Help Page

Marketing 247 Pages
Programs Instructions
Free Programs

Information Page

This is where you go when you are looking for instructions to any of the programs used in SE300.

Free Tools Microsoft Office Video SMARTBoard PhotoStory SharePoint Tips

Free Tools for Teachers

Check out this blog for all the free stuff you can teach with, I subscribe to its RSS feed.
Google tools for educators here.
Freebies for Teachers here
Schoolnotes.com here
Wordle Word Clouds here
Sofotex here

Don't forget to check out my Portaportal the guest login is mhtalbut

Microsoft Office

Here is one of the best places to get tips on how to use the "hidden gems" of PowerPoint.
Jeopardy PowerPoint templates and examples here and here and you can always go to Google's Advanced Search and specify what type of file you are looking for as .ppt.
Look for the templates when you first open Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Access as great starting points.

Video

Teacher Tube: Think of this as a safe version of YouTube. Most schools allow the content on this site past their firewalls but you might want to check to make sure.

Teachers TV: This is a website maintained by a corporation in the UK which has videos considered safe for viewing by children for educational purposes.

hulu TV: This is a website which has television shows, old and new which you can watch for free.

Studio 4 Learning It provides students and teachers with free, high-quality videos that can be watched online.

Current TV Current is about what's going on in your world: all the things you and your friends are actually interested in -- that you won't find on any other news site or cable TV channel.

The Internet Archive Home to the "Way Back Machine" and Internet archives, this resource also has multiple video clips from the 20th century.

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that offers flexible copyright licenses for creative works.

Google Video This search engine searches specifically for video clips using the keywords that you enter.

Downloading and saving the Videos

Now, one of the problems which occurs when you use video websites is that they are "Here today and Gone tomorrow." Therefore, you need to save the files and here is where you get the program to do this. This way, you do not have to worry about a good internet connection, a firewall blocking access to the site, and the inappropriate suggestions given by YouTube.

You may find videos which are different formats than what your computer system will run, this usually means they need to be converted to some form of Windows. Therefore you need to download the Windows Media Encoder here. This allows the file to be converted and read by a Windows Media player, Microsoft Office tools as well as be streamed on a server if you school uses that technology.

Smart Board

Links to inspire you from other school districts

http://www.waukesha.k12.wi.us/WIT/SmartBoard/specificapps.htm
http://teach.fcps.net/trt27/smart_board_lessons.htm
http://www.wacona.com/smartboard/smartboard.html
http://www.amphi.com/departments/technology/whiteboard/lessonplans.html

Here is the link to the lessons on the SmartTech website. there are 46 pages for you to look through for some of the best examples of ways to use the SmartBoard.

PhotoStory

Steps in using the PhotoStory program

Download the program from Microsoft http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx If you do not have the latest version of Media Player (11) then download it first.
Decide upon a story line you want to tell. This can be a review of a chapter’s vocabulary, introduction of a new concept, an example of what you want your students to do or directions which tell how to do a task. Create a storyboard. Here is a lesson on how to do storyboards http://skyview.vansd.org/bquestad/cwstoryboard.html Overall you need to have three points for the storyboard, the story or content to be told, the image or diagram and the audio for each slide.
Create or find the images you want to use to tell your story. Save them in a folder you can easily access. I suggest titling the folder the name of your project.
Find the music to act as background for your story if you do not want to use the music associated with the program.
Open the Photo Story Program. Select “Begin a new Story” which is the default. Click Next.
Import the pictures from your saved file. Click on the button Import Pictures and find your file. Highlight the pictures you want to import and click OK. Remember Shift and click will highlight more than one picture. Your pictures must be .jpeg files and if you are getting them from the internet they need to be at least 720 x 534 pixel size. In a Google Images search, this would be the large size in "Images showing" pull down box.
Put the pictures in the order you want them. Edit the pictures as needed, removing black borders etc. Click Next.
Add titles to your pictures. You can change the font, the color of the font, the placement of the title or any other title issue here. You do not have to use titles for each slide. Click Next.
It is now time to Narrate your Pictures and Customize the Motion of your Photo Story. Preview your Photo Story to see if you like the transitions. Change any which need to be changed by clicking on the “Customized Motion” button. Then using any of the tabs at the top, you can change the motion and direction or the transition. You need to click on the specify start and end position of motion to change the path transition of the slide. Click on Close and go on to the next picture you want to edit.
If you want to add notes to help you with the discussion of the slide, you do it at this step. You can also record your own voice or the voice of others to add to the story. Obviously you will need a microphone connected to your computer or some kind of recorder. Click Next.
You can change the music for each slide if you want, or have some music for one group of slides and a different tune for another. Just make sure you have the picture you want the music to begin on highlighted when you add or create your music. Click Next
Save your story. You can choose to save your story, for this project choose the option to save it to your computer. Click on the browse button to save it to your portable drive. The default location to save will be “My Videos.” Click on the settings button to save it for a computer with a screen 800x600. This is what we use in this class. You then save the project and click next.
In order to use this program, you have to have two saves, one, the project, which you can go back and edit at any time and it will have the extension .wp3, and two, the video which is what you play for any presentation and it has the extension .wmv. If you do not see "your story has been successfully created", you have not done the final save step. It will play on the Windows Media Player if you click on the “View your story” button.
You are done; you can click on the exit button or create another story.
If you want to have slides with just words, an easy way is to create a slide in PowerPoint and then save it as a .jpeg file. This can then be imported into your Photo Story project. All images must be in a .jpeg format for this program.
Remember, if you have finished and find you still want to make some changes, you must go back to the file which saved the project (.wp3), not the video file.

Inspiration

Websites to go to for "Inspiration"

hhttp://www.inspiration.com/resources/index.cfm
http://surfaquarium.com/newsletter/inspiration.htm
http://www.wjcc.k12.va.us/nes/pontonm/Staff/KSP/ResLessons.htm/a>
hhttp://www.mamkschools.org/curriculum/curriculum/technology/support/inspiration/inspiration.htm

Get Ready for School With These Free Resources from the Inspiration Company!

Searching for some ideas? Look no further than these pre-made lesson plan examples and diagrams.

Visit the Inspired Learning Community to download and share lessons and ideas and participate in our forum!

See Inspiration Software products in action on
Teacher Tube.

If your school district won't buy Inspiration for your students to use, you might consider this http://bubbl.us/ as Bubbl.us is a simple and free web application that lets you brainstorm online.

Helpful SharePoint Designer 2007 Tips

Creating the page: 1)Open a new file by either clicking on the icon in the tool bar, or by selecting File/New/Page... 2)You will see a dialogue box which will have General and HTML as the default 3) Click OK and your blank page will appear along with many Task panes. I would close all the task panes except the Folders List as they just confuse the beginning user. 4) I offer this suggestion, if you are just learning and working with this program, insert a table, make it one column wide and one row horizontal and your life will be easier. Working inside tables makes the process easier.

Book marking within one page: 1)Highlight the text you want to link 2)Click on the Insert dropdown menu or Ctrl G 3)Click OK 4)Create and Highlight text which will be your link (like the Assignment, Helpful Information links at the top of this page) 5)Right click, or click on the hyperlink icon or select "Hyperlink" from the Insert menu 6)click on the button on the left of the popup window entitled "Place in The Document" 7)Choose the bookmark you made where you want the link to go to 8)click OK

Adding a Hyperlink: This is similar to the above process 1) Select the text you want to link 2)Right click, or click on the hyperlink icon or select "Hyperlink" from the Insert menu 3)You will see a window for hyperlinks, if you do not, click on the "existing File or Web Page" button on the left side 4)Enter the address, then click OK. Note the link has a new color and is underlined. You can change to colors of the fonts of active and visited links at Page Properties (accessed by right clicking).

To have a link open in a new page (useful for scoring guides or other files which would be downloaded from the web like resume's) when the hyperlink dialogue box opens, click on the "Open Target Frame" button on the right hand side and select "New Page."

Font: This works much the same as it does in Word, although the list of effects is somewhat different. Note text color is set here. Text color is an important property in web page design: not only must the color have good contrast with any background selected for the page, but it must fit well with several "standard" web page text colors used for hyperlinks: many page designers choose a bright blue to denote a clickable link (the text is usually underlined also), and a violet color (also usually underlined) to indicate a link which has been recently visited by the browser. Try not us use these colors for other purposes. You can access Font via the Format pull down menu or the Formatting toolbar or by right clicking on the mouse.

Background: HTML allows the developer wide latitude in establishing the appearance of a page; SharePoint Designer organizes the various options into this feature. Not only can you set the hyperlink colors, which are discussed above in the Font area, but you can also select the background color, or even select a picture to use as a background. If you select a picture, it will be "tiled" on your page, meaning the picture will be repeated (like the design in floor tile) until the entire page's background consists of the selected picture.

To give your page a background color, either right-click in the work area and select "Page Properties" OR File/Properties/Background OR select "Background" in the Format menu, and under the color background pull down menu choose a color. The Automatic color is usually white even though the picture is black.

To give your table or a cell within your table a background color, follow the above instructions but look either table properties for the entire table, or cell properties when you right click then change the color. Again the automatic color will be the color you selected for your page if you do not change it.

Horizontal Line: To create separation in a page or within a table, use a horizontal line. From the Insert menu, select "HTML/Horizontal Line." A line will be placed at the cursor's location. You can highlight the line right click and and change the color etc. with your menu options.

Pictures: From the Insert menu, select "Picture", then "Clip Art..." there are many sources of clips as you know, but you should look at "Clips Online" sometime. Select a clip, click on it, and select "Copy." Return to SharePoint Designer, and Paste the image at the cursor's location. If you right click on the image, you can resize and otherwise format it, just as you would in a word processor. If you go to Google Images or some other place to get a picture, you will need to remove the hyperlink, (see the process of adding a hyperlink and when given the option, click remove hyperlink) and you should cite it in your "Credits and References" section. If you do not break the hyperlink, then every time someone loads your webpage, it will go to that site to get the picture. As with all things, change happens and the picture may change and therefore your picture will not be visible.

You need to make sure the pictures were saved to the server. If they are only saved to your flash drive or some other storage devise, then the only people who will be able to see the pictures you put on your web pages will be those who have access to your storage devices.

Last Updated In order to let users of your website know when the last time, you the owner of the site even looked at your pages, you should include a "Last Updated" information line to your web pages. In order for the date to be automatically updated whenever you open your files go to Insert/Web Component/Included Content/Date and Time.

You can also write the following code in either the split screen, or the full code screen.  to do the same thing.

Other: Remember when you want to single space, hit the shift key while you hit the enter key. If you want to see how your page will look when it is published over the WWW, then click on the Preview in Browser. The code button will show you the HTML code in which the page is written, the split button shows both. The Design button is where you have the SYSIWYG.

Here is a "cheat sheet" Dr. Sauter created for SE300

Links to go to for help:

http://www.towson.edu/adminfinance/OTS/trainingdoc/shr09-fp-ew-spd.asp

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/FX100646991033.aspx

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/work/sharepointdesigner.aspx