Welcome Students and parents will be accessing your classroom website pages via www.yis.ac.jp Go through the overview below. All instructions for each section are included on following pages. Training videos are also available on the server for each section under: Faculty Resources > Shared Teacher > IT > New Website Training Tutorials The cotents of this folder include; If you have questions or problems, feel free to speak to Bob Pomery or the IT Dept. for help. Important: Please note that you cannot use the Safari web browser to create or edit content on the website. Please use Firefox, Mozilla or Microsoft IE. Step No. 1 - Login to the Faculty & Staff Portal Step No. 2 - Confirm or Revise your Classroom Site Listings Please let Mr. Bob Pomeroy (BP) know as soon as possible if any of your classes are not listed. In addition, some teachers with multiple classes/sections may wish to consolidate classroom websites for classes that share common course structures and resources. Anyone wishing to consolidate classroom sites should come and speak with BP as soon as possible so that I can set up the consolidated website structure for you. Step No. 3 - Update your Teacher Profile Step No. 4 - Start Building Your Classroom Websites 4-A: To start off with, enter your class overview. 4-B: Confirm or revise your student roster. 4-C: Upload classroom resources. 4-D: Consider the multimedia possibilities. The'Media' section is where you can put slideshows, videos, etc. For the time being please consult with Bob in advance if you are planning to upload video to your sites. Important notes for both 4-C (resources) and 4-D (media): 1) Before you start uploading files to these areas think carefully about how you want to name and organize your folders in these sections. Unfortunately, once you've uploaded files to these areas it is not easy to move them between folders or to modify the folder structure. (Of course you can always add new folders and delete empty folders.) 2) Make sure that the file names for any document or photo that you want to upload are short, simple and do not have any funky things like periods, apostrophes or quotation marks in them; otherwise, the photo upload editor will not accept them. If you should have trouble uploading a file, check the file name first. If you still have difficulty, speak with the IT Dept. 4-E: Think about how you might use the 'Bulletin Board' and 'Classroom Calendar' features and start entering Calendar events. These features are an excellent way of communicating day-to-day assignments, announcements and other informatioin with the students in your classes, as well as keeping their parents informed. The 'Bulletin Board' and 'Classroom Calendar' features will replace email for most communications. (Note that students and parents will be able to see the master all-school calendar from their portal pages.) 4-F: HS/MS teachers; think about how you might use the 'Discussions' feature. This is not something you have to do right away, but the 'Discussions' section is a blog-like feature that allows you to post classroom discussion themes that students can respond to outside of class. Please regularly utilize your sites, particularly the Bulletin Board and Classroom Calendar features, to communicate with students and parents. Each teacher's needs and experience will be different; some of you may use your classroom sites every day, others may only update their sites a few times a month. Some may want to have just a few resources and/or media files posted, others may wish to have extensive resources or media galleries of student work. There is no uniform standard for how involved the classroom sites should be or how frequently they are updated. My sincere hope is that they will be an effective and, yes, fun tool for enriching our students' educational experience and enhancing our communication with students and parents. Frank Curkovic 1
school website How to update your class website 1.Go to www.yis.ac.jp If you see the old site, click the refresh button. 2. On the top right-hand corner, click Communities and select Faculty and Staff to log in. 3. This window will appear. Enter your username and password (which are the same as when you log onto the server). example: username: curkovicf (last name/first name initial) If you have any login problems, please email yisweb@yis.ac.jp 4. Your page will appear. In the picture to the left, the teacher has an Engligh 7 class. This will be clicked. The class will then open... 5. Click the highlighted edit button. Frank Curkovic 2
When edit is clicked, a window will open. In this section, write a generic description about the class. 6. Enter your desired text and when complete, click Update Overview. Resources Your Resource area is useful for keeping documents, links and other material for your class in one central location. As you can see in the picture, the area is empty. NOTE: A resource (document, link) cannot be added without being placed in a folder first. You must create this folder first and then add the resources. You may also want to give some thought as to how you wish to organise your folders (i.e. by units? by subjects? etc.) How To Create a Folder: 1. Click this button. 2. This window will appear. Give your folder a title and click Create Folder. You may repeat this step to create your desired amount of folders. Here 3 folders have been created and resources may now be placed within them. Frank Curkovic 3
How To Add a Resource: A resource will be added and placed into the Units of Inquiry folder. 1. Click the + button. This window (Resource Editor) will open. 2. Give the resource a title. 3. You may select a Link (to a website), a File or copy and paste Content. 4. A PDF wishes to be uploaded so File has been clicked. To find the document, click Browse. Your File Manager will open. As you can see, there is 1 folder in the example (yours may be blank). 5. Click +upload files (which has been starred in the picture). Frank Curkovic 4
When +upload files is clicked, this window will open. 6. Click Browse. Find the document you wish to upload and click Upload Now. 7. The document will appear (starred in the above photo). Click the document and it will appear in the dialogue box (pictured right). 8. Now click Post Resource. It will then appear on your Resources section on the website. Frank Curkovic 5
Updating Your Teacher Profile: After logging into the website, select Update your profile. You may also do this by clicking on the user icon (loacted in the top left-hand corner) This window will open. Your name and faculty information should automatically be inserted. You will need to enter your Education details. Write in your: Degree Title (University, Country), year When complete, click Update Profile. Creating Your Student Roster: After logging in, select the class you wish to add students to. 1. When the class page opens, go to Student Roster and click the blue pencil. 2. This window will open. If you have no students yet, click +add the first student. Frank Curkovic 6
3. You can search by individual names or by class. In the example, 3W was selected and Search was clicked. This will give a list of all students registered to that class. 4. Once the name has been selected it will be added to the class. Repeat this for all students. Adding Photos / Slideshows (A. Exporting photos from iphoto) Before adding photos to the website, you should export and resize them from iphoto. The fastest way is to place all your selected photos into an album. Select the album and go to File > Export. This window will open. Enter the same information as in the picture. This is for iphoto 08. If you are using the 06 version, please watch the tutorial video entitled Exporting Photos from iphoto 06. Click Export. NOTE: You may experience problems if you alter the file names of your pictures. DO NOT delete the.jpg extension and do not create titles with apostrophes etc. Frank Curkovic 7
Select where you would like the photos to be saved. I prefer the desktop for faster access. Click OK. Your photos will be exported to the destination you specified. Adding Photos / Slideshows (B. Creating a slideshow for the website) Go to the class you wish to add photos to. 1. Click manage in the Media area. 2. The below window will open. Select +Add Folder, give it a title and click Create Folder. 3. The folder will be made. Select Create Photo Slideshow. Give a title and select the duration for each picture. Click Create Photo Slideshow. 4. Frank Curkovic 8
Select Browse to find your photos. I had saved all the photos on the desktop. Select the photos and click the blue Select button. 5. The number of files will appear. Click Upload. This may take some time. 6. When complete, this window will appear. You may enter descriptions for each photo if you wish. Scroll down to the bottom and click Update. 7. This window will appear with your photos. You may close the window and now view the slideshow in your Media area. You may need to click refresh on your browser. Frank Curkovic 9
In order for parents (and yourself) to save these photos, select a photo and click on the magnifying glass that appears on the slideshow window. The picture will open in a new window where you could then simply drag it to the desktop to save. REMINDER: DO NOT delete the.jpg extensions from your photos or add titles with apostrophes etc. Adding Photos with the PopUp Editor (As mentioned above, photos need to be exported and saved into a folder on the website) 1. Several of your windows/class sections will have a pop-up editor. Here an example will be given on how to add a photo to the classroom description. Within this area, click the edit button, which is the blue pencil. 2. Your classroom overview page will open. Click the Popup Editor icon. 3. This window will open. Click Insert/Edit Image (the tree icon). 4. Select this button from the next window. 5. Select the photo from your folder that you wish to include simply by clicking it. 6. The picture will appear. Click Insert. 8. Click Update Overview. 7. Click Save from the top left-hand corner. 9. The photo will appear in the desired box. Please note that in this example, the photo was resized to 250 megapixels wide instead of the normal 450px for aesthetic purposes. Frank Curkovic 10
Adding Video To add video, you would follow similar steps as to adding a photo slideshow. You will need to create a folder first (as above) and then select Create Video Playlist. Review 1. From your desired class, go to Media and select manage. 2. A window will appear. Select Add folder. Give the folder a title and click create. 3. Select Create Video Playlist 4. A window will open, select Browse and find the video file. 5. Click Upload and wait. 7. 6. A window will open, you may give a description about the film. When complete, click Update. 8. The window may now be closed. Click Refresh to see the new addition. NOTE: Video length should be 3 minutes as we have a limit on file size (300MB). Uploading video may take time depending on the size. If you wish it to upload faster you may wish to convert it to Flash (.flv) using VisualHub for compressing (which is installed on your computers). If you do not have VisualHub on your computer, you coud also use the Staffroom imac, a student computer or one from the IT lab. To see the size of a file, click it once and then press Apple/I. A window will open with the details. An example is pictured left. If you wish to add video from an external website, simply copy and paste the URL link (web address) into the necessary area of your class (Discussions, Resources etc). This will save you time and save space. Please note that YouTube videos may be deleted by the uploader that may result in dead links. Frank Curkovic 11