About CForum

October 5, 2007

Location:
Alpine School District
575 North 100 East
American Fork
Room 310 - Computer Lab

Welcome and Introductions - Lynn Sorensen and Bonnie Anderson

Around the Room - District Sharing

    • What is new?
    • What is your district focusing on this year?
    • How are you spending your "Engaged Classroom" dollars?

SMART AirLiner wireless slate - Bonnie Anderson.

    • The light weight notebook allows you to walk around the room and have all of the features of a traditional SMART board.
    • It is Bluetooth technology and will work with any projector.

Blog Tool Overview - Kevin Hansen

Over the Shoulder: iLife '08 - Robert Gordon

    • Robert's web site: http://trainerob.myedesk.org/
    • Robert shared some new features of iLife 08
      • hiding photos in iPhoto
      • assigning keywords and groups
      • web gallery
      • and much, much more.

Pioneer Library - Federated Search - Rick Cline

    • http://pioneer.uen.org/
    • Federated Searching: the ability to search all of Pioneer Library's databases with one search.
    • Use the Quick Search or the Advanced Search
    • Rich has been conducting training around the state and there has been a lot of positive feedback on the new search tool.

USOE Updates - Kathy Webb and Rick Gaisford

    • UIMC (Utah Instructional Media Consortium) is in the process of evaluating videos for purchasing. UIMC receives 77 cents per student to pay for these videos. All purchases come with digital rights so that they can be added to eMedia.
    • The legislature request for another $55 million is at the top of the list for potential funding requests.
    • Invite your state legislators to your schools to see good use of technology.
    • Rick is on the SETDA board and they have drafted a bill to bring back educational technology funding for each state. ATTAIN – Achievement Through Technology And Innovation Learn http://www.setda.org/web/guest/federalpolicyleadership
    • Rick shared a trial login for netTrekker
    • Rick has Google SketchUp advanced manuals. You can pick them up from him at his USOE office.

my.uen Tips and Tricks - Karen Krier
Here are a few tricks you may want to share with some of your more confident educators.

    1. New registrants and unverified users don’t need to verify their email immediately. They can continue to access their my.uen page for 14 days. However, unverified users will not be able to use the other UEN tools that require a login.
    2. Fatty Portlets: Some of the portlets don’t display well in some of the layouts. The calendar really only looks good on the 30-70 or 70-30 or 100 layouts.
    3. Deleting and Editing a Calendar Event: Sometimes educators can’t figure out how to delete a calendar event. After logging in they can use the Event tab on the calendar. This will list ALL of their events. Now it is easy to see the Edit and Delete icons.
    4. Message WYSIWYG: Our current solution is functional, but not ideal. An educator let us know that if you format your text in a Word doc and copy and paste it in your message portlet it will keep most of the formatting. (This is just for Windows machines. It doesn't seem to work on a Mac.)
    5. Adding Images in Messages: We don’t have a straight forward way to upload images at this point – but you can go to a website that has the image you want and click and drag over the image so that it is highlighted or selected. While it is still selected Copy it (ctrl C) and then navigate back to your message portlet and Paste (ctrl P). ex: http://my.uen.org/201209
    6. Linking to Documents in Messages: You can upload a file in your Documents portlet and then right mouse click on the document link and select the “Copy link location” option. Go to your message portlet, type text (Class Disclosure document) and use the Insert/Edit option on the WYSIWYG and paste the URL.
    7. Page Tabs: You can click on the tab name and rename it or use the X to delete the tab. You can even rename the default “Home” tab. You can also click and drag the tabs to reorder them.
    8. RSS Feeds: You can add some interesting RSS feeds to your RSS portlet which will provide some unique content on your page (ex: TIME Top Photoessays on my.uen.org/6998). I have provided a list of feeds in the RSS portlet.
    9. Anchor or Jump Links: Some educators add a lot of text to a message and they want to allow users to jump down to certain sections.
      • Go down to the point in the message where you want people to be able to jump to. Click you mouse and then used the Insert / Edit Anchor icon in the WYSIWYG.
      • You will be prompted to enter a name for that anchor.
      • Go back up to the top of the message and select the text you want people to click on to jump down the page and use the Insert / Edit Link icon.
      • Select the name of the anchor from the drop down.

Cool Gadget - Celia Powell

    • Aluminum laptop stand - locally produced, light weight and inexpensive
    • (Celia - I must not have heard the correct web site address.)

NECC Highlights - Rick Gaisford

UCET Updates - Ross Rogers

    • UCET Conference: February 29 and March 1, 2008
    • Theme - UCET 2.0 Explore and Create Possibilities
    • Taylorsville High School, Granite School District
    • Call for Presentations - deadline Dec. 1, 2007

UTIPS Updates - Julie Quinn

UEN Updates - Karen and Victoria

    • Multimedia Guide is now available. It should be delivered to each Utah educator. If you need more guides, contact resources@uen.org or call (800) 866-5852.
    • Water Wise Utah
      • waterwiseutah.org has numerous links and activities specifically for K-12 teachers and students.
      • W.E.S.T. – Water Education Science and Teaching from the U of U – will be hosting an activity targeted primarily for 4th grade students at the Day Riverside Library.
      • Washington County Water Fair at Dixie College– Water Wise Utah will host a session during the fair (every 4th grader in Wa. County attends) and demonstrate the web site and the activities for students.
    • End of Life discussion for 2002 Olympic and Paralympic Education page and the Weather Report.
    • New Professional Development course "Create Educational Games"
    • Courses are now organized into groups: GIS/GPS, Multimedia, Productivity Tools, Strategies and Resources, Web Publishing, Mac Classes and Online Classes. (The linked ones have community blogs.)
    • Faculty Lounge: Thursdays at 3:30
    • Monthly Teacher Feature highlighting a Utah educator who is using technology effectively.

Future meeting dates:

    • November 2, 2007 - Provo School District
    • December 7, 2007 - Jordan School District
    • January 4, 2008 - Utah Education Network
    • February 1, 2008 - Granite School District
    • April 11, 2008 - Davis School District

Utah State Office of Education - USOE     Utah Education Network - UEN     Utah Coalition for Educational Technology - UCET

For questions or comments contact us.