Kassblog

All Kinds Of Minds in action

Sun, 8 Nov 2009 14:19:25 -0800

You may know the whole-brain teaching philosophy called All Kinds of Minds. A majority of our teachers attend professional development days to learn this brain-based approach to teaching students, one part of our approach to progressive education. Teachers learn to construct learning activities that work for different types of learners. Students learn to identify their own learning strengths and weaknesses and appreciate the unique set of qualities that each person possesses. Such an approach gives students responsibility for their own learning. In the following video, second grade students share what they have learned about their own skills and brains.

The video also serves as a fine example of teacher use of technology to share student learning with the school community. This second grade teacher collected media, produced this video, and presented it to parents without requesting any assistance from our IT department. Well done!

tags: allkindsofminds, learning, secondgrade, metacognition, school, imovie, techintegration, curriculum, pedagogy

Amateur Video On Your School Website

Wed, 4 Nov 2009 19:51:03 -0800

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video must be worth a million. Motion picture and audio better simulate "being there" than a long article or photo gallery. Video may capture the subtle cues of emotional expression and the energy of the moment that help a viewer understand the intangible values of your organization. Now, it is possible to capture video with a small, portable device and transfer it to the web with just a few clicks.

Why isn't online video more popular on independent school websites? One reason may be the apprehension of some about posting "home videos" on your school website or social network site. Given all the care that we put into our print publications, we may wish to hold videos to the same standard. That would be nice, but It takes many hours (and/or dollars) to create professional-quality video. Perhaps we should hold video to a different standard than written articles. Could a new standard for school website video include amateur content?

Authenticity

In the new web, content has trumped style. YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, and Twitter have demonstrated the greater value to users of authentic content over quality of presentation. YouTube is the fourth most popular site on the web. The President of the United States addresses the nation via YouTube. Cellphone reports of political unrest and natural disasters run on major network news broadcasts. At times like these, the value of amateur video is the authenticity of the content, not its production quality.

We may apply the same test to school events, even though they may not convey the same impact as mass demonstrations and natural disasters. Take the following video. I shot this at our annual homecoming event, a varsity soccer game attended by alumni and long-time faculty. It may well capture essential aspects of our school better than highly polished writing in a glossy magazine, especially if you studied with these teachers 20 years ago.

Choose to film school events that naturally capture the special qualities of your institution.

Edit as much as time allows

While you may not have the time or expertise to create professional-quality video, you can still produce video of reasonable quality. Depending on how you learn best, you may benefit from attending a beginner's training for iMovie or Adobe Elements Premiere. Consider using a tripod to stabilize the picture and an external microphone to capture good audio. Develop a basic sense of composition, and timing. Learn to add just enough transition effects that your clips smoothly link together. Cut at least 90% of your original footage, keeping just the very best scenes.

Track your success

Following the progress of your new videos is essential to inform your own publishing choices and convince others that the experiment is working. Social media websites track the number of views of each of your content items. This allows you to track the number of video playbacks, one potential measure of success.

If you use Google Analytics on your school website, check out the "time on page" measure. Larger values suggest that more viewers actually watched the video all the way through.

Determining perceived quality is more difficult. Comments may provide some clue. If hundreds of people view a video and only one person complains about video quality, then you're probably on the right track.

Start on your social media sites

You may not want to post your first video experiments to your public-facing websites. Facebook and YouTube are chock full of amateur video, so people will expect to see work of lower production quality there. The community pages on your school website may be another good place to start. Yet don't stop there. Collect data on these first experiments in order to make an informed decision about whether to extend the experiment to the public-facing pages on your main school website.

On perfection

A founding faculty member at a well-regarded school recently retired. In his farewell remarks, he cautioned the community to resist perfectionism.

We are all under the illusion that we can and should be perfect all the time. If we don�t do �excellent� work everyday, then we don�t �measure up� to [our] standards. An awful lot of us impose these unrealistic expectations on our selves, and it�s not healthy. [...] Our school culture unduly puts pressures on us to look perfect in the eyes of everyone else. Stop!

tags: video, website, youtube, facebook, school

Microsoft Entourage, Exchange Web Services edition

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 08:07:30 -0700

This new version of Microsoft's email client for Mac has not gotten much attention, but anyone who uses Entourage to connect to a Microsoft Exchange Server should consider installing the free upgrade. Version 13.0.0 is also known as the "Exchange Web Services" edition. At the time of writing, you need to download and install the update manually from the Microsoft Mac website. It only works with Exchange Server 2007

Microsoft has changed the technology the Entourage uses to exchange data with an Exchange Server from WebDAV to Exchange Web Services. This is as important as it sounds! You can notice the effect most clearly when synchronizing large numbers of items, such as when you migrate accounts or sync with a public folder. In my experience, the rate of data transfer has improved by many times. Beware that the upgrade does erase your local Entourage profile, so back up any Entourage data stored locally on your machine first. Any data already stored in your Exchange account will reload from there, so you don't have to worry about that.

As with the last few versions of Entourage, the EWS edition talks to your organization's client access server (which also hosts webmail), so Entourage works just as well off-campus and on.

Entourage 13 also synchronizes notes and to-do items, which previous versions did not.

One of our users files his mail into dozens of folders. With Entourage 12, his folders took so long to sync that the Sent Items folder would remain several days out of date, never having the chance to fully synchronize. Version 13 saved our bacon by (presumably) synchronizing more quickly and being able to keep all of his folders updated.

Incidentally, we are also using the EWS protocol in one of our home-grown web scripts to publish a calendar on our website for employee use.

Microsoft Entourage 2008, Exchange Web Services edition

tags: entourage, microsoft, exchange, web, services

Training pays off

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:59:00 -0700

Training is one key success factor for our new website. Since June, I have personally led 15 group training sessions on how to post content to the new website, and a handful of us have worked with individuals to answer questions and help them accomplish their website goals. Divisions heads have required teachers to update certain parts of the website, such as classroom pages and our curriculum map.

49 users have been trained as "content managers." I required employees to get this training before allowing them to edit core pages on the site. Teachers could gain access to classroom pages without attending a training, though many benefitted from doing so. The carrot worked, as many users got a more thorough introduction to the site than might have been the case had I not required it to gain access. Incidentally, I allow trained content managers to edit just about any part of the site -- the more eyes, the better!

86 users have posted 1,500 pages to the website, not including me! (I have posted another 7,000, mostly by migrating our curriculum map and school archives into the site.) Most of the 86 users are employees, but a handful of parents (volunteer coordinators, parents of athletes) and students (science project and honors arts bloggers) have been active.

I feel like one has a limited window of opportunity when launching a new technology to hold people's attention, build their skills, and solve issues with the setup. Today, people largely find the site easy to use and like the appearance. A limited number of exceptions exist, of course.

The website tour video has been viewed 437 times. The video outlined the main features of the site for users. Not everyone can attend a training, especially parents. We promoted the video through a home page badge and by reference in school newsletters. I can't say how much the video has helped parents and students learn to use the site, but I imagine it has helped some.

tags: training, website, drupal

Writing student reports

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:21:07 -0700

As I write fourth and fifth grade student narrative reports for the first time, I am enjoying using Moodle's activity reports to add detail to each one. From the Participants list, I access each student's profile page, which includes a tab for Reports. Moodle tracks every time a student views a resource or completes and online activity. I am then able to add comments like, "[student] played two games about online safety eight times!" I can also see what students are sufficiently excited by the website to visit it outside of class time. Our progressive elementary school does not have grades, so I don't have much use for the grading and summary functions in Moodle. Go Moodle!

tags: moodle, progressive, school

Website Baker Still Trucking

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:43:41 -0700

I just upgraded an installation of Website Baker to the new 2.8 version. This basic CMS has been serving a couple of sites I run well for a number of years now, and they keep improving it. Last version, WSB switched to FCKeditor for their WYSIWYG editor, improving an issue the software had editing complex pages. I chose to install from scratch and then migrate pages over by hand, because we don't have many static pages on this site, and I remember the instructions for updating in place are pretty manual. It went very smoothly.

Website Baker has good page creation tools, a straightforward way to post files and news items, and excellent image and media management tools. It requires little maintenance compared to more fully-featured website applications.

My WSB sites: San Diego Hat Co, Maru-a-Pula School

tags: website, baker,, cms

Open Blackbaud group

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 21:18:53 -0700

Come join the Open Blackbaud group! Adam Gerson and I want to get together individuals who are writing SQL queries directly against Blackbaud database tables. We have found a number of people doing this sort of work on their own, so it seems like a good time to share our new knowledge. Already, Adam, Tom Phelan, and I have posted a number of queries that others may find useful.

tags: blackbaud, open, sql, query

Teachers teaching teachers

Fri, 9 Oct 2009 15:38:23 -0700

Ten teachers attended our professional development day today. Seven also presented! Interestingly, all but two were from the upper school, atypical for our professional development activities. We followed a model in which teachers did all the presenting and led the group discussion, which led to an energizing day that focused squarely on teacher interests. Here is a summary of content covered.

Ginia shared the sophomore English Moodle site, which is organized by type of assignment (tests, recitations, essays, etc.) instead of unit or week. Forum is more useful than chat for "decentered discussion." Encourages different voices to speak in the class. Art reported that education research in modern language acquisition has found that success in written, online discourse has transferred to oral participation in class. Teachers differed on how firmly they held students to proper writing form, though people agreed on the desire to do so. The best tools allow one to print a single document from the discussion of the day. English teachers use the forum tool to set up a space where students may post essay drafts and other students may post replies and response papers. It can be difficult to compare three drafts of an essay posted to Moodle. Ginia reflected that students don't automatically think to check the website for course information. They appear to be more mindful of paper. Lisa and Daisy speculated that upcoming students will be more automatic about this due to online experiences in the younger grades.

Tony built on Ginia's presentation by showing the Junior English Moodle site. He used one discussion forum for students to write and improve their questions in preparation for the upcoming Tracy Kidder assembly next week. The site uses the Moodle groups feature to keep section discussions separate. The site is most valuable to keep all of the drafts of the writing process in one place for the teacher and student to access. Can be a challenge for the kid who has a hard time staying on task, but teachers can help by monitoring computer use in the room.

Paul commented that the English program may have led to students' higher comfort level with typing lab reports in science. While this has improved the quality of presentation, students are struggling to produce good diagrams in this format. This has led to a trend in which many students prefer to find an existing diagram and copy it into their document instead of drawing an original illustration. It's interesting that the use of Photoshop here is widespread, yet use of Illustrator is rare.

Lauren shared a community, service learning project with which her students are currently engaged. She won a small grant to fund this project, working with our development and communications departments to refine her proposal. Her class is creating an online presentation of the Hispanic Presence in Oregon to complement a production at Portland's Miracle Theater. Their project compares the hispanic presence during the depression to the present day. The curriculum has evolved as opportunities have appeared to interview good subjects around town. They have found no interview subjects from the depression era, but an author helped them understand that the lack of found information is useful information in itself. Contextualize this finding and move forward.

The theater director challenged the kids to make the site truly interactive. So far, they have decided to add a comment box to their website, in order to gather more stories. Also, students will be present at each performance in order to explain the project and potentially collect interviews on the spot! Students are collecting footage with Flip cameras, notwithstanding the lack of proper video lighting. The historical archives has commented that a serious deficit of raw material exists on this topic. The students' footage has the potential to become an important research source, especially if the site persists and continues to collect footage after the theater performances are over.

Students are using the course Moodle site to manage the project, including notes, interview forms, and links to web-based resources. The teacher has stepped back and left room for the students to plan and execute.

The class built and distributed a survey using our internal survey tool. They got 79 responses to a survey about Hispanic Heritage Month, including a giant collection of narrative comments, which were really useful in guiding their work.

Lisa shared new work she is doing with students to post book reviews into our Follett Destiny library catalog -- really exciting work. This has potential to change student perception of the library catalog from an external authority to a community resource. Already, fourth grade students are excited about adding items to this resource. They also rate the books on a five star system. We'd like to post audio reviews as well, and while Destiny may not support audio file playback, we may post them elsewhere and then post links to the catalog. Lisa also demonstrated how a teacher may create a public resource list of library items for students or other teachers to view.

Roberto shared a long-distance correspondence between a Catlin Gabel alum in Quito, Ecuador and Catlin Gabel students. Topics include poverty, energy consumption, and women's rights, among others. Spanish V students are using an online bulletin board for this purpose.

Roberto also underscored the value of his document camera, which he uses every day. It helps him save time and paper. Roberto uses it for flashcards, homework correction, and editing. Lauren has used it for coins and maps.

For two years, Roberto's Spanish V class has not used books. All of the resources are posted online. The Spanish I, II, and III textbooks have an online site that includes online activities and audio components. This has been especially valuable for students with learning differences or who want to slow down the audio to listen to it more slowly.

Pat demonstrated his use of the social format in Moodle courses, which transforms the course home page into a student discussion center. He also demonstrated the use of embedded images, YouTube videos, and RSS feeds within his course Moodle sites.

Dale showed how he uses the school website and email system to engage parents in narrative discussion about student artwork well before the semester reporting period. He posts photos of student illustration to the website and then sends an email message to parents with suggestions for what to discuss about the artwork with their children.

tags: moodle, professional, development

Volunteer signups

Wed, 7 Oct 2009 21:18:11 -0700

We are using Drupal's signup module to manage volunteer signups for large events. Signup handles so many needs so well. We have a dedicated content type for major volunteer signups, but we can also attach signups to any event, date-enabled or not! Volunteer coordinators may specify the confirmation message that volunteers see right after signing up, as well as another message for reminder messages. Volunteers may see a list of their own signups. I allowed volunteer coordinators to create new events via a free-tagging taxonomy field.

I added a few features to meet our needs. Out of the box, Signup doesn't offer anything for large events that have lots of different jobs, dates, and time slots. I added a custom field to the content type and a form_submit hook to a custom module in order to accept a list of dates and clone the submitted node to as many dates as needed. Volunteer coordinators still have to submit one form for each job, but that's okay, because they tend to have distinct descriptions as well.

Signup comes with an administrative view to list all signups, which was a great base to filter by event (taxonomy term). I then installed Views Bonus in order to get CSV export. That way, volunteer coordinators can download the data without the help of a website administrator. Another view displays just the taxonomy terms attached to signups, which serves as a main menu of all available events (showing all available dates and times would generate far too many items).

I had to make one change to Signup module code. Volunteer staff wanted to display how many people had signed up versus how many slots were available. I created a new computed field in the module itself, because I couldn't think of another way to do this.

It's great that so much of this may be assigned by permission so that individuals with the volunteer coordinator role may help themselves to set up new events, jobs, dates and times, and download results.

tags: drupal, signup, volunteer

Network basics

Wed, 7 Oct 2009 21:02:50 -0700

Fourth grade students have spent the last few classes exploring their new network accounts. We started with username and password basics and set their passwords. Students completed a treasure hunt to find as many website-based services they could access with their new logins. By now, the students have a done a nice job remembering the new passwords that they chose!

Monday, we took a break from network accounts and got to know the insides of three computers that I had taken apart. Today, we asked the question, "when you save to the server, where does the file go?" We took a mini field trip to follow the route the fiber takes from the lower school to the server room, where we found the copied file and got to know the other servers a bit.

Next week, we'll start typing practice and begin a more curriculum-integrated unit on research.

Fourth and Fifth Grades

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:28:18 -0700

It's been a month since I last posted here? Wow. Two new responsibilities have kept me busy: managing our new web site configuration and teaching fourth and fifth grade technology classes. I see these lovely kids twice a week for forty minutes each. It feels exciting and appropriate to get back into the classroom after too many years in the office. Luckily, I still have all of my other responsibilities to keep me busy! ;^)

Fourth grade students take technology classes for the first time this year. They started typing practice in third grade but otherwise have had only occasional computer contact in their classrooms. We started with class expectations, explained the Smart Board, and then set up usernames and passwords to access network resources. Fifth graders got started similarly but then left for a week to visit three farms as part of their "Pitchfork to Plate" curriculum.

My main goal this year is to have technology periods build on activities taking place in the rest of the kids' curriculum. The first two projects are already underway. Fourth grade students start keeping a reading log, and I've build an online database for them to use. They will use their newly acquired network accounts to access the database and post their first book of the year. This will allow for a simple lesson in structured data, fields, records, and reports. As the year goes on, they will see patterns in their own reading: what titles, authors, genres, and difficulty levels of books they have read. Once we have a fair bit of data, the reports will become more complex, and we will take a look at reading patterns across the entire class. I am excited to start the year with databases, which most adults conflate with spreadsheets!

Fifth grade students will build paper-based diagrams of how substances move through the farms they have studied. Whether studying milk, meat, or corn, the students will sketch a plan, search for clipart, and each create one or two frames for their diagrams. We are using as an example National Geographic digrams (though we won't quite approximate the quality of their illustrations). We successfully resisted the temptation to use presentation software, which would only allow us to view one step in the process at a time. It's important to us to be able to view the whole process at once, and we have the billboard space to spare! I suppose we could also create some extra-wide web pages with horizontal scrollbars, a favorite trick from the old days.

On a technical note, I searched for an hour to find a good source of free, vector, farm clipart, only to find the best source under my nose: Microsoft Office Clip Gallery! Too bad their clipart objects only download properly in Safari, and Firefox is our default browser!

Another tech point: I am using Apple Remote Desktop in the lab to make batch changes to the 22 computers in there. It's allright, but I miss the capabilities of Workgroup Manager (but don't really want to do the back-end Windows-Mac integration work there, either).

I'd like to expand my professional learning network to include more elementary tech educators. Drop me a line if you're in that group!

tags: elementary, technology, teaching

Apple laptops not holding up in students' hands

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 22:09:27 -0700

During summer laptop maintenance, we touch every teacher and student machine to perform updates, change some configuration settings, and fix hardware issues. As of today, we have 40 Macs out for service out of a total of about 200 machines that have passed through our hands. Far and away the leading category of repair is MacBook computers with cracked plastic cases.

I know our kids are hard on these computers, but they also carry them to school, through five to seven periods, to afternoon activities, and then back home each day. We want the kids to use the computers, after all. This repair rate creates hours of additional work for us and days of delays to the students.

Why oh why won't a computer manufacturer produce a laptop truly designed for highly mobile, high-use individuals like students?

tags: apple, macbook, hardware, school, laptop, program

Teaching Digital Citizenship

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:48:14 -0700

In a meeting yesterday, two division heads, our laptop specialist, and I met to kick off an effort to build a K-12 digital citizenship curriculum. We are trying to avoid a past habit of conflating discussions of teaching good decision-making about technology with the formulation of technology policies and restrictions. We want to start this conversation from a different set of assumptions: that our students are deeply immersed in digital technologies, so we need to find out how they spend their time online, what they value there, and how that may continue without impeding their participation in the school's academic program. Next step: a conversation with all four division heads to decide how to facilitate this conversation with our teachers.

A number of teachers find ubiquitous use of social technologies disruptive and distracting. Discussions and of new technology policies will continue, perhaps even leading to their implementation, but this should not substitute for actual teaching and learning about life in a digital age.

These discussions also represent a new threshold in the role we have been trying to create for the IT department in the academic life of the school. For the first time in recent memory, IT staff will be teaching classes (some for just a few days, others for longer), deliberately inserting ourselves into the academic life of the school in order to inspire more conversation about what we should teach and what conversations we should have with our students.

We will simultaneously teach new classes and collect data on student technology use. Onward with both efforts! Classes start in just two weeks.

tags: digitalcitizenship

Teacher meetings

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:26:34 -0700

I have attended a couple of really valuable start of year meetings with teachers in the last two days. The first was to plan the fourth and fifth grade technology curriculum for the year with those homeroom teachers. I am teaching fourth and fifth grade technology for the first time and really looking forward to it! Our plan is to align technology activities throughout the year with classroom activities taking place with the students' other teachers, whether in homeroom, arts, languages, or P.E. So far, we have identified the units with which a technology activity seems to fit best -- in productivity application use, publishing, research, or other technology theme. We will also give some time to technology as its own subject of study, for example to improve the students' keyboard skills or develop sequential and logical reasoning skills (a.k.a. programming) using Scratch. Classes begin in two weeks' time!

Today's meeting was with three upper school arts teachers who are really keen to further develop the program's website presence. Given the role of the arts in encouraging students to present or perform their work in a public space, it's a natural fit for the teachers to explain the design of the school's arts program and publish loads of student work online. They will be using our site's new photo gallery and embedded media features to make this happen. We also devoted some time to the possibility of student portfolio publication and blogging, so that students could publish their work directly to the website. When upper school faculty meetings begin, the upper school teachers will give some consideration to this question: what is the pedagogical value of students publishing (or performing) their work to a general, public audience?

Discussing teaching, learning, and technology with teachers. This is some of our IT department's most important work.

tags: technology, elementary, school, arts, publishing

Facebook fan page launched

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 14:35:45 -0700

We launched the Catlin Gabel Facebook fan page today. We are launching the tool to provide a strong community discussion space, using a technology that is already common. If it also helps us get the word out about news from campus or attract new applicants to the school, that would be nice too, but that's not the primary goal. As a result, we decided to launch just a single page for alumni, students, parents, and employees instead of launching a separate page for alumni.

To build momentum, we have asked a number of people to make a deliberate effort to post in the next two weeks, so that visitors see some useful content. We also opened our wall to all fans to post content, in order to amplify the community aspect of the page. Our main web site will remain our main one-way communication portal. Facebook will be for community connections and conversations.

Catlin Gabel on Facebook

tags: facebook, catlingabel, socialnetworking, finalsitesocial, edsocialmedia

Calendar request web form for MS Outlook

Tue, 4 Aug 2009 16:52:27 -0700

For a while, we have used the moderated folder and custom form features of Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange to allow users to request school vehicles for trips and other purposes. It didn't work well. Our users view this public folder calendar through Outlook, Entourage, and Outlook Web Access. Only Outlook supports custom forms. Public folders were difficult to find. They don't sync well with Entourage. It was a mess.

With our upgrade to Exchange 2007, we decided to move away from public folders and create buses as resources instead. At the same time, we wanted to build an easier-to-use request form for users. We wondered whether we could build a simple web script (in Perl or PHP) and send Outlook a calendar object that it could use.

It worked! Uncharacteristically, Microsoft uses an open, standard format for calendar entries. Below, I have reproduced part of a script I wrote that sends a .vcs (vcalendar) file as an attachment that our transportation coordinator may open in Outlook, review, and add to a calendar. May other potential uses for this exist.

Please do try this code and let me know any improvements you make. This is only part of our script code. It won't work on your server as is!





#!/usr/bin/perl



use Time::Local; 

use CGI qw(:standard);

use Net::SMTP;



sub write_form {

    

    param(-name=>'action', -value=>'save_form');

	

	$output = start_form . 

	    p . "Please complete the following form to request a school vehicle." . 

	    "<div style=\"border:1px solid black; padding:5px; margin:20px 0 20px 0;\"><b>Required Information</b>" . 

	    p . "Activity: " . textfield(-name=>'activity', -size=>60) . 

	    p . "Destination: " . textfield(-name=>'destination', -size=>60) . 

	    p . "Depart date: " . popup_menu(-name=>'depart_month', -values=>['',@months], -labels=>\%month_labels) . ' ' . popup_menu(-name=>'depart_day', -values=>['',@mdays]) . ' ' . popup_menu(-name=>'depart_year', -values=>['',@years], -default=>$year) . ' Hour: ' . popup_menu(-name=>'depart_hour', -values=>['',@hours], -labels=>\%hours_labels) . ' Min: ' . popup_menu(-name=>'depart_min', -values=>['',@mins]) .

	    p . "Return date: " . popup_menu(-name=>'return_month', -values=>['', @months], -labels=>\%month_labels) . ' ' . popup_menu(-name=>'return_day', -values=>['',@mdays]) . ' ' . popup_menu(-name=>'return_year', -values=>['',@years], -default=>$year) . ' Hour: ' . popup_menu(-name=>'return_hour', -values=>['',@hours], -labels=>\%hours_labels) . ' Min: ' . popup_menu(-name=>'return_min', -values=>['',@mins]) .

	    p . "Driver: " . textfield(-name=>'driver', -size=>'30') . 

	    '  ' . "Contact: " .  textfield(-name=>'contact', -size=>'30') . 

	    p . "Number of students + adults: " . textfield(-name=>'total_number', -size=>'3') . 

	    p . "Depart from: " . checkbox_group(-name=>'depart_from', -values=>['Gym','Theater']) . 

	    p . "Division/Department: " . textfield(-name=>'division_department', -size=>'20') . "</div>" . 



	    "<div style=\"border:1px solid black; padding:5px; margin:20px 0 20px 0;\"><b>Optional Information</b>" . 

	    p . "Rental vehicle types (e.g., minivan, SUV, cargo van): " . textfield(-name=>'rental_vehicle_types', -size=>'40') . 

	    p . "Other details: " . checkbox_group(-name=>'other_details', -values=>['Cargo van','Drop off only','Pick up only','Overnight trip']) . 

	    p . "Special requests: " . textfield(-name=>'special_requests', -size=>'60') . "</div>" . 

	    p . submit(-name=>'submit', -value=>'Submit Request') . hidden(-name=>'action') . endform;



	$template =~ s/\$body/$output/;

	$template =~ s/\$title/Request Transportation/g;

	print header . $template;



}







sub save_form {



    # check for empty minute fields    

    if (!param('depart_min')) {param(-name=>'depart_min', -value=>'00');}

    if (!param('return_min')) {param(-name=>'return_min', -value=>'00');}



    # convert dates to GMT

    $depart_localtime = timelocal(0,param('depart_min'),param('depart_hour'),param('depart_day'),param('depart_month'),param('depart_year'));

    $return_localtime = timelocal(0,param('return_min'),param('return_hour'),param('return_day'),param('return_month'),param('return_year'));

    ($s,$n,$h,$d,$m,$y) = gmtime($depart_localtime); $y+=1900;

    $vcs_depart_time = $y . sprintf("%02d",$m) . sprintf("%02d",$d) . 'T' . sprintf("%02d",$h) . sprintf("%02d",$n) . sprintf("%02d",$s) . 'Z';

    ($s,$n,$h,$d,$m,$y) = gmtime($return_localtime); $y+=1900;

    $vcs_return_time = $y . sprintf("%02d",$m) . sprintf("%02d",$d) . 'T' . sprintf("%02d",$h) . sprintf("%02d",$n) . sprintf("%02d",$s) . 'Z';

	

	# format vcs file

	$vcs = "BEGIN:VCALENDAR

PRODID:-//Microsoft Corporation//Outlook MIMEDIR//EN

VERSION:1.0

BEGIN:VEVENT

DTSTART:$vcs_depart_time

DTEND:$vcs_return_time

LOCATION:" . param('destination') . "

DESCRIPTION;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:Activity: " . param('activity') . "=0D=0ADestination: " . param('destination') . "=0D=0ADepart time: " . param('depart_month') . "/" . param('depart_day') . "/" . param('depart_year') . " " . param('depart_hour') . ":" . param('depart_min') . "=0D=0AReturn time: " . param('return_month') . "/" . param('return_day') . "/" . param('return_year') . " " . param('return_hour') . ":" . param('return_min') . "=0D=0ADriver: " . param('driver') . "=0D=0AContact: " . param('contact') . "=0D=0ANumber of students + adults: " . param('total_number') . "=0D=0ADepart from: " . join(", ", param('depart_from')) . "=0D=0ADivision/Department: " . param('division_department') . "=0D=0ARental vehicle types: " . join(", ", param('rental_vehicle_types')) . "=0D=0AOther details: " . join(", ", param('other_details')) . "=0D=0ASpecial requests:" . param('special_requests') . "=0D=0A

SUMMARY:" . param('activity') . "

PRIORITY:3

END:VEVENT

END:VCALENDAR";

	

	# send mail

	$smtp = Net::SMTP->new('localhost');

    $smtp->mail($username.'@yourdomain.com');

    $smtp->to('facilitiestransportationcoordinator@yourdomain.com');

    $smtp->data();

    $smtp->datasend("To: Transportation Coordinator\n");

    $smtp->datasend("From: $fullname\n");

    $smtp->datasend("Subject: Transportation request\n");

    $smtp->datasend("MIME-Version: 1.0\n");

    $smtp->datasend("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"request.vcs\"\n");

    $smtp->datasend("Content-Type: application/text; name=request.vcs\n");

    $smtp->datasend("\n");

    $smtp->datasend($vcs . "\n\n");

    $smtp->dataend;

    $smtp->quit;

	

	# return html

    $output = "Thank you. The transportation coordinator will review this request and then assign it to a vehicle. Please check the transportation calendar in a day or two to confirm your reservation.<P><a href=$cgiurl>Submit another transportation request</a>";

	$template =~ s/\$body/$output/;

	$template =~ s/\$title/Transportation Request Sent/g;

	print header . $template;

	

	

}

tags: exchange, outlook, vcalendar, perl

The iPhone Paradox

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:10:30 -0700

I've had an iPod Touch for the last six months to get to know the iPhone OS and its legions of apps. Yes, the range of apps is extremely impressive. I downloaded these the other day. Here's the rub, though. If I don't regularly visit these sites on my computer, what's the chance that I would visit them on an iPhone? When would I actually have an opportunity to do this?

tags: iphone

New Catlin Gabel web site launched!

Thu, 2 Jul 2009 15:39:28 -0700

We launched the new Catlin Gabel web site yesterday morning! The first day went very smoothly. Thank you to those who sent feedback (especially the two with constructive comments). Most first reactions have been about graphic design and navigation. I'm sure that people will have more to say about functionality once they use the site to get things done.

We timed the launch for the very slowest week of summer, so that we could see how the site performs as the load increases up to the start of school. A handful of teachers and staff members are updating new sections of the site, such as Sustainable School and Global Education. Other parts of the site are missing content at present and will need to be populated before the start of school. I created an introductory video to call attention to some aspects of the site.

Far from being done with the site, I have a very long list of items to address, most notably continuing development work on our custom modules. Many remaining to-do items are to customize aspects of the Drupal interface that aren't quite the right match for our needs. Nonetheless, it feels great to have cleared a major hurdle!

Some of the recent posts on this blog describe the site's features and development process in greater detail.

tags: drupal, catlingabel, webdesign, edsocialmedia

PNAIS TechShare Conference

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:30:54 -0700

I just returned from three days at the PNAIS TechShare conference, located in the foothills of Mt. Hood. It was a great conference. Though very small (maybe 35 attendees), we attracted a critical mass of teachers, kept the conversation focused on teaching and learning, and enjoyed the retreat-like atmosphere of a resort hotel. Gaining face time with Northwest colleagues we usually only "see" through email was most valuable. I picked up a lot of useful sites and tools to support our global education initiatives and made several contacts at other schools who are doing very interesting work. Best of all, I shared the experience with two colleagues from my school, which should really help with implementation of these ideas this year. Go TechShare!

We did devote an hour's time to discussion of open source software. Interestingly, the conversation was not much different from similar talks two years ago. A lot of tech staff are still struggling with how to take the first steps to exploring open source software in their schools, and the categories of desktop, server, and web open-source software are mixed without much discrimination. I don't fully understand why open-source technologies are not treated like other new technologies. You find the time to learn it because it's interesting, your users are curious, and it has the potential to really help your operations. If it's strategically important to your school, then you find the time to study it. I hope that we may one day take this conversation to the next level within our community of northwest schools.

Wow, has the Apple revolution arrived to the state of Washington! A number of schools are now wrestling with Mac client-Windows network integration, as students have begun to show up on campus with MacBooks. A whole bunch of conference attendees sported iPhones (and complained about the spotty signal reception at the resort)!

We maintained our global ed theme throughout most of the conference. The best part for me was learning what interesting global trips other schools have undertaken (Seattle Academy, Overlake, Northwest Academy, Lakeside, among others). However, when I asked the teacher group how many had tried a virtual exchange, no hands went up! Maybe the right people weren't in the room, but I was surprised at the lack of virtual exchanges. Thankfully, the group received my presentation about our Gaza City Skype chat very well, and perhaps one or two will give it a try this year.

After a lovely retreat and conference experience up in the woods, I return to help launch our new web site tomorrow! Hopefully, by the end of day, you will see a whole new look and functionality at www.catlin.edu.

tags: globaled, pnaistechshare

Curriculum map in Drupal

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 22:12:14 -0700

Two weeks to go until live! This week, I migrated our school curriculum map from a custom system I authored into Drupal. This allows us to ensure the longevity of this web site resource, take advantage of Drupal's strengths in structuring content storage and display, and provide teachers with a very usable editing interface. The curriculum map stores over a thousands nodes and can be added to an existing Drupal site. This article assumes familiarity with Drupal 6 views, content construction kit, blocks, and very basic custom function programming. This isn't a step-by-step tutorial (maybe one day).

Curriculum map course content type holds courses. The description field is not yet populated but available for course descriptions. Taxonomy categories for division, grades, and subjects are applied to this content type. A node reference field is used to connect each curriculum map course node to as many curriculum map units as necessary. The autocomplete node reference widget is used to allow the user to re-order the units as desired. It may be difficult for a user to find the correct unit node using autocomplete if it is not named creatively. It may be a good upgrade to use a view to display more identifying information than the title for the autocomplete search.

Curriculum map unit content type has a textarea field for each curriculum map category. We use the following: essential questions, habits of mind, content, skills and processes, assessment, resources, multicultural dimension, and integrated learning. In retrospect, having so many categories created a lot of work for teachers, who had to populate some of these categories x each unit x each course they teach.

We authored module cgs_curriculum_map.module to migrate content from our old system into Drupal. It creates content and unit nodes, establishes node reference links between them, populates content fields, and attaches taxonomy terms. This is not necessary for schools starting a curriculum map from scratch.

When the system displays a curriculum map course node, the units also load in a table below the course description. This is accomplished by loading a block view that displays the curriculum map category content for each unit node referenced in the course node. The view is loaded into the content_bottom template region, so that it appears just below the course description field. A simple function in cgs_curriculum_map.module returns a + delimited list of node ids of the unit nodes attached to the currently loaded course node. The display setting for the node reference field in the course content type is set to hidden to prevent unit links from appearing above the unit content itself.

If a user wants to display a single unit in a more readable form, one may link the unit title to its node. The conventional node CCK field display presents fairly well.

A page view with exposed filters lists courses, so that a user may view courses in the desired divisions, grades, or subjects. This is a good starting point for a user.

The user interface for adding new units is currently weak. It would be clever to load the curriculum map unit node add form in a lightbox above the curriculum map course page, so that a teacher could create a new unit on the fly and still have it show up in the node reference autocomplete field. Also, some node edit form elements are named in such a way that may confuse teachers. For example, the edit tab on the curriculum map course node page will likely be construed as providing editing access to the unit nodes (you actually have to view the unit before you can edit it).

I am currently having difficulty using both arguments and filters together. The argument limits the initial course list to a single division in the division pages, but the filters attach additional criteria using ? arguments. When both exist, the view returns no nodes. It may be that the view is applying terms from one taxonomy to the other, where they don't exist, causing the empty result set.

Use pathauto on the curriculum map content types and menu block visibility to load the correct secondary navigation menu when the view is displaying curriculum map entries.

tags: drupal, curriculum, map, webdevelopment