GCS Webmasters

What is Design? Cool Youtube!

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:05:00 +0000

This Youtube video entitled, "What is design?" is quite thought provoking. As web designers we have to always be mindful of the balance between content and graphics and DESIGN is keeps both aspects in mind. Enjoy.

A New Year Arrives!

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 21:43:00 +0000

Welcome 2009!! Goodbye 2008!! It has been a good year with many learning experiences and lessons. I enjoyed many visits to schools last year, but I need to get around to see more of the school webmasters.
Let's review some of what happened in 2008:

We had a very large turn-over in school webmasters. There were quite of few new webmasters who needed training to start off the school year. By the way, they are doing a great job!!
Scores of hours in 2008 were spent in VNC. Sometimes I spend 3-4 hours with VNC to school webmasters in a single day. This made it very convenient for both me and the school webmasters.
Many schools started using the ASP Web Calendar which dynamically works with a database. Of course, with any free resource, there are vulnerabilities. Some vulnerabilities were discovered early for which Brannon Carter (Bryson Middle) created a fix. Unfortunately, since our databases were out in the open and the passwords are housed in the database, this was hacking opportunity waiting to happen - and it did around Thanksgiving. Fortunately, we've now moved our databases to a nonpublic location on our server which vastly enhances our security.
Several schools in 2008 converted to ASP so that the great majority of schools are now ASP. I plan to offer some classes on the Power of ASP to help those who need a better understanding. The few non-ASP school websites will hopefully move to ASP in 2009 to take advantage of the ease and convenience of managing your sites.
Several schools in 2008 implemented a new flash menu system, replacing the DHTML menus which are still widespread in our schools.
Some schools have taken advantage of data-driven capabilities that many other schools possess, such as a faculty directory, Announcements, News, and Events. This capability enables the webmaster to pass off responsibilities to other people at there school without the need to use FrontPage or FTP.

On a personal note, 2008 brought me a new grandson, (grandchild#5), a motorcycle (lovin' it!!), another child to complete high school, and 26 years married to the same wonderful woman.

Some of the goals I have for 2009 are as follows:

All school websites converted to ASP - not mandating, just on my "wish list".
All school websites using the benefits and conveniences of data-driven capabilities (ASP calendar, directories, annoucements, news, and events). Of course you can only do this if you actually use ASP at your site.
More workshops and training offered as well as a face-to-face meetings.
More individual school visits.
Provide more online tutorials.
Develop a better game of pool so that I can beat John Woggon. Last week I met John for lunch. We played at least 8 or so games and John completely demolished me!! He always asks about you guys and I sense that he misses you all.
Blog more. This is obviously not yet a habit, but I'd like to incorporate tutorials into my blog.

Thanks to all school webmasters for the time and effort spent in making our school sites "top-notch". I often get comments that our schools sites are much better than other schools sites not only in other districts in SC, but also throughout the US. This is a testimony to all of your hard work over the years. Thanks for all you do.

Happy 2009!

Mid-Life Crisis

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 12:23:00 +0000

This week marks my first official vacation since becoming district webmaster in June of 2007. I have to take two more weeks of vacation sometime betweeen now and January 31 or I lose those days. I've enjoyed working around the house getting caught up on repairs and maintenance. It's been great getting away from my cubicle and sitting in front of the computer - which is exactly what I'm doing now - but only briefly!
Mid-Life Crisis?
Some people might call it a "mid-life crisis", but I've always wanted a motorcycle for as long as I can remember. Up to now I either could not afford it and/or could not convince my wife. A friend owned the bike - a Kawasaki 1000 Concours - and was trying to sell it After some "wheeling and dealing" and a visit to the credit union (and some concessions to my wife), I purchased the bike! For some of you, this might bring back thoughts of John Woggon, retired district webmaster and mentor to us all. Well, I actually consulted John about the motorcycle before I bought it to get his opinion. Thankfully, his "thumbs up" was the final push in making the purchase. John wanted to see the bike so I stopped by his house after work one day last week to show it to him. He gave me some gear (I had nothing) and sold me some gear that he had and we set a lunch get-together.
I have met John for lunch several times since his retiring just to keep in touch and get his feedback on the changes to the site. We always meet at Baily's on Laurens Rd. This is a pool (billiard) hall. John and I play several rounds of pool over lunch, and I don't mind being John's victim (he's quite good and I'm pathetic!). It's always a good, relaxing time. He always asks about the school webmasters. Working with the school webmasters was the most exciting and rewarding part of the job for John, as I concur with him that it is the same today with me.
Many have asked about the onscreen tutorials that I had promised. I have actually made some tutorials, but have had some synching issues with Camtasia and have not been happy with how they turned out. This summer working on the curriculum portal and with everything esle since school has started (including the demon-possessed teacher website upgrade), the schedule has been very full, but I hope to get some time soon to resume and resolve the problem with the tutorials.
I usually get at least two or three calls daily from webmaster with questions. VNC is a wonderful way to resolve issues and I recommend those of you who have questions, to call and let me VNC to your computer. I prefer talking you through issues rather than resolving them myself so that it is a "learning experience". Please don't hesitate to call if need be. I can usually drop what I'm working on and help.
Well, back to my vacation projects - and maybe some piddling on the bike. Regards.

School Website Winners!

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 04:04:00 +0000

The last day of the UTC conference is tomorrow. It has been a wonderful, information-filled conference. The pre-sessions yesterday were fairly well attended. I presented a pre-session for an audience of Grenville County School Webmasters and a second session for an audience of teachers interested in learning more about the Teacher Website Tool (EdPoint). At the end of the webmasters session I announced the winners of the school website awards. This was extremely difficult as our school websites have vastly improved this year and fewer awards are given. Here are this years winners:

Bronze

Elementary - Greenbriar and Chandler Creek
Middle - Woodmont
High - Greer

Silver

Elementary - Mitchell Road and Brook Glenn
Middle - Northwest
High - TR
Other - Roper Mountain Science Center

Gold

Elementary - Alexander and Oakview
Middle - Bryson
High - Mauldin
Other - Fine Arts Center

Congratulations on the winners. I have your certificates and will have them at UTC tomorrow. I'll send by courier those who do not pick them up.

Due to suggestions during our session (Dee Jacobs), I've decided to offer specific training sessions in late July - early August rather than general sessions like last year. The purpose is to come to a session and leave with a newly implemented tool working on your website. Topics will include. ASP Calendar, Dynamic Faculty Directory, Flash Menus, and Spry Accordion. I'll set these up on the portal and let everyone know. I'd prefer to meet at a school for these. If anyone is able to host these sessions, it would be easier for connectivity to be at a school rather than at our office.

Hope to increase blog post frequency!!

I have two sessions tomorrow entitled: "Technology Tools for Teachers: Curing the Content Conundrum". Perhaps I'll see some of you there.

A New Blogpost - This is NOT an April Fools Joke!!

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:59:00 +0000

The temptation of course is to pull some sort of April Fools joke on you guys, but since my blog posts have been so rare and sparse, I thought I would try to make this post useful and profitable for you all.

First, if you are a prankster, you can get some ideas about how to add excitement (or anxiety) to those at your school. Here's the link - Top Ten Harmless Geek Pranks.

Now to something that may be useful. Adobe has released a free version of Photoshop - Adobe Photoshop Express. If you've always wanted to play with photoshop but couldn't afford it, here's the link for a new free version.

If you need some new icons, here's a link to a free package of 60 icons that you might find useful.

Now, on to some business. I will be sending out a form to the web committee that was designed earlier for judging school websites. They will be judging websites based on the criteria that has been established in years past. The specific criteria will be as follows:

Site content (15)
Design (10)
Navigation (10)
Timeliness (10)
Parents (10)
School Calendar (10)
Staff Directory (10)
Student Work (10)
Student Resources (10)
Legal Guidelines (5)

There will be one gold, one silver and one bronze for high schools and middle schools. There will be two of each for elementary schools. This year there will be no "Best of the Web". The four gold winners will receive $1000, silver winners will receive $500, and bronze winners will receive $300. This will not be a cash award but credit toward the purchase of technology or professional development. The winning school webmasters will select the technology or professional development of their choosing.

Lastly, I'll be soon sending out directions for selecting top teacher websites from your school. I know that you all are insanely busy, so don't spend an inordinate amount of time on this. This will be somewhat "low key" since the criteria has not been published. I'll attach a copy of the criteria that you should use. You may share this with your faculty if you wish - I hope to also have something on the teacher area of the district website. This year there will be no awards - just recognition (as in times past). In the future we will attach an award of some sort. There will be a total of 20 elementary teacher sites, 10 middle and 10 high teacher sites which will be recognized (fewer than in years past). I'll send a link to a form (as John did in the past) to make it easy to submit. We'll need to do this by the deadline that I'll send so that the web committee can select the winners. Thanks so much for all your help.

Reminder - Upstate Technology Conference will be held at JL Mann this summer (June 24-26). Please consider presenting. We will have some great presenters and fantastic keynote speakers - Ewan McIntosh and David Jakes. These are nationally know speakers who speak at the major technology conferences. I'll be presenting some preconference sessions geared specifically to Greenville County Webmasters. The UTC website is http://www.greenville.k12.sc.us/utc/

Webmaster Tool Chest

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 21:19:00 +0000

Here are some powerful tools which I have used from time to time to help with my websites.

PageRacer - This site will simulate your website loading with a 56K modem.
Google's Webmaster Central - Great place to get webmaster resources and "best practice" information.
Sitepoint's CSS Reference - This is a great resource for CSS coding.
Enjoy.

Thank You!

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 03:26:00 +0000

A big "thank you" goes to all greenville county webmasters. Your hard work and diligence designing and maintaining your websites while at the same waging a relentless battle against the ignorance of our youth is quite admirable.
Donna Jones the webmaster of Teen Parent just unveiled her new site today. She's using the new menu system. Great job, Donna. Thanks also to Brannon Carter from Bryson Middle School who developed the fantastic video tutorial on installing the new asp calendar at your site. His step by step tutorial makes it a synch! Take a look at his school site and you'll be impressed!
There are so many more of you that I can mention, but time forbids. I sincerely thank you for the fantastic job that you all do and the time and dedication you put in making a top quality site.
The teacher website tool has been a pain. Two weeks ago a new "upgrade" was pushed out. Shortly thereafter, glitches were discovered - missing hyperlink button, pages requiring logins, and other strange things. The contractors finally had to revert back to the previous version which is the current situation. If you have teachers who still have a login screen coming up on their normal web pages, this is the fix: Go to the RAD editor; for all hyperlinked documents or pictures, "right-click" on each and change the link property from "http://staff.greenville..." to "http://teachers.greenville...". This should fix the page.
For the argument: "it really doesn't matter about file size; most people have broadband anyway", look at this link and take note.
Do you have someone you want to feel special? Use the following url to make your recipient feel like they are greatly appreciated. The following address will send a personalized message Webmaster.YouAreMighty.com. Simply replace "Webmaster" with the name of your special friend.
Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving break. I'm looking forward to an overdose of tryptophan! Best regards!

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 12:51:00 +0000

Here is a cool video about the development of the Internet. It is a "Youtube", so you probably can only see this from home. Enjoy.

EdTech 2007 Highlights

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 16:29:00 +0000

This year's EdTech was pretty rewarding for me, so I'm going to include a summary of the sessions I attended.
Wednesday 12 noon: I was a volunteer "card swiper" at my first session at the pre-conferenece. This session was conducted by the keynote speaker, Deneen Frazier Bowen. It was entitled "The Power of Story: Digital Style". It was very powerful. As students personalize a story when they create it, it becomes a powerful learning tool.
Wednesday 2:30pm: I was a volunteer swiper here as well. The room was so crowded that I was not able to take in this session, but will follow up on her online handouts whenever they are posted. This session was entitled, "Free Technology Tools: Past, Present, and Future".
Thursday 8-9am: Website Work
Thursday 9:30-10:30am: Building Accessible Websites: This session was conducted by Christine Moore of College of Charleston and had a lot of resources I found useful. I hope to have a future blog/podcast about this topic. Of course the World Wide Web Consortium was an important recource.
Thursday 10:30-1:15 Exhibition Hall Time - I actually won something!! - A cold laminating machine - really cool.
Thursday 1:15-2:15pm: "Classroom Adventures with GPS" - Great presentation, very informative. This is a great tool for the classroom. I missed Kevin's session on a similar topic, but I'm sure his was great as well. I would recommend checking out the online handout when it becomes available in a few weeks.
Thursday 2:30-3:30pm: "Feed the Mind with RSS". Good summary and application of rss with referring to bloglines and googlereader.
Thursday 4-5pm: Website Work.
Friday 8:30-9:30 am: The session I wanted to attend was a "no show", but it worked out nicely as I benefited greatly from the session I attended - "Creating On-line Photo Galleries with Free Web Services (Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa). This was a very informative session. The slideshow on my previous post was made during this sesson. I would recommend getting the handouts (I'll give you the link to check to see when these are posted - may take a few weeks).
Friday 9:45-10:45am: Website work.
Friday 11-12noon: "From the Computer Classroom to Online Learning: Learning to Use Technology with Technology". This session was presented by a couple of professors at USC-Aiken as they discussed the transformation from face to fact instruction to online instruction. They use Blackboard, so it was good to see their use of Blackboard for instruction. I got some ideas for the online Blackboard course I teach for the district.
The conference ended at noon. I enjoyed talking to vendors and actually won two items; a cool laminator and a digital photo frame - quite exciting.
During this visit I was able to spend time with relatives I have here at the Beach. We had a great time together. Disappointingly, I did not set one foot on the beach and only saw the beach from a distance through misty rain.
At some point in the future, you may search and download handouts from the edtech sessions here.

EdTech 2007

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 15:11:00 +0000

SC EdTech 07

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 02:02:00 +0000

This week is EdTech at Myrtle Beach and I'm very excited about getting to go and connect with other professionals interested in technology and education. I know that many of the Greenville County Webmasters will be there as well. Please make sure to give me a "yell" if you see me. I plan to attend as many sessions as possible to try to connect with the latest "best practices" in technology. I will be working while at the beach, so email if you have questions.
My goal is to try to put together a podcast summary of my experiences from SC EdTech to share with everyone.
I've updated some things on googledocs, highlighting additions in green and possible deletions in yellow. If you have any ideas about the teacher and school website evaluation tools, please try to give your input on googledocs by mid-November.
A cool site recommendation for this blog is Pageflakes. This is a customizable feed reader that you can set up and get all of your favorite feeds on one single page. My pageflakes page has my hotmail account, gmail account, pictures and events from Greenville, Greenville weather, Fox news, Tech feeds, Daily Dilbert, and much more. Check it out and you may decide to make this your new browser homepage.

New Navigations on the Horizons

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 00:09:00 +0000

There are some new navigations on the horizon for those schools who wish to make changes. Unfortunately, they must currently be created with Dreamweaver. But after being created they can be edited with FrontPage. Below are some examples of how these look:

These button styles are available as a plugin from F-source, which enables these powerful, navigation menus which do not invade the web page real estate. Charlotte at Woodmont Middle was, as far as I know, the first to introduce these to the district and you can see these at her site. Brannon, at Bryson Middle has a similar type of navigation which is web page friendly. Southside (url is currently secretive), our recently scandalous school, will soon unveil their new site which utilizes one of the above menu styles.

Another cool feature for you to consider is the new calendar in use at some schools. Brannon turned me on to this calendar which is a free download from fullrevolution.com. It is a very simple calendar to employ and once you set it up it is ongoing and easy to maintain. You will love it. No more uploading 12 calendars to your site every year. This calendar is ongoing and so easy. One of the files is an "html" file so you have to utilize and iframe for this to work. I'm in hopes that someone energetic (hint, hint, Brannon!) will be able to produce some step-by-step instructions for us, otherwise I'll try to get these done sometime soon for you all.

Keep up the great work!

20 Years of Computer Technology

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 20:28:00 +0000

Twenty years ago I began my first year at Greenville High School (now Greenville High Academy of Academic Excellence). Back then at about this time of the year I was introduced to my first computer experience - the Apple IIe. Prior to this I had computophobia and had no interest in learning. But my colleague, Ron Burris, who still teaches biology at GHS, showed me how to use the Apple IIe for word processing and grades. That's when it all began for me. I remember getting a grant for an lcd panel that could be placed on an overhead projector so that the computer screen could be seen. That was the latest and greatest in technology. We've come a long way with our Smart boards and Prometean boards from those days of old, not to mention the myriad other forms of technology that we use.
Later this month we will have a couple of breeze sessions for those who wish to volunteer to help develop web guidelines for websites and rubrics for evaluating them. This will be used by a commitee that will be formed to select the best teacher and school websites.
I'm working on a redesign of the district website. Hopefully, by the end of the year, we'll have a new look. I'll keep you posted.

Practice Run Breeze Session

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 00:22:00 +0000

We will have a practice run Breeze session on Tuesday afternoon around 3 pm. I'll be in my office and you can click on this link to access Breeze. When the page loads, select "login as a guest". At this point you will then enter the meeting room. This will give those of you who have questions to come and ask them. If you have a mic, you may use it, but you must have ear buds on to do this so that the background delay is not confusing.
When you get a chance, check out Brannon Carter's site at Bryson Middle School. What a fantastic job he has done in designing his site and providing some very interesting tools for web visitors. Brannon definitely has some advanced techniques going on. Way to go, Brannon.
The session on Wednesday will be informal. I plan to introduce myself to those of you I haven't yet met. Then I'll go over some hot topics in the district (Teacher Websites, Net Trekker, etc). Then I'll briefly mention some important "best practices" to keep in mind. At this point I'll open it up for questions. The session will be recorded for those who cannot come. I plan to use Breeze from time to time to meet you individually in this virtual environment. Some of you have pressing issues and we may resort to Breeze to try to resolve them.
Onscreen tutorial are still in the works.

School is Fast Approaching / Web Resources

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 02:58:00 +0000

"August is almost here and I am not ready!!" Do you feel this way? I have felt this same anxiety in the past at this time of the summer anticipating the coming students and the lesson plans that need to be tweeked, and the need to think about the mistakes I made last year and focus on not repeating them again this year. And then there is the website to work on as well. I know that many of you are super stressed and I appreciate your hard work on the websites in the face of all of the other demands of your schedule.
Well, I don't have another podcast ready yet, but I wanted to share a couple of websites with you that I've found helpful.
First This website - has some good basic information for beginners to intermediate. You might find some good code tricks here and there is also a newsletter that comes to your inbox if you wish to subscribe to it. It is usually interesting with useful information.
Another good resource is a British podcast and website run by Paul Boag. His website is boagworld, which also the title of his podcast. He actually has two podcasts which I listen to weekly. His other podcast is with .net magazine with the same podcast name. These podcasts are usually nearly an hour and have a lot of the latest and greatest information. Sometimes you have to overlook a little crudeness, but not much.
Hope to have another podcast up soon. It will involve looking at the dhtml menus and the javascript code that produces them. We will look at onscreen views of the code and how to make changes to your menu by changing the code. Should be helpful.

First Podcast - Episode 1

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 02:05:00 +0000

Today's blog with mark the inauguration of the podcast that will be associated with this blog. In this podcast, there are onscreen captures of the basic webmaster session that I presented last week. We discussed some webmaster "best practices" that I strongly recommend to all webmasters. While I will be fleixible in allowing school webmasters freedom to do much of what you want, I think there are some basic practices that we should all move in a direction toward adopting. These are covered in this podcast. The podcast is either in flash format or M4V Ipod format. In addition it will soon be subscribable through Itunes and Google.
Please feel free to provide feedback. If you disagree with some of my "suggestions", let me know why you disagree. I know that you webmasters are stretched to the limits sometimes and that you job is often a thankless one. But I know that many of you put in long hours trying to enhance and improve your sites. I'm in hopes that these onscreen tutorial podcasts will be found useful and beneficial to you. Keep up the good work!!
Starting Monday and for the next ten school days, I'll be teaching Intel at Northwood Middle School. Feel free to drop by if you would like to chat or have questions.

Busy Times / Steep Learning Curve

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 16:11:00 +0000

These past two weeks have been quite busy as my first two weeks as the "sole" webmaster, now that John is gone. I'm sure he's having a blast traveling the east coast on his bike. I am truly jealous. John bought a new laptop and video camera for his 6-week trip and promised to put up pictures and possibly videos to his site.
Yesterday, I spent quite a lot of time with David Craig from Eastside. He took my place as webmaster at Eastside and will no doubt do a great job. He pointed me to some links of interest that you may want to check out. One website is coffeecup.com and has a free download for teachers at the bottom of the page. You have to fill out a form with your school info. One part of the software is a neat flash calendar that I found impressive. You can see it in action on David's Eastside Athletics page. This little calendar seems powerful and occupies a small amount of real estate.
Next week will be the Webmaster training courses. There are still spots available. We'll hold our class in room 114 at Greenville Middle School - just down the hall from ETS. We will talk about the new teacher websites briefly and then get right in to the content. I'll generally stress the importance of separating content from design. Basic classes will go over site organization and archiving. Intermediate classes will go over the dhtml menus and staff directories. The advanced class will involve communicating with the database through forms to turn over content responsibility to others.
Podcasts with onscreen tutorials are still in the plans.

Welcome to my blog/podcast!!

noreply@blogger.com (Michael) — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 04:26:00 +0000

Welcome to my blog/podcast. This page will soon become a resource for Greenville County school webmasters as there will be onscreen video tutorials available to cover a range of topics from my basic philosophy and vision for the school webpages to tutorials on basic to advanced techniques that you can use to optimize and enhance your website.
Let me first say that my job is to support you and help you. Please don't hesitate to call me if I can ever be of assistance. Having been a school webmaster myself for five years I fully understand your frustrations. In many ways you have a thankless job. Most people have no clue as to the amount of time and effort you put in bringing content to your site, but they are quick to criticize and point out our errors. I understand that many of you spend hours developing your site and adding content. I appreciate all that you do to bring our sites to a level that you, your school, and the district can be proud of.
There are two major points that I want to stress to begin with. These are two areas that I would like for you to seriously keep in mind as you continue to build your sites. These represent commonly accepted "best practices" in web design and development and my major focus on the school and district websites. First, content is king. Before you think about fancy clip-art, animations, widgets, or other special web functions, you should make sure that every page is RICH in content. Many webmasters become guilty of being so self-focused that they spend so much time on all the things that they can do on a web page rather than the content. A web visitor's main objective is to find content at your site and will not be impressed with any "cool effects" if they cannot locate the content they came searching for. In addition the content on your front page should be interesting and non-static - that is, changing with additional "fresh" information. Your front page is your "welcome mat" to your site. If you have the same thing on your front page all the time, some visitors will lose interest. But if you change your content by including announements, news items, pictures, or calendar items, visitors will return to your site to stay informed with the "happenings" at your school.
Secondly and for the sake your survival, we all need to strive to separate content from design. Your navigational menu, top and bottom site information, and basic page formatting (CSS) need to be in separate external files and not on all pages. This will definitely make your job easier down the road. Most of you already do this, but some of you have not yet come on board. Please call me if I can help you move in this direction.
One last comment... Those of you new webmasters -- please do not come in and un-do what was mentioned above in my second point. New webmasters (and you know that I am one as well) often come in with fresh ideas and make radical changes. As long as you maintain a separation of content and design while you make these changes, I can live with that. But if you make radical changes and un-do work that others have done to separate content from design, that will just cause a lot of extra work and headaches for me and whoever takes your place when you move on to bigger and better things.
Well, these are just some things to think about. I will be posting regularly (I hope) and will begin to produce onscreen tutorials by August (hopefully).
Stay tuned.