields. Often times, these fundamentals are completely transparent to observers, except for the most expert. The same is actually true of the use of spreadsheets. While PC Mag has acknowledged that mastering Microsoft Excel can take years, some very basic fundamentals make an enormous difference in what can be accomplished with a spreadsheet.

Some important rules for successful spreadsheet use include:

Working Environment

• Spreadsheets on Screen--Spreadsheets are designed to be used on a computer. It’s not to say that we never print spreadsheets because we do at times, but 99% of the time, we work with a spreadsheet in the most efficient manner on the computer rather than for how it will look for printing.
• Normal View--Always use Normal View (View > Normal) for data entry and manipulation.
• Toolbars--Select View > Toolbars > Standard & View > Toolbars > Formatting. Most importantly, also select View > Formula Bar, which will show you exactly what is really in each cell as you select it.
• Workbooks & Worksheets--Don’t be afraid to use multiple worksheets within a single workbook. Label them carefully.

Layout

• Columns & Rows--Columns are for data fields/variables. Rows are for records.
• Header Row--Row 1 should always be used as a header row. Headers should be short and descriptive. Each column should have a header.Depending on the spreadsheet’s purpose and audience, headers may be free of spaces.
• Align Data within Columns--Whether it is left-aligned, centered, or right-aligned, depends on the data in the column, but all data within a column should be aligned.
• Separate Distinct Data--It’s not difficult to split data in to separate columns from a single column (i.e., split “last, first” to two columns--“last name” and “first name”), but it’s even easier to push data together from separate columns in to a single column (i.e., from “last name” and “first name” to “last, first”.) So, keep separate data separate from the start.

Content

• Grab Starting Data from Elsewhere--Teachers, support staff, and administrators all have the ability to export data from PowerSchool. Get your IDs, Names, etc. from there!
• Student IDs--ALWAYS use student id numbers for each student when collecting data on students. Typically ID numbers will fill Column A or Column B.
• Use Columns/Fields for Categorizing, Not Colors--People like to organize their spreadsheets by color. This is fine. Do not only organize by color. Rather than represent a category within a spreadsheet by color-coding cells, use a new column, create the proper field, and categorize that. Data can then be sorted, counted, analyzed using that.

Tips

• Use a Mouse and/or Tab and/or Return--When doing significant and/or extended work in Excel use a wired mouse plugged in to your laptop to make work more efficient. Better yet, for data entry, use the Tab key to move to the next cell to the right in a row and the Return key to move the next cell down in a column.
• Right-Click--When you “right-click” in Excel a contextual menu will pop up with a number of options that you can apply to the selected cell, column, or row.
• Plan Ahead--Before beginning to work in your spreadsheet, consider what fields you are going to use, how your records are going to be used, etc. This will help you visualize how your schedule ought to be laid out and will make your organization of rows and columns much easier.

Tags: Excel

Even with great tools, such as the PowerTeacher Gradebook and Inform, spreadsheets remain the most critical of tools for success in collecting and analyzing student data. Whether we are collecting data before uploading it to Inform or we are exporting it from the Gradebook to graph, spreadsheets are used to systematically collect, sort, manipulate, and analyze data. Currently, School District 21 does utilize Microsoft Office. Staff members who are using Windows PCs are typically using Office 2007 as we begin our transition to the new Office 2010. Staff members who are using Macs are using Office 2008.

AtomicLearning.com (which requires a username and password) features great tutorials on Excel 2008. These tutorials are broken up in to three different sections of tutorials:

• Intro (76 tutorials)
• Intermediate (86 tutorials)
• Advanced (85 tutorials)

That’s right! There are a total of 247 tutorials on AtomicLearning.com about Microsoft Excel 2008 alone!

In addition to all of the resources in AtomicLearning.com, there is also built-in support available right in the application itself. Microsoft, like Apple, has included a lot of information to provide help and support to end users right on the desktop from within the application itself. Simply select Help from the Menu Bar at the top of the screen as pictured below.



Either enter your search terms in the Search text field or select Excel Help from the menu and then search for more information.

“But wait, there’s more!” The Microsoft Office for Mac website also has great resources for learning more about how to use Office products, include Excel 2008.
Microsoft.com/Mac Office 2008 How-To Courses

Tags: Excel, AtomicLearning

One of the most powerful, easy-to-use tools for newcomers and advanced users to Microsoft Excel is the AutoFilter. The AutoFilter allows you to quickly and easily sort and or select certain data from either a pull-down menu or by custom defining your search criteria. Enabling the AutoFilter is as simple as clicking on AutoFilter in the Data > Filter > AutoFilter menu command from the Menu Bar as pictured above. Once the AutoFilter is enabled, you will see arrows in the header row of each column on the right side of the column as pictured below.



By simply clicking on the arrow, it will open up a new menu as pictured below.



Choosing from this menu, will allow you to only see the rows, or records, that you have selected. Choosing the Custom Filter option will allow you to specify exactly what data you would like to see. For example, you could choose to see all students who scored a 90 or higher on a particular assessment. While your other data will appear missing, it will really still be there. It is just hidden--or filtered out.

When you have filtered a column, the arrows in that columns header will appear blue. To unfilter, simply choose the Select All option from the pull-down at the top of that column, and all of your data will re-appear.

Simply by following our steps for entering data using Excel best practices and by using the AutoFilter, you can uncover all kinds of very important information about your students!

Tags: Excel

So, The Modern Pen looks strange in comparison to how it has looked? What happened?

An update to the software used to compose and publish The Modern Pen left the entry for each header too small to read, and correcting it in code was not having any impact in any of the three browsers tested. So, an alternative theme has been chosen.

While the new theme may satisfy the tastes of some and leave others desiring an improvement, we hope it serves to allow users to access the content until we can find a more permanent, and completely web-based, solution for posting to The Modern Pen.

Thanks for reading!

Tags: Modern Pen, Design

Previously, we had anticipated being able to begin allowing CCSD21 staff members to access Exchange via their personal smartphones as early as today. Unfortunately, our current mix of staffing and other ongoing summer projects is going to cause us to delay this. As we move through our summer projects, we are continuing to re-evaluate how best to accomplish all of them in an efficient and timely manner while continuing to provide training and resources to staff in order to accomplish these projects. As soon as we are ready and able to begin scheduling appointments with staff regarding signing up to access your District 21 email, calendar, and contacts on a personal smartphone, we will communicate that to all staff via email. Again, we thank you for your patience.

Tags: Staff MacBook, Exchange, SmartPhones

What do I do if my computer isn’t working right and it’s summer?

First, you need to call the Help Desk. They will try to help you over the phone, but if that doesn’t work, the next step will be that the user will have to bring the computer in to the District. Especially during the summer, if the computer is operational, it is critical that the user logs in and logs out of the computer inside of the District 21 network to ensure that another home sync takes place, thereby securing their Documents and Desktop folders. This may also resolve the issue. In the event that the computer is still not working, the computer will need to be left in the Technology Office along with some Summer Contact Information for the user. The ticket will be reviewed by one of our field engineers. They’ll check with AppleCare and the Support Forums to see if there are any OS-related fixes that they can apply first (and/or firmware updates). If there’s not and they believe it that it’s an isolated hardware issue, then the ticket will be transferred to our Operations team, and they will send the machine to AppleCare. When we receive it back from AppleCare, depending on what was done to the machine, we may need to do the pre-set-up (Binding, Place in Group in OD/WGM, etc.) again. We will ask the user to arrange a time with us to come in. Then, we will have the user log-in before we do the rest of the set-up—Entourage, iChat, Office Default Save Locations, Deletion of Safari and Firefox Bookmarks, etc. After that, the user can take it home. (The user will be in the office for about 10-15 minutes at this point if a field engineer is available.) So, first, call the issue in to the Help Desk—847.934.8100 and press 2.

Finally, please do remember that summer is actually the busiest time of year as we try to take care of projects when students (mostly) and teachers (mostly) are not around as much, so our field engineers are not sitting and waiting for individuals to come in and address tickets. Rather, the projects alone keep us very busy. As a result, typically, one should not expect to be seen when the computer is brought in the first time by a field engineer. Rather, the user should plan on coming in to the District, logging in to the computer, and checking to see if the problem is still there after the log in is complete.

Tags: Staff MacBook

During the last two weeks of July 2009, we installed 30 new Apple Xserves, and we completely re-configured the relationship between users (people), clients (regular computers you use), and servers (servers!). At this time, we also set-up two dedicated wiki and blog servers--one that is designed to serve the public (teacher blogs for parents, classroom projects with students, etc.) and one that is designed to be used collaboratively by teams (to support teaming).

When we installed the servers, the operating system was at 10.5.7. Shortly after the school year started, we upgraded all thirty servers to 10.5.8. Then, Apple released 10.6, Snow Leopard. This type of update was too significant to perform over a weekend. (It is taking us nearly three weeks to do during the summer!) In the past, we’ve typically left servers running with whatever operating system it was using when it was originally set-up. Now, with new servers in place along with lots of new clients, we have upgraded the servers to Snow Leopard. Specifically, each of our Mac servers will be running OS 10.6.4 by the end of this week.

We’re excited that by the end of this week, all of our open directory and file servers will have been upgraded. We have already upgraded the iChat, wiki, and teams servers, yet there is additional work that has been required on each of these before we can be fully up and running. So, here’s the run down on exactly where these servers are at right now:

iChat
After an extensive period of tweaking settings and testing, we are pleased to officially announce that iChat is back open. It seems to be working just fine with both text and video chats working. iChat is open right now as this is written, so chat away!

Teams
The teams.ccsd21.org wiki server that is used by teams is also working, but we’re needing to go through and reset permissions for each group. We had worked extensively with Apple prior to this upgrade in order to determine what type of issues we may have with blogs and wikis. Even from inside Apple, we heard very different reports on how this update might go. Overall, this update went well, but we are having to reset permissions on each of the approximately 200 wikis that we have in use for teams in District 21. We hope to have this work done later this month. Once this work is done, we will ask iTech teachers to go in to Active Directory and update which staff members are in which groups. When this work is done, everyone will be able to be a part of whatever teams they are a part of for the 2010-2011 school year! We do thank teachers for their patience as we work through this process for the first time.

Wikis
The wiki.ccsd21.org wiki and blog server has seen the same issues as the teams.ccsd21.org server. Here, though, there will be additional testing that we are undertaking as we look to potentially utilize Active Directory to manage the users on the wiki server. (Prior to now, we have had to enter each user individually on this server. We have done so in order to meet our web page policy that requires us not to post the first and last names of students.) Individual wikis and blogs will come back online as we can (with sites in which only staff post being up first), and we will let the individuals running those sites know when they are up.

Tags: Staff MacBook, iChat, Wikis, Teams, Blogs