Indicator proficiencies

You will now find the K-5 End of Year and the 6-8 End of Year indicator proficiences documents available now by using the links on the right of the page. These includes math and English/Language Arts.

The 6-8 grading period 2 indicators for math and English/Language Arts have also been updated and may be found in the link section.

District Tech Committee Meets

The District Technology Committee met on Wednesday, October 18, 2006. Good discussion on a wide variety topics including the writing of the technology curriculum for grades K-8.

During the elementary staff development day upcoming on November 2nd, teachers will be asked to fill out a short survey. The technology curriculum writing team needs to know two things: 1. What do you want your students to know technology-wise before they enter your grade in the fall? and 2. What will your students leave being able to do technology-wise from your grade level in the spring? The middle school people will do the same by focusing on grade-level and subject matter. This survey will give the writing team a chance to place activities in the appropriate grade level.

For the complete minutes, check the document link section for District Tech 10/18/06 Minutes.

Other links referencing 21st Century Technology Skills and the new proposed Indiana Education Council are in the website link section.

World Libraries Access Available!

WorldCat is the largest library network in the world. All WorldCat libraries (Portage Township Schools is one of them) provide access to their free resources on the Web where now most people start the search for information.

What will you find there? You can search for books, music CDs and videos. You can also link to digital content such as audiobooks you can download to your personal MP3 players. You may also find primary documents such as photographs, maps, abstracts, full-text articles and even perhaps digital versions of rare items that aren't available to the public at these libraries. Resources are available in many languages.

Can I check something out? Here's how you would do that: Go to www.worldcat.org (link is available in the websites' link section on the right).

• Enter a title in the search box; click Search
• List of titles appears; select the exact title you want by clicking on the title
• In the Location box, enter your zipcode
• Libraries that are the closest to your location AND that have the title are listed.
• Select the library by clicking on it.
• The library's online catalog will open and give you all the information you need to request that title if you are a registered user of that library or how to get it to your local library.

Try doing a search for Harry Potter or Deception Point by Dan Brown. You will see that PTS has both items and you can request them to be sent to your school building via intra-library loan by entering your barcode information!

Happy Searching the World!

Junk Mail -- What can I do?

We all get emails from people we don't know (spam) and how can we handle these? GroupWise has a couple of things each individual user can do to block emails from coming into their mailbox. PTS does run a "Spam Blocker" on the overall site, but hey spammers are good. They have started mocking school sites (notice that the addresses look like school addresses .k12.oh.us). Here's some steps you can take:

1. You can add individual e-mail addresses or entire Internet domains to a Block List. Items from these addresses or Internet domains are blocked and never arrive in your Mailbox.An Internet domain is the part of the e-mail address that comes after the @. For example, in the address Henry@mymail.com, the Internet domain is mymail.com.
2. You can add individual e-mail addresses or entire Internet domains to a Junk List. Items from these addresses or Internet domains are delivered to the Junk Mail folder in your Mailbox. You can specify that the items in this folder be automatically deleted after xx days.
3. You can specify that any e-mail items from users whose addresses are not in your personal address books (including your Frequent Contacts address book and any personal address books you have created) are sent to the Junk Mail folder.
4. In your GroupWise Inbox, right-click an item with an Internet address; click Junk Mail.
5. Click Junk Sender OR Click Block Sender.
6. Select Junk E-Mail From This Address or Block E-Mail From This Address. If you select Junk, the address is added to the Junk List. All future e-mail items from this e-mail address will be delivered to the Junk Mail folder. You can specify that the items in this folder be automatically deleted after so many days. This folder is not created in the folder list unless a Junk Mail option is enabled or an address or Internet domain is added to the Junk List (which enables the Junk List option). If you select Block, the address is added to the Block List. All future e-mail items from this e-mail address will not be delivered to your Mailbox.
7. If the Junk List or Block List is not enabled, select Enable Junk List or Enable Block List.
   At any time, you can click Tools > Junk Mail Handling > Junk List or Block List > New to add an e-mail address to the Junk List or Block List.

Proficiency Indicators for Second Grading Period

Access to the Second Grading Period's Proficiency Indicators is now available through this blog even with the Intranet being down. To access both the first and second grade periods' indicators, see the links in the sidebar to the right of the page. Both Math and English/Language Arts are listed for K-5; 6-8 is not yet available.

Great Newsletter for Educators

Answers.com is called "an encyclopdictionalmanacpedia" which means it tries to have all sorts of information for you. It has a great teacher spot at www.teachers.answers.com that contains tools for teachers, lesson plans, free posters (Write it Right; Etymology: Breaking it down; Citations), links to teacher/educational blogs, NYPublic Library's Homework Help site; and more. Best of all it offers monthly newsletters chockfull of information. You can sign up for the various newsletters by going to its main site at www.answers.com and clicking on newsletters. I have linked to the October newsletter in the link section so you can see it.

For grades 5-12, there is a great lesson plan for teaching online searching on the main teachers page complete with a downloadable movie and lesson plans, posters, etc. Scroll to the bottom of the main page.

Hope you all get a chance to check out this site. I think you will be coming back for more. Don't forget to sign up for the monthly newsletter.

Reports, Reports, how do I know which to choose?

Confused about AR reporting? Concerned about the amount of paper to run the different reports? AR FAQs have been updated to included information about how one of our schools, South Haven Elementary, handles Accelerated Reader reports.

Basically, South Haven decided that the TOPS report simply uses too much paper. They still wanted to give reports weekly to students and provide important information to teachers. They felt that these three reports do a good job providing the information: TWI report, Student report, and the Diagnostic report. Directions are included on how to use these reports. Just click on the link in the link section to Accelerated Reader FAQs and see question 6. Our thanks to Sandy Click, computer coordinator, for the directions.

Updated AR Information

Have you wanted to see how an AR quiz looks before you introduce it to your students? Take a look at the AR FAQs. It has been updated to include a section on how to take a sample quiz for teachers.

Fall 2006 Technology Workshops Schedule

The Fall 2006 workshop schedule is now available on STI-PD. If you are a new user please see your computer coordinator for your username and password. You will find workshops on School Messenger, Excel (a series of 3 sessions), Beginning Blogging, United Streaming, Microsoft Word Tips, and Open Labs.

An Open Lab is just that--unpaid workshop with an instructor available to answer questions and offer help on your individual projects. There is at least one Open Lab per month to deal with any of the Microsoft Office products (Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint) and there is one to help bloggers. While the time for the Open Labs is 3:30 to 5:30, you may come at any time, but sign up so we know that someone is coming and can schedule an instructor.

Accelerated Reader FAQs

Quizzes, quizzes, and more quizzes are available to your students, but how can you choose which ones to use? IMS has developed a FAQ (frequently asked questions) about Accelerated Reader. It will be continually updated as more questions are asked. Yes, please email Lynn Duhamell with your questions about this program. That way answers for everyone will be posted in one place. The link to the AR FAQ is posted on this blog's link section although you can also access it by going to the PTS homepage and clicking on PTS Documents tab.