Oncourse "Refresher"

Go to: https://dcps.oncoursesystems.com/login.aspx

To Take Attendance:
• Click on the “Attendance” tab at the top of the screen.
• Select the class you are taking attendance for.
• Use the drop down box to select the type of absence. The student will be marked as present until you change it.


To Use Gradebook:
• To add a category, such as “Math Classwork” or “Reading Tests”, click on “Add Category”. Add a category in the “Category Name” box. You can also add a description of what assignments the category will contain.
• To set a weight percentage to your categories, change the grading method at the top of the page to “Weight Based”. Make sure if you do weight based that your categories total 100%.
• To add an assignment, title the assignment, and choose which category it will go into. You can give a weight to an assignment or allow it to be averaged evenly with the other assignments in the category. You can also add it to other classes by putting a check next to the classes you want it to be added to.
• Be cautious of using the “Extra Credit” option, because it may elevate grades too much. You may want to add extra credit assignments to the category to which they pertain.

Why is Rebooting SO Effective?

Occasionally, our Macs don't work exactly as we expect. Before you start to worry, the best course of action is to try rebooting. Rebooting fixes many problems , because it resets everything on your computer from your wireless connection to your applications. For example, sometimes your network connection may have timed out and rebooting simply restores it. This has always worked for me when my network connection stops working.

To reboot, you can quickly press the power button, which will caue a pop-up to appear that asks you if you would like to restart your computer. Also, you can click on the apple and choose "Restart". I hope this helps you to enjoy your Mac even more, and to beat those little hiccups along the way.

Teacher Lingo

Hi everyone! I hope you are enjoying your Macs and have found many uses in your classroom. This post is about a website called "Teacher Lingo". It was mentioned in the latest issue of InTech Tips from Duval County, and it is a great website that allows teachers to connect and share ideas with peers. If you find yourself struggling to come up with an idea for a unit or you want to find other teachers who are in a similar teaching situation, this may be a great resource for you. As teachers, it is important to grow professionally, and this website may help give you ideas to make your classroom an even better learning community!

The website is: www.teacherlingo.com

Have fun in this safe and helpful community of teachers!

Editing Your Photos

It’s time to take those good pictures and make them amazing!
Rotate a picture: To do this, click on the picture you want to rotate and click on the rotate key on the bottom of the screen. Continue to click it until it has the correct orientation.
To begin more dramatic editing, choose a picture and click “Edit”
• Rotate: The first icon allows you to rotate the picture
• Crop: The next icon “Crop” lets you crop till you drop! First, select the portion of the picture you want to keep by moving the boundary lines. Whatever is outside the rectangle will disappear. When you are done, click “Apply”.
• Straighten: Straightening your picture may be helpful if it was taken at an odd angle.
• Enhance: This automatically increases or decreases the color saturation to help with pictures that looked washed-out.
• Red-Eye: Click on the eyes that have red eye once.
• Retouch: …is a beautiful thing! ☺ You can smooth out lines, flecks, etc. – give it a try.
I hope you have learned a little about making your pictures even more wonderful.


P.S. If you would like to see an amazing example of how to use blogs effectively in your classroom, Mrs. Montemayor is doing a fabulous job. She uses hers as a way to keep in touch with parents, and this is really an excellent example of how to use technology to enhance parent communication.

Her blog is: www.lanimontemayor.blogspot.com

Organizing Your Photos...

So, your pictures are now on your computer, but they are in no kind of order! Here are some tips from organizing your photos and making specific pictures easy to find.
To have your pictures successfully organized, the key is to use ALBUMS!
1. First, create a new album. You can either choose “File” and then “New Album”, or click no the plus sign in the left corner.
2. Type in the name for your new photo album. (Ex: End of the Year Party)
3. Click OK
4. Locate “Library” and then click on “Photos”. Click on any photo you would like in this album and drag it to the album title. You can also highlight more than one at a time and drag them into the album.
This way, you can have your photos organized by events, months, or place, depending on how you title your albums
You can also organize your photos using keywords. This is helpful, because you may want to find a particular picture, but you don’t know which album it falls under. iPhoto has some keywords available for you, such as favorite, family, vacation, etc. You can use words for school photos, such as science or project to make these photos easily accessible.
To add a keyword to your picture, click on “View” at the top of your toolbar, and then make sure Keywords is checked. Next, run your cursor under the picture’s name. It will prompt “add keywords”, then click. Add keywords to help you identify your pictures.
To find a picture with a particular keyword, type in the keyword in the spot available next to the magnifying glass and hit enter. It will pull up any picture with that word.
Good luck organizing all of those great shots!
Next time, we will talk about editing your photos…

Logging in at the Computer Lab

There have been some questions as to how to log on to the computers in the computer lab. Your students each have a log-in that they can use. It is as follows:

Log-in: Student number
Password: Last 4 numbers of their Social Security Number

You may want to consider making cards with your students' information on it, laminate them, and use these whenever you go to the lab.

Good luck and have fun! :)

How to Import Photos into iPhoto

For the next entries, I will be giving you a few helpful hints for importing, organizing, and editing your photos. These can be pictures you take with your digital camera or ones that you take using photo booth.
First, we need to get these beginning of the year shots off of your camera and onto your computer. Follow these easy steps to import your pictures.
1. Connect you digital camera to your laptop.
2. Launch iPhoto (This should happen automatically, but just in case…)
3. Type in a name for this set of pictures.
4. Add a description for the roll if you would like. This can help you find images later on.
5. Click the Import Button
It may prompt you to delete items from the camera. Only do this if you do not want to add these images to another device and you no longer want them on your memory card.
If you have images on a CD, you can insert your CD, wait for the CD image to appear on your desktop, and then drag the CD to the iPhoto icon in your dock.
If you have taken pictures in Photo Booth and you wish to add them to your iPhoto library, open Photo Booth and select the picture you would like to move. Next, click on the second icon from the left which is labeled “iPhoto”. Your Apple will then send it to your iPhoto Library.
Have fun snapping those pictures!