Thank You For a Great School Year!
New District Web Site and How It Affects You
Reporting Web Site Content
As we head into summer, I wanted to thank you for an amazing year. This was a new position for me this year and I had the opportunity to work with and support many of you. Thank you for your willingness to try new things in your classrooms. I know there were many changes this year due to changing standards and state testing. I feel our district really did an amazing job of working as a team to make this the best possible experience. This was new for all of us. We will use what we learned to continue to improve the process and make this easier on you and our students.
Please feel free to contact me any time if I can help you over the summer with anything you are preparing for next year.
New District Web Site and How It Affects You
Our district is moving to Eschoolview as our web site provider. Our current website will remain active until the end of the school year. This week, you should have received information on how to log into the new site. Please let me know if you did not receive this. Our goal was to move any Frontpage or Dreamweaver sites to the new hosting. In the future, you will update these through the new web site.
There are some really important things that you need to check now.
1) Is your site present on your building's page? If you go to more than one building, make sure you are present at all buildings.
2) If you had any hidden web site folders in SchoolPointe (our current site), we need to save that information and upload it to the new site. This will only affect a very small group of teachers. Please let me know if this affects you and I will be happy to meet with you and help you fix this.
3) Websites were converted during the early part of May. If you made any posts this month, they are likely not moved over. All of your previous content should be there. Please make sure to add anything from May that you want to keep to the new site. Let me know if you need help.
NOTE: If you currently have a Google Site or other outside teacher site, your link should be present on the new page. If anything is missing, please let me know ASAP.
I also shared a folder on how to update your web page. This is meant to help you get started. I plan to add content to the folder as staff need dictates.
If you have any questions or concerns, please send them my way. I am happy to help. The goal is to make this as easy as possible for you.
Twitter as a Resource
Even if you aren't comfortable with the idea of posting to Twitter yourself, Twitter is an amazing resource for teachers looking for helpful content and valuable resources. There are many educators who post links to articles, web resources and tools that can help you meet your classroom goals. You can search for and follow educators based on topics of interest. I highly encourage you to consider this. For the summer, this is a wonderful way to keep up on new trends while maximizing your time.
I regularly Tweet and Retweet interesting resources at https://twitter.com/SeanWhelanTech .
Kristen Gregory and Jay Bishop held some wonderful PD sessions on how to use Social Media to benefit your educational goals while keeping yourself safe.
They are well worth checking out, as they can make navigating the vast amount of resources available to educators much easier.
In the case of Twitter, I made a walkthrough on how to change privacy and security settings based on who you want or don't want to have access to you.
Reporting Web Site Content
One question that comes up from time to time is how to handle web content that is inappropriate. Yes, we have filtering software but one thing to keep in mind is that this software isn't always perfect. It blocks certain terms and website content but it can't always distinguish in every situation. This leads to certain inappropriate sites getting through and certain educational sites being blocked.
I am the teacher. What can I do?
For High School: Please email HSTrouble.Reports@westg.org
For Elementary and Middle School: Please contact your AV/Tech Supplemental Holder. They will put is a Trouble Ticket that will make us aware of the issue.
Information that we need from you:
The URL of the web site:
Do you need it blocked or unblocked?
Why?
The more we know about the situation, the faster we can help you.
Trouble Reporting Tips
One of our goals in 2015 is to improve the error reporting process so we get to your needs faster. This requires a little help from you. Please make sure you report issues early. If something is a reoccurring issue, please let us know so we can help. Don't let it get to the point of frustration.
For High School: Please email HSTrouble.Reports@westg.org
For Elementary and Middle School: Please contact your AV/Tech Supplemental Holder. They will put is a Trouble Ticket that will make us aware of the issue. This is important because it allows us to organize and keep track of progress.
Information that we need from you:
Date:
Time:
Room Number:
What is the problem you are having:
Were there any error messages?
What were they?
Does this happen all the time or in specific situations?
The more you tell us, the faster we will pin down the actual problem and be able to resolve you issue.
HOW TO SCHEDULE A TIME TO MEET?
The easiest way to contact me is through email at sean.whelan@westg.org. Please let me know what you'd like to meet about, your room number, free periods, and any other info that might be helpful to me in order to prepare for our meeting. I'd love to meet with you to see if I can help facilitate any issue you might be having. Also, if there is something I share that you would like to implement in your classroom or with your team, please let me know. I would be thrilled to help.
