Page 1 of 11 Dear Teacher, Tutor or Program Coordinator, The deadline for entries to this year s edition of To Open Your Mind is just a month away February 16! Please try to get your entries in as soon as possible. Since we re requiring that entries be submitted electronically this year via the official Student Entry Form (which is included in the attached file), I ve been asked to provide a guide to the process. That guide is included below. I ve tried to be as specific and detailed as possible, but since computer systems vary, there may be differences in details of the procedures. If your have questions, please feel free to give me a call or send me an email. Guy Haglund Office Manager/Minnesota Literacy Council 651-645-2277 x201; 651-645-2272 fax ghaglund@themlc.org 2007 To Open Your Mind Entry Guide Your students entries to the 2007 edition of To Open Your Mind must be submitted using the official Student Entry form which is included in the Microsoft Word file that was attached to an earlier email (the blank file is also available on the MLC web site go to http://www.themlc.org/toym.html and then click on the link in the sidebar on the right side of the screen to open and save a copy of the file). I ve also attached another copy of the file to this email. Please let me know if you have problems getting a copy of the file. The first step is to save a copy of the attached file to your computer s hard drive (C: or Desktop). Since the method for saving and attaching files to email messages varies between different computer systems I ll give examples of how to perform the procedures using Microsoft Outlook and Yahoo Mail. Other systems use similar procedures, but if you are not using one of these two email systems, you may want to ask an IT person at your site or talk to someone else in your office who is experienced with saving and attaching files to email messages. Your email message in Outlook will look something like the illustration below. Begin by right-clicking on the name of the attachment. In Yahoo Mail the message will look something like this left-click on the name of the attachment to begin.
Page 2 of 11 Yahoo Mail then does a virus scan and then asks you if you want to download the file. Click on Download and then Save. Both programs will then display similar windows for navigating to where you want to save the file. Saving it on the Desktop is the easiest. In Outlook you ll see this.
Page 3 of 11 Then click Save in the next window and you ll have a new file on your Desktop named 2007 Submission form. The Yahoo Mail windows look almost the same.
Page 4 of 11 The next step in the process is to enter the student contact information and the text of their piece of writing in the Student Entry Form. Begin by double-clicking on the icon for the 2007 Submission form file on your Desktop.
Page 5 of 11 The first page of the Word document contains Submission Guidelines for this year s book. Please read them carefully and then scroll down to the second page of the file, the Student Entry Form. In the Student Information section, please enter the contact information for the student after the colon on each line (please don t modify the labels for the lines because they will be used to automatically process the entry when we receive it). Under Program Information, please enter the name of the literacy program and the name(s) of the Teacher and/or Program Coordinator along with their contact information. This is important because our editors may want to contact some of the students for biographical information and they will want to do that via the teacher or coordinator. In the Submission Information section, enter the Title of the entry, the Type of entry (Story or Poem), and, if the student has a preference as to how he or she would like his or her name to appear under the title, enter that preference after the colon on the third line of this section. Please note that if the student elects to NOT have his or her name published (in the following Permission section), his or her name will appear as Anonymous no matter what might be entered on this line. As noted in the form, the Permission section must be completed by entering the student s name after one of the two choices. We cannot publish the entry without this information.
Page 6 of 11 Once the information section is complete, the last step in this part of the process is to include the text of the piece of writing. It should be placed (either by typing it directly or copying and pasting it) into the section between the words Entry: and End of Entry:. Finally, save the file by using Save As in the File menu. This will keep the original copy of the file blank so you can use it for additional students. It will help us if you use the name of the student as part of the new file name. After you save the file you ll see it on your Desktop.
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Page 8 of 11 The final step in the entry process is to attach to completed submission form to me (ghaglund@themlc.org). You CAN attach more than one entry to a single email. Here s how this step looks in Outlook and Yahoo Mail. Open your email program and start a new message. In Outlook click on the paper clip, then navigate to the Desktop and double-click on the file name to attach the file. You ll see it listed in the message. Then click Send.
Page 9 of 11 In Yahoo Mail you ll see the following screens.
Page 10 of 11 Click Send and you re done!!! Please let me know if you have questions or problems. Guy
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