The LAN Managers' Community RSS feed

New Computers that Arrive with Clutter - Nathan McClenahan

Nathan McClenahan — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 06:00:00 GMT

I found a handy little program the other day that solves a very specific problem. Clutter on brand new computers. I get a little frustrated with computers coming from the manufacturer cluttered with all sorts of software that is trialware, or unwanted. So I used this nice little program called the decrapifier to help with this situation. The name is well chosen, because in one running of the program, you can select all the crap on your computer and it removes it. It is only for PC because we all know mac's don't come with crap.

http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/

1 Comments

Internet Safety & Digital Citizenship Workshop - April 8, 2010 - Graci Gillming

Graci Gillming — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:13:22 GMT

Internet Safety & Digital Citizenship Workshop
April 8, 2010
9:00 AM - 3:00 PM
ESU 10 – Kearney

Register: https://odie.esu10.org/workshops

As the digital world changes and new technologies arise, kids eagerly grasp on to the latest tool or web application with no fear or hesitation. During this workshop we'll explore the safe use of the Internet and digital technologies, i.e. computers, cell phones, mp3 players, etc. We'll also discuss social networking, cyberbullying, digital citizenship (the rights and responsibilities in a digital world) as well as related online curriculum.

0 Comments

2010 Internet Safety and Digital Citizenship Contest - Graci Gillming

Graci Gillming — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:34:54 GMT

The 2010 Internet Safety and Digital Citizenship Contest guidelines and entry form can be found at ESU 10 Internet Safety Contest Guideline 10 frm.pdf

Please note the March 8, 2010 deadline. This is 4 days earlier than what was announced in the Connector.

For more information and contest rubrics as well as the 2009 winners, visit

http://nis.esu10.org/ggillmin/InternetSafety

Contact Graci Gillming for questions - ggillmin@esu10.org or 308-865-5664 x-229.

0 Comments

Arnold Laptop Learning Institute March 16-17, 2010 - Graci Gillming

Graci Gillming — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:47:09 GMT

You and a team from your district are invited to attend a 21st Century Learning Leadership Institute sponsored by Arnold, a pioneering 1:1 school. This Institute is your opportunity to see and hear how Arnold's school is achieving academic excellence by putting technology in their students' hands. Every student in Arnold has their own laptop with K-6 staying in the building, and 7-12 talking their laptops home.

There is a way to bridge the digital divide between students and school. A way to engage students and make education relevant. How? Research shows students with routine access to laptop computers score higher in writing assessments, demonstrate better analytical skills, engage in problem solving, and collaborate more effectively on schoolwork - all of which, ultimately, lead to higher student achievement.

The agenda includes discussion on how technology changes learning, the impact of professional development, key success factors, funding, and the digital tools today's students use to create knowledge. You will hear from how the Arnold school is currently using technology in innovative ways to make a difference, have the opportunity to see a laptop learning initiative in action and interact with students, teachers and administrators.

Cost of the program:
Schools are responsible for transportation to the Institute location and hotel accommodations. Apple will cover all meals and activities during the forum if allowable by your state ethics laws.

Who Should Attend?
School Presidents, Superintendents*, Principals, Curriculum/Technology Directors, Board Members, Teachers and other school leaders. You are encouraged to send a collaborative team of 3 or 4 people.

*Attendance at this event by a public official or employee may constitute acceptance of a reportable gift. Please consult your ethics official to ensure that no state laws, local laws or school district rules prevent your acceptance of costs associated with this event.

There will be a dinner at a local restaurant following the event on Tuesday evening.

To register please go to the following site:

http://edseminars.apple.com/seminars/event.php?eventID=2294

If anyone has questions about the agenda for the two days, they can contact Nicole Badgley by email at nbadgley@esu10.org or via the phone 308-848-2226 ext 9

0 Comments

Interactive Whiteboard & Clicker Showcase at ESU 9 Hastings - Feb 3 - Graci Gillming

Graci Gillming — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:44:09 GMT

On Feb. 3, ESU 9 is bringing in four vendors to demo interactive white boards, clickers and tablets. If anyone in your district is thinking about purchasing this type of technology, this would be a great opportunity to compare products and to learn more about the new features.

If you are interested, please register at http://esu9.org/ by Friday, Jan 29.

The vendors will be:

            Engaging Technologies: Dustin Frank - Clickers, InterWrite & Wireless tablets
            CCS Presentation Systems: Ed Pullen - SmartBoard and other new products
            Haddock: Dan Reid - Promethean ActivBoard
            Polyvision: Douglas Liszka -  Eno Interactiv

If you have any questions or to register, feel free to email or call.

Wayne Wiens

Technology Systems Support Specialist

Educational Service Unit #9

402.463.5611

0 Comments

Try to avoid spaces and long names in home directories on OS X Server - Marc Regenos

Marc Regenos — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 22:11:28 GMT

Apple has published a support bulletin that explains the naming convention in OS X Server. It's a good quick read and might help with issues down the road.

You can read the article here:

OS X Server home directory names

0 Comments

Classroom Instruction That Works Webinars - Carol Smith

Carol Smith — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 06:00:00 GMT

In this series we are featuring nine webinars on Marzano's instructional strategies. Each webinar will focus on the how to use specific instructional strategies in your classroom as well as technology tips and tricks to integrate along the way!

Each webinar is a one-hour session from 4-5PM. A day or so before the webinar, you will receive an email with instructions and the website for the webinar.

There is no driving or weather worries, all you need is a computer! Choose just one webinar to attend or choose them all! These are great refreshers if you attended Classroom Instruction That Works this last summer! Even if you don't know anything about these instructional strategies, please join us and find out all the easy ways of engaging and reaching your students.

Summarizing and Note Taking - January 19, 2010
Reinforcing Effort/Receiving Feedback - February 2, 2010
Homework and Practice - February 16, 2010
Non-Linguistic Representation - March 2, 2010
Cooperative Learning - March 23, 2010
Setting Objectives/Providing Feedback - April 6, 2010
Generating and Testing Hypothesis - April 20, 2010
Ques, Questions, and Advanced Organizers - May 4, 2010

Register on ODIE at https://odie.esu10.org/

0 Comments

Help! Looking for info on extra large projection screens! - Deanna Stall

Deanna Stall — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Our AD is looking for a large projection screen for the gym. I would say 14x14 or bigger. Do you know any schools who have that large of screen? Where we can go look at their setup? Etc. can you point me in the right direction.

Thanks
Teresa

Teresa Osborn
Cozad City Schools <http://cozadschools.cozad.k12.ne.us/>

3 Comments

Microsoft/Nebraska Coop Select Program - Stacy Peters

Stacy Peters — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:33:35 GMT

Purchase Microsoft Software for home use!!
See the attached PDF for more information!

Microsoft-NE Coop Software.pdf

0 Comments

IPod Touch Workshop - John Stritt

John Stritt — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:07:33 GMT

Mobile technology and particularily the Apple IPod Touch is becoming a relative tool in education. On December 1, ESU 10 staff will take participants through IPod Touch 101 which includes researching educational applications for the K-12 classroom.

There is no charge for this workshop but because of room size, we are requesting that no more then 2 participants per school register. All participants should bring an IPod Touch unit.

Registration - To register, go to http://odie.esu10.org and select the December 1 ITouch Workshop

IPod Touch Agenda: - 12:30-3:30

IPod Touch 101 (12:30-1:00)
Searching Methods for IPod Touch Applications (1:00-1:30)
Search and Post IPod Touch Education Applications (1:45-2:15)
Sharing best education applications (2:15-2:45)
Introduction to Web Applications (2:45-3:15)Closing (3:15-3:30)

0 Comments

21st Century Skills Teaching and Learning Summit - Ron Cone

Ron Cone — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:00:00 GMT

21st Century Skills Teaching and Learning Summit: Moving from the Why to the How
A highly interactive day is developed to enhance collaboration and partnership among secondary and postsecondary partners, business/industry and across curricular areas.

Purpose: To provide high school and community college professional teams consisting of career and academic faculty, administration, and advisory members a long-term sustainable professional development opportunity which will integrate 21st Century Teaching and Learning into classrooms and schools across Nebraska.

Key Note Speakers
Jim Brazell: www.ventureramp.com
David Thornburg: http://www.tcpd.org

No Registration Cost: Partnerships for Innovation is sponsoring the Summit and participant lunches. Mileage, lodging, stipends and sub-pay are the responsibility of the attending districts and colleges.

Date: January 19, 2010

When: 9:00 AM - 4:30 PM

Where: Northeast Community College: Life Long Learning Center, Norfolk, NE

Teams are encouraged, but not required. Space is limited to 400 participants. Suggested Team Make-Up: Academic Faculty, Career Education Faculty, Administration, Counseling Staff, and Business/Industry Partner

Lodging: A discounted block of 20 rooms have been reserved at the Hampton Inn & Suites ($75.00/night) and Holiday Inn Express ($70.00/night), each for the night of January 18, 2010. These rooms will be released January 2nd. Both hotels provide a warm breakfast. Ask for the Partnerships for Innovation block.

Hampton Inn & Suites: 1-402-379-3585

Holiday Inn Express: 1-402-379-1524

Summit Registration: http://www.nde.state.ne.us/nce/ConferencesWorkshops.htm

0 Comments

Burwell 6th grade - eInstruction Makeover 2009 finalist - Ron Cone

Ron Cone — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:19:15 GMT

Congratulations to Joy Schott, sixth grade teacher at Burwell Public Schools, and her class for making the finals in the eInstruction Makeover 2009 contest, 6-8 grade division.

You can watch and VOTE for their video “It’s All Technology” and help their chances to win a $30,000 classroom makeover. You must sign up to vote, but it’s easy and painless.

0 Comments

What to Donate to schools - Gary Warner

Gary Warner — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:00:00 GMT

All
After reading this I have to agree with the findings. Something to pass onto PTO's, parents and businesses who want to help out schools..

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/11/technology-and-your-local-school-what-to-donate-and-what-not-to-donate/

A few things that I would think to add on
1. Servers - can always use a server to run something if for free.
2. LCD's
3. Old iPod's..
4. Routers/Switches/ wireless points.. You always have a section of a building that just does not quiet get a good signal.

Gary Warner
A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.

Steven Wright

0 Comments

Did "I Touch" A Hot Topic - John Stritt

John Stritt — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 06:00:00 GMT

As Dave Evertson and I had a chance to debate mobile technology and its possible relationship to your LAN, I wanted to provide this forum to allow others to share comments related to that discussion.

Although Dave and I may have strayed abit as we got off on student owned vs school owned technology, the question as I see it is as follows: "If it is determined by school educational leaders that types of mobile technology are important to learning in your school district, will your LAN be able to support such technology and if not, what might you need to do to prepare your LAN for said learning devices".

Thanks to Dave for sharing his thoughts yesterday and I hope others might share this forum to express views regarding mobile technology and its impact on your network today and in the near future.

3 Comments

Snow Leopard "Guest Account" - Marc Regenos

Marc Regenos — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 06:00:00 GMT

There have been many reports of Mac users that have unintentionally deleted their normal user home directory on a Mac running Snow Leopard (10.6) by logging into the built in Guest account and then trying to log back into their account. This can and has deleted the normal account home directory. Be careful and tell your users to avoid using the Guest account until Apple fixes it. You can read more about it here:

Guest Account Deletion

0 Comments

GNENC Webmail Error When Thread Is Enabled - Jamie Kramer

Jamie Kramer — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Since the recent email server upgrade, some users get this error in webmail:

ERROR: Bad or malformed request.
Query: THREAD ORDEREDSUBJECT ISO-8859-1 ALL
Server responded: Error in IMAP command UID: ORDEREDSUBJECT threading is currently not supported.

This problem affects users who use the Threaded View on their inbox.
Threading will work, but there is a preference which must be disabled.

Here is the workaround if people get this error message:

In Webmail, go to Options->Display Preferences
Enable the "Enable Thread Sort by References Header" option (make sure the box has a check in it)
Submit

Upon clicking the Inbox folder the inbox listing should work again, whether threading is enabled or disabled.

0 Comments

8th grade standards for 2010 tech plan - Graci Gillming

Graci Gillming — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:01:34 GMT

For those of you still working on your tech plan for 2010, here's a suggestion for 8th grade tech standards...

If you roll your tech. plan over from last year,
8th grade tech competencies are under
Assessment of Technology
Part D - Ed Facts

The section has the below information:

Does your district benefit from Title II-D funds?

*
* Yes
*
*
No

If 'Yes', please continue to this section and press the submit button
at the bottom of the page to enter your reply to this section.
Report on 8th Grade Student Technology Literacy

The Technology Literacy Assessment Work Group of the State Educational
Technology Directors Association (SETDA) has suggested the following
definition for Technology Literacy. You may utilize this suggestion or
modify as appropriate for your district’s purpose.

Technology Literacy is the ability to responsibly use appropriate
technology to communicate, solve problems, and access, manage,
integrate, evaluate, and create information to improve learning in all
subject areas and to acquire lifelong knowledge and skills in the 21st
century.

Enter your District's definition of Technology Literacy if different
from above:

The US Department of Education requires local districts that benefit
from Title II-D to report the total number of 8th grade students and
the number of those students who demonstrate a locally determined
proficiency of technology literacy. Please provide an estimate of the
number based on the best data available. The total number of 8th grade
students will be taken from the Fall Membership data in the Nebraska
Student and Staff Record System.2336

Enter the unduplicated number of 8th grade students from the most
current completed school year who demonstrated proficiency of
technology literacy as defined above.
Example: Proficiency may be determined through technology assessments,
completion of courses or technology components imbedded in the
curriculum (such as keyboarding, computer-based applications, etc),
direct teacher observation, or other means as determined by the
district.

0 Comments

ESU 10 Now Has GPS Units! - Deanna Stall

Deanna Stall — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 05:00:00 GMT

ESU 10 has purchased 15 Garmin eTrex Legend GPS units for teachers to checkout and use with their classroom! They can be checked out through ODIE!

More can be found in the description on the Media Library:
https://odie.esu10.org/library/MediaItemDetails.aspx?MediaItemID=54607

Also at: http://blog.esu10.org/gps Here you can find out more about the Global Positioning System devices as well as how-to's and instructional materials to go with the GPS's.

Let us know what you think! How will YOU use the GPS Devices with your students? Are you already doing a GPS project that you would like to share? Share this and other instructional materials here on this community!!!

0 Comments

Educational Software Rep - Marcy Rodriguez - Graci Gillming

Graci Gillming — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:29:37 GMT

At the last LAN Mgr meeting I mentioned that I saw Marcy Rodriguez at NECC this summer. She is now employed at Journey Education Marketing, an educational software supplier. Her contact info is:

Marcy Rodriguez
K12 Student Licensing Manager
Journey Education Marketing
www.JourneyEd.com
13755 Hutton Drive, Ste. 500
Dallas, TX 75234
Work: 866-559-0302
Fax: 866-496-1243
mrodriguez@JourneyEducation.com

She works diligently to get you the best price for your school.

0 Comments

Snow Leopard and MobileMe - Dan Sich

Dan Sich — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 05:00:00 GMT

If any one has upgraded to Snow Leopard and uses a mobileme account you may have seem some problems. One of my main ones was iCals not publishing to the web like they are supposed to. I use a calendar for our high school activities on my mobileme account and a patron pointed out this it was not accessible from the web any longer. Upon investigation it was gone. In iCal it still said it was publishing but the page was not there. If any one else has calendars published I would check them out if you've upgraded. A simple solution for now is to go into the applications folder and the "Get Info" window on iCal and tell it to run in 32 bit mode instead of 64 bit mode and it will start publishing it again. Apple has not said this is the fix, but I got it from somewhere else. Also, from Apple, if you have upgraded to Snow Leopard they recommended to me to stop syncing your mobile me account take your computer(s) off the registered computers list and than set up the computer again. It seems to be a problem with the upgrade so far. It's all good, because it's still better than windoze.

0 Comments

NWEA MAP testing - Heather Callihan

Heather Callihan — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 19:35:14 GMT

Brian Gibson and I are new to this MAP testing and know there are other schools in the area using it. We will be going to some training next week, however, the training is most likely more for proctors and test administrators/teachers. Please help by posting any "TECHY" advice for us as far as downloads, scheduling or any other advice you may have to make this process smooth. Thanks!
-Heather

1 Comments

WordPress Updates - Jason Everett

Jason Everett — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 05:00:00 GMT

WordPress Site for updates and information
Check out this website for current announcements, news, account requests, feature requests, training resources, and workshop information. Wordpress @ ESU 10 Blog Site

Mobile Support in WordPress @ ESU 10
Districts purchasing and supporting mobile computing now have the option of making their Wordpress site mobile accessible. Great for providing content to these mobile devices without having to sync them on an continual basis. Read more...

0 Comments

Downloading videos from History Channel and other similar sites - Cameron Hamer

Cameron Hamer — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 05:00:00 GMT

I have students that are trying to use Zamzar.com to get a clip from the History Channels website or similar site. When the go to convert it says there is no file extension associate with this file. Has anyone had any success downloading video from this site or others other than YouTube?

1 Comments

NDE - 2010 Tech Plan site open - Ron Cone

Ron Cone — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 05:00:00 GMT

The Technology Plan interface for the 2010-11 E-rate funding year is now open.

Each applicant for Erate funding must have a completed Technology Plan at the time of filing a Form 470 application, and the Plan must make reference, in part, to the services requested in that application. Be sure to read the USAC Technology Plan guidelines at http://www.usac.org/sl/applicants/step02/

What’s NEW: Report on 8th Grade Student Technology Literacy (III. Assessment; D: EdFacts)

The US Department of Education requires local districts that benefit from Title II-D to report the total number of 8th grade students and the number of those students who demonstrate a locally determined proficiency of technology literacy. USDoE asks for the unduplicated number of 8th grade students from the most current completed school year who demonstrated proficiency of technology literacy (as defined by the district). Proficiency may be determined through technology assessments, completion of courses or technology components imbedded in the curriculum (such as keyboarding, computer-based applications, etc), direct teacher observation, or other means as determined by the district. NSSRS data at NDE will be used to report the total number of 8th graders.

To complete (create) your Tech Plan for E-rate FY 2010, go to http://edweblab.unl.edu/retc

and log in with your Co-Dist number (including the hyphen) and password. If you cannot find or do not remember your password please contact SuAnn Witt at suann.witt@nebraska.gov.

After logging in to your account, you will be given choices to "Edit Existing Tech Plan" or “Create a New Tech Plan." Click on "Create a New Tech Plan." You will now be presented with two options. Option I will be to select a Tech Plan (probably the previous year) from which to transfer contact information and School Improvement Goals and Strategies; Option II will be to “Create a New Empty Tech Plan”. More than likely, most will want to choose Option I, and transfer information from the FY2009 plan. You will then be asked to "Select Year for Plan" that you are creating – which is 2010. It will then confirm that the new Plan has been created.

Update the contact information and School Improvement Goals and Strategies as needed. You will need to enter current technology inventory and budget information, and complete all remaining data elements.

When you have finished entering the 2010 Tech Plan, click on the Notification section, click the appropriate responses, enter an end date, and then click the "Submit" button for certification. Clicking the “submit” button locks the plan and changes can no longer be made

The Nebraska Department of Education (NDE) reviews and certifies school technology plans for public schools and ESUs in Nebraska. If the plan is complete, you will receive a certification notice and Certification Number within 5-7 days. Certification provides a timestamp of the completed plan and that the applicant has addressed the required elements as set forth by the Universal Service Administration Company. Neither NDE nor the Tech Plan approver is responsible for Technology Plan content.

PRINT THE CERTIFICATION NUMBER NOTICE EMAIL as well as a copy of the certification letter, and put them in your FY 2010-11 E-rate file folder. You do have a file folder for each E-rate year, right? This is very important if you are ever audited in the future. As a backup, a PDF version of this document is also archived on the Tech Plan Certification System server. The Nebraska Department of Education (NDE) reviews and certifies school technology plans for public schools and ESUs in Nebraska.

Anyone who wishes to receive updates on Technology plan developments and the E-rate program are encouraged to register with the NE-ERATE listserv on the Nebraska Library Commission website at: http://www.nlc.state.ne.us/libdev/erate/eratelist.html

If you have any questions, contact me or your ESU E-Rate expert.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

SuAnn Witt

Erate Coordinator and Infrastructure Specialist

Nebraska Department of Education

PO Box 94987 • Lincoln NE 68509-4987

402.471.2085 • Fax 402.471.0117

0 Comments

Skype Error: Disk full - Heather Callihan

Heather Callihan — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:29:49 GMT

I have several teachers using Skype and now one of them gets a disk full error message when attempting to log in. I have uninstalled and re-installed several times. Has anyone seen or heard of this and if so what is the solution. I am lost for ideas now.
-Heather Callihan

2 Comments

Print Shop question - Graci Gillming

Graci Gillming — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Nancy Rupp from Hall 1R has a question about Print Shop that I am
unable to answer (we don't have it so I can't troubleshoot). So if
anyone has had experience using it, please contact Nancy at
308-385-6352 or nrupp@esu10.org.

Thanks.

0 Comments

ODIE Account Profiles - Brian Schanbacher

Brian Schanbacher — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 19:24:29 GMT

The next time you log onto ODIE you'll see the following screen:

We're collecting profile information so that we'll be able to deliver customer-targeted content. For example, when a science teacher goes to the media library, we can show them a list of the new science videos on the front page.

If you have any questions about how this will work, or about what we'll do with the information, feel free to let us know.

UPDATE: If you set your profile, you won't see this prompt again. If none of the listed positions, grades, or subjects are appropriate, click save with nothing selected to prevent the prompt from appearing each time you log on. :)

0 Comments

Laptop AUP - Graci Gillming

Graci Gillming — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 13:50:38 GMT

Would any of you post your student/teacher guidelines for responsible (acceptable) use of the laptop computers?

You can comment and include a link if you have one that's online or create (publish) a new article and upload a document by clicking on the icon with a paper clip.

thanks for your help!

0 Comments

Article on why security pros should master Google - Jason Everett

Jason Everett — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 05:00:00 GMT

From ComputerWorld Security:

Search Party: Why Security Pros Should Master Google

0 Comments

Secure Board/Meeting portal software - Jason Everett

Jason Everett — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT

I have been contacted by Adrian Smith's office wondering about software they could use to host meetings and have files to share online, etc. As I talked with Jessica from their office, it seemed like a secure board meeting type software might fit their bill.

I am wondering if any of you have worked with this type of software and what you thought of the product you saw or used. I have talked to Gary Needham and they use BoardDocs. KPS seems to like that solution. It looks like North Platte also uses this solution. It seems a little pricey for what they might need so any other ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Jason

1 Comments

Adobe Connect Webinar - System Requirements - Jason Everett

Jason Everett — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT

This next year we will be doing more and more with Adobe Connect, Adobe's webinar software. With this in mind, I would like to share the system requirements for receiving content with this medium. Your teachers and other staff may need to update their computers to have a positive experience with this new method of sharing information.

If the information being shared is expected to be hands-on, it is best to have two computers available: one for the Adobe Connect presentation and one for the participant to use as a hands-on machine. We will also provide a telephone conference option for most presentations as this is the most recommended way to deliver good quality audio. This means that it may be useful to have a phone in the room where the participant will be accessing the Adobe Connect webinar. If you have questions, feel free to contact me (Jason - jeverett@esu10.org)

Adobe Connect Participant System Requirements

0 Comments

2.0 Summer Technology Camps at ESU 10 - Graci Gillming

Graci Gillming — Mon, 18 May 2009 21:45:09 GMT

We’re going High-Tech at 2009 Summer Camps

Come and connect with us at ESU 10!

Science 2.0 – May 27 & 28
Elementary 2.0 – June 9 & 10
Language Arts 2.0 – June 16 & 17
Technology Integration Specialists Camp - July 16-17 & 27-28
Social Studies 2.0 – July 21 & 22

For registration and more information, visit https://odie.esu10.org.

1 Comments

NSSRS Workdays at ESU 10 - Graci Gillming

Graci Gillming — Fri, 15 May 2009 21:23:48 GMT

NSSRS Workdays
ESU 10 – Kearney
9:00 – 3:00

May 21*
June 4
June 15

Russ Masco (NDE Data Trainer) will be here to assist all three days.

*Dean Folkers (NDE Perkins Rep ) will be here on May 21 to assist in the entry of Perkins performance data.

Register at https://odie.esu10.org

0 Comments

Trouble after deploying dual-boot Macs - Marc Regenos

Marc Regenos — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 05:00:00 GMT

I found that after using DeployStudio to re-image our lab of MacBooks with dual boot capabilities that 3 of 25 machines were unable to use the touchpad in windows. It turns out to be some confusion within Windows as to what correct driver should be used. I found on Apple's discussion the following that fixed the problem for us:

a) Go into Control Panel/Add Remove programs
b) Remove Apple Trackpad, Apple Trackpad Enabler and Apple MultiTouch (not Apple Multitouch Mouse)
c) After rebooting Macbook into Windows XP, insert the Mac OS X Install disc and explore and go into D:\Boot Camp\Drivers\Apple. Install AppleTrackpadInstaller and AppleMultiTouchTrackPadInstaller.
d) Use the first mentioned method:
-Go to Device Manager
-Under Human Interface Devices you have an Apple Trackpad listed change this driver to USB Human Interface Device
-Properties
-Driver (tab)
-Update Driver
-"No, not this time" (radio button)
-Next
-"Install from a list or specific location (Advanced)" (radio button)
-Next
-Dont search, I will choose a driver to install" (radio button)
-Next
-USB Human Interface Device
-Next

0 Comments

Acrobat Pro Workshop - May 8 - Graci Gillming

Graci Gillming — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:38:35 GMT

Eliminate the need for finding a typewriter or completing a form or application by hand.

Join us for an end-of-the-school-year workshop featuring

Adobe Acrobat Pro 9.0
Friday, May 8, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 2:30 p.m.
ESU 10 - Kearney

The primary focus of the workshop will be the easy creation of forms from Word documents or other PDF files.

Bring your forms to the workshop either digitally on a flash drive, email them to yourself so you can access them when you are here, or have a clear copy of a form which can be scanned.

Register on https://odie.esu10.org

0 Comments

BackupPC Backup Solution - Jamie Kramer

Jamie Kramer — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 05:00:00 GMT

At the last LAN Managers Forum at ESU 10 I talked about BackupPC as a backup solution. Here is a link to a HOW-TO for installing BackupPC on an Ubuntu host, and backing up an OS X server.

http://wiki.esu10.org/w/index.php?title=Install_BackupPC_on_Ubuntu#Why_BackupPC

0 Comments

Instr Tech Vendor Showcase - Apr 27 - Graci Gillming

Graci Gillming — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 05:00:00 GMT

ESU 10 is hosting an Instructional Technology Vendor Showcase on Monday, April 27 to assist you in the decision making process of how to spend your ARRA monies.

There will be a morning and afternoon session, each starting off with a panel of NDE personnel to share info about the stimulus monies.

Although no registration is required, ODIE does have information as to the day's events. Visit https://odie.esu10.org

Check out the Instructional Technology Vendor Showcase flyer (2).pdf

0 Comments

ESU 10 Hosted Services - Jamie Kramer

Jamie Kramer — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Educational Service Unit 10, in conjunction with the Greater Nebraska Educational Network Consortium (GNENC), hosts a wide array of computer and web based services. The purpose of this article is to outline these services, provide a brief description of each service, and include a URL as a starting point for each service.

The ultimate goal is to inform you, the educational computer user and manager, so that you can take advantage of our services which you may or may not have known about. Our focus is on serving you!

Internet Access

ESU 10 provides Internet access aggregation. In some ways we are like an Internet service provider. We provide bandwidth, network monitoring, guaranteed bandwidth, and network security with the Internet access that flows through our aggregation point. If you use the Internet at your school, then you most likely already use this service.

Web Filtering

Internet web filtering provides a means for each school district to apply a customized web filtering profile customized specifically for each district's needs. ESU 10 provides the 8e6 web filter, which is managed by LAN managers and administrators at each district.

8e6 Filter Management: http://webfilter.project42.k12.ne.us:88
Web Filtering Information: http://www.esu10.org/filtering/index.html

Domain Name Services (DNS)

Every school district is provided a FREE DNS domain name, such as sunnysideschools.k12.ne.us or anytown.k12.ne.us. Just let us know and we can easily set up a DNS record for your school's customized domain.

If you currently access any local web services at your school directly by an IP address in the URL, we can remedy that with an easy to remember DNS name like powerschool.anytown.k12.ne.us, www.anytown.k12.ne.us, or webmail.anytown.k12.ne.us. The possibilities for what we can nameserve for you are endless.

You also have the option to purchase your own domain name from a DNS registrar such as GoDaddy. If you choose, we can mirror your new domain with your existing k12.ne.us domain.

Additionally, every school network IP address range is configured with reverse DNS mapping (PTR records)

Email

Email services actually consist of a number of "sub-services."

Every esu10.org email account holder can access email via web based email, IMAP, or POP.

IMAP and POP allow users to download email with popular email client programs such as Outlook, OS X Mail, Thunderbird, Eudora, and a plethora of others.

On a global level, all email is scanned for viruses and spam. The email system blocks over 30,000 spam per day.

If a school district chooses to host its own email server, we can "relay" email for that server. By doing so we can act as an intermediate "buffer" between the school's email server and the Internet, and continue to provide spam and virus filtering.

YAMS is an email account management interface and an online "address book" of all email accounts we host. LAN-Managers use YAMS to create email accounts, change passwords, and remove email accounts. End users can use YAMS to change their own password and email forwarding settings. Any esu10.org email user can use YAMS to search for the email addresses of other users.

DSPAM is an anti-spam tool which gives users some control over spam.

Links:

Web Hosting

Web hosting is provided, including the features of MySQL databases, PHP, and FTP/SFTP access. Its as easy as requesting a web hosting account from us. We can host your school and teacher educational web sites today!

Web Calendar

The legacy calendar application we have promoted in the past is based on WebEvent. A new alternative is the Web Calendar service we now provide.

With Web Calendar, any user can utilize a web based calender. Username and login are integrated with users' esu10.org email account. No new username and password required!

Web Calendar also supports non-user calendars. A non-user calendar could be used by your school district as a district wide calendar, sporting event calendar, or lunch menu calendar. The possibilities are endless.

Web calendar features include email reminders and client subscriptions. With client subscriptions to your calendars, your teachers, parents, and other users can integrate the happenings of your school into Microsoft Outlook, Apple's iCal, or Mozilla's Sunbird.

Links:

Web Survey Tools

We currently offer two different web based survey applications. These survey applications make it easy to create customized surveys and distribute the surveys to users electronically.

Links:

Survey

Blogs

We host Wordpress for user blogs. We can set up a customized blog URL for your district, such as http://blog.anytown.k12.ne.us. A Wordpress blog can be easily customized to look like a typical web site instead of the blog format if a user simply wants the ease of use offered by Wordpress.

Check out some of the ESU 10 blogs:

http://blog.esu10.org/jeverett/
http://blog.esu10.org/edtechstudio/
http://blog.esu10.org/dstall/
http://blog.esu10.org/jkramer/

Email Distribution Lists

We host email distribution lists with a service called Mailman (often referred to as listserves). An email distribution list might contain a list of all teachers and/or staff in your district, making it easy to send email to a large group of email addresses. A distribution list might also be used as a way to distribute email newsletters to parents or community members.

Distribution lists can be configured to allow anyone to subscribe or unsubscribe, or you can choose to manage the members of a distribution list in a more "controlled" manner. You decide.

Let us know if we can set up a Mailman distribution list for any of your district's needs.

Links:

Groupware

Currently we are evaluating a groupware solution. Groupware applications typically include a suite of products and tools which allow for easier communication, collaboration, and sharing amongst members of a group. Such a group might consist of the administrative staff of a district, or even every employee of a district. Collaborative tools include shared calendars, common file/document storage, shared addressbooks, etc.

The product we are evaluating is called eGroupware. Its features include email (integrated with existing esu10.org email accounts), calendaring, address book, to-do, notes, CRM customer relationship management, project management, file management, websites, and wikis.

eGroupWare might be considered an alternative to Microsoft Exchange.

Links:

ESU 10 GroupWare Solution (currently only trial testing)

1 Comments

Don't Let Your Domain Name Expire - Jamie Kramer

Jamie Kramer — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Does your district own any registered domain names? If so, do you know when they expire? Does the terminology "domain name" sound foreign to you? Read on to learn more!

Some examples of registered domain names are:

example.com
esu10.org
google.com
yahoo.com
kearneypublicschools.org

In each of the domain name examples listed, somebody (not ESU 10) was responsible for purchasing the domain name for your district. Does your district utilize any registered domain names to access web sites and other Internet services?

The most importing thing to know about domain names is: DOMAIN NAMES WILL EXPIRE. Usually, the person who originally purchased the domain name will receive an email notification if a domain name is about to expire, but what happens if that person is no longer around? Then its time to start digging in so that you will be in position to renew the domain name.

What happens if your domain name does expire? The domain name could be purchased by another entity, in which case your teachers, students, community members, and other users may lose access to your web sites and Internet services. It can be hard to inform people that your web site URL has changed when they can't get to your web site.

One way to check the expiration status of your registered domain is the Whois.net web site. Go to the web site and enter your domain like this:

(In this example the esu10.org domain is being checked. Enter your own domains to check them. Do not include any http://, www, or any other part of a URL. ONLY enter the domain part, i.e. example.com, but NOT http://www.example.com or www.example.com)

Alternatively, if you are using Apple OS X or a Linux OS, you can simply use the whois command from the command line:

> whois esu10.org

Either whois lookup method will return the same result. First, look for the expiration of the domain name. It will be a line which starts with "Expiration Date:" It is recommended that you perform the whois lookup for all of your registered domains and document the expiration date for each.

You should also pay attention to the Registrant Name/Email, Tech Name/Email, and other contact fields, as those are the individuals who will be contacted when a domain name is expiring. It would behoove you to keep the contacts for a domain name as current as possible.

A few other tidbits of information to note from the whois lookup are the "nameserver" settings. If the nameserver settings include one or more of the following:

ns1.esu10.k12.ne.us
ns2.esu10.k12.ne.us
ns3.esu10.k12.ne.us

then ESU 10 hosts the DNS records for your registered domain name. If the domain is not using the ESU 10 nameservers, then you most likely manage the DNS records for the domain with the company from which the domain name was purchased.

Finally, look at the "Sponsoring Registrar" field in the whois output. The sponsoring registrar is the company who your domain name was purchased from, and the company with which you will need to renew the domain name.

If you are concerned about your domain ending in k12.ne.us, rest assured it will never expire since ESU 10 hosts that domain for you free of charge.

Hopefully this information will help you stay in control of your domain names. And remember, do your whois lookups today!

0 Comments

NETA 2009 Room Host Volunteers Needed - Graci Gillming

Graci Gillming — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 22:03:33 GMT

You have the wonderful opportunity to help at NETA this year. ESU 10 is hosting the DAPPER II room and are in need of 11 volunteers to:

be at the room early to welcome the presenter(s).
provide support and aid as needed to the presenter(s) (distribute handouts, etc.).
make sure the room is ready for the next presenter(s).

There's nothing to it! And for your efforts, you'll get a FREE NETA T-shirt...and more importantly you've done your civic duty for a great organization.

Check the schedule at http://www.netasite.org/conf2009/schedule.html and search for Dapper II. Take note that there's also a Dapper I & III. Look for a session you'd like to attend and let me know which one it is (day and time). If you'd like to do more than one, just say so. If you don't care, tell me what sessions to avoid.

Email me at ggillmin@esu10.org to let me know which sessions you'd like to host.

Thanks for your help! More specific details will follow as NETA nears.

0 Comments

NSSRS Data Quality Tactical Workshop 2009 - Graci Gillming

Graci Gillming — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:44:20 GMT

NDE is providing a fast-paced two-day NSSRS Data Quality Tactical workshop designed for data steward teams, i.e. those people who are directly involved with the entering and maintenance of student and staff data. Participants may sign up for any or all of the four sessions. Lunch is provided.

Day One

1. The Desktop Database (9am - 12pm)
     Entering, updating, and exporting information
2. Uniq-ID (12:30 pm - 3:30 pm)
      Assigning, maintaining, and updating student state IDs

Day Two

3. NSSRS Basic (9am - 12pm)
      Hands-on experience working with NSSRS
4. NSSRS Intermediate (12:30 pm - 3:30 pm)
      Data Quality for uploading, analyzing, and verifying data

There are still four dates you can attend.

April 14 - 15 (Kearney, ESU 10) - Register at https://odie.esu10.org
April 22 - 23 (Omaha, ESU 3)
May 5 - 6 (North Platte)
June 15 – 16 (Hastings, ESU9)

For more complete information see http://www.nde.state.ne.us/nssrs/docs/TDQFlyer.pdf

0 Comments

Technology Virtual Conference - April 16, 2009 - John Stritt

John Stritt — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Sign up now for the first ESU 10 Virtual Technology conference for high school students. The conference will be streamed live on April 16 beginning at 8:00 and finishing at 11:30 am CST.

Information about the event:

Since this is a streamed event, all you will need is your computer, an LCD projector or monitor, and your web browser.
Students are encouraged to participate in the entire conference
Each student should have access to a computer
Register for the event at http://odie.esu10.org - Select workshops and choose TECHS Virtual Conference - Register no later then April 8.
On April 8, registered sites will receive a pre-conference checklist.
To learn more about the conference including the agenda, go to http://www.studenttechs.org/techsvconf09

The virtual conference is being presented by ESU 10 and is open to all schools. In addition to instructional technology sectionals, the ESU 10 TECHS 2008-09 class projects will be highlighted.

If you have questions, please contact John Stritt - jstritt@esu10.org

0 Comments

SIS needs survey - Graci Gillming

Graci Gillming — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 16:15:46 GMT

ESU 10 is considering hosting a Student Information System (SIS) showcase soon. Your responses to the following survey will help us determine the need for such an event.

Please complete the survey AFTER consulting with the person(s) responsible for managing and/or administering the SIS used in your district OR forward this invitation to them to complete.

The SIS survey is located at http://tinyurl.com/cdpabr

Thanks for your help. If you have any questions, please contact me at ggillmin@esu10.org or 308-865-5664 x-229.

Graci

2 Comments

NDE streaming video - Graci Gillming

Graci Gillming — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:20:09 GMT

NDE programs are available through the ODIE Media Library. All programs that are aired through satellite are captured and placed online for viewing…such as NCLB updates, NSSRS Data Collection updates, School Budget, NASDSE Special Ed, etc. To access the videos:

Log into ODIE https://odie.esu10.org
Open the Library link on the left side
Under Featured items…, click on "NDE 2008/09 Programs"
Click on the title of the broadcast you want to watch.
Click on "Click here to view this webpage."

NDE video files are in QuickTime Movie format, and they will stream directly to your computer. Most Macintosh computers already have QuickTime capability, and many Windows computers do as well. If your computer does not have QuickTime capability, you may download the free QuickTime Player at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/.

By using this service, you will no longer need to have a copy made of the program. If you have questions about this or would like to continue to have a copy made of the program, contact Susan Sandoval ssandova@esu10.org or call her direct line 308-237-2280.

0 Comments

Software to support fill in applications - John Stritt

John Stritt — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 18:03:00 GMT

Jessie Kaskie, guidance counselor from Litchfield Public Schools, requested the following information regarding fill in applications. Please comment on suggestions for Jessie.

--------------------------------

I am investigating scanning programs for our school. I would like to be
able to scan in scholarship forms so the students can enter in their
information on the computer and print it out rather than using a
typewriter to fill our their scholarship forms. I would also like to be
able to save the forms to our school webpage so they would be accessible
to the students at any time.

Do you have any suggestions as far as programs?

Thanks for your help.

Jessie Kaskie
Litchfield Public Schools

3 Comments

Default Queues in ODIE - Brian Schanbacher

Brian Schanbacher — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:34:21 GMT

For school's using ODIE for local tickets, the default queue was the queue that a ticket was put into when a teacher created it. There was only one default queue for the district--this was the default queue for every teacher in the district. Until now! :)

Default Queues have been rewritten from a single selected queue for the whole district to a structure that will allow you to manage what ticket gets sent where, based on three variables:

The account of the person requesting the ticket
The building the person is requesting the ticket from
The problem type the person assigns to the ticket

If you are a District Helpdesk Manager, you have permission to manage your queues, including this default queue structure. Click on 'Manage Queues' in the helpdesk menu, and then click on "Set Default Queues" at the top of the page. This will take you to a page where you can manage which ticket gets directed to which queue.

There's a short description on the page, but if you would like to know more about how this works, or have questions about the best way to manage your default queues, don't hesitate to let us know!

0 Comments

Internet Safety Contest 2009 - Graci Gillming

Graci Gillming — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 21:28:47 GMT

The 2009 Internet Safety Contest sponsored by the State Attorney General's Office and the Nebraska ESUs is underway.

Students may enter in several categories including computer-generated or hand-drawn posters, audio or video PSAs, or the new open category.

Entry deadline is March 16, 2009.

Get the contest entry form, guidelines and rubrics at http://nis.esu10.org/ggillmin/InternetSafety.

For more information, contact me at ggillmin@esu10.org or 308-865-5664 x-229.

Graci

0 Comments

Filter overrides - Brian Garey

Brian Garey — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 14:58:00 GMT

We know about an issue with both kinds of filter overrides and are trying to find what is causing it. We will let you know when it is fixed or a workaround is found. I’m sorry for any inconvenience this is causing.

1 Comments

iTunes download problems - Brian Gibson

Brian Gibson — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:50:00 GMT

Is anyone else having a problem with the iTunes download page on Apples website? I have tried 3 different computers, windows and Mac and I can’t see a download button. I’m trying to download the windows version.

0 Comments

Arnold Laptop Day Registration Closing soon - Nicole Badgley

Nicole Badgley — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:04:00 GMT

If you are still interested in attending Arnold's Laptop Initiative Days next week, registration will close on Monday at noon. Please register as soon as possible at http://edseminars.apple.com/arnold or http://edseminars.apple.com/seminars/event.php?eventID=1460

0 Comments

Internet Bandwidth - Brian Gibson

Brian Gibson — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 06:00:00 GMT

FYI:

We are in the process of making changes to our Internet service. I would like to get a sampling of other schools, the bandwidth they are using and if it has been sufficient. If you would like to help me with this please send me any or all of the following information. I appreciate your time and assistance.

Location of school (city) –
Approximate number of computers in your school -
Total Bandwidth speed to school –
Distance Learning – Yes or No
Satisfied with the amount of bandwidth to your school – Yes or No
Comments -

1 Comments

Leopard Mail - Chad DeWester

Chad DeWester — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Has anyone else seen an issue in Leopard mail with the time not showing correctly? It only shows the minutes under "Date Received". If the email was received at 1:05 AM it shows as 05 AM. The header time shows correctly and the system time is correct and shows correctly. Any ideas or suggestions would be helpful.

2 Comments

Teacher's access to the Helpdesk section of ODIE - Brian Schanbacher

Brian Schanbacher — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 06:00:00 GMT

While we've specifically created ODIE with the ability to help you manage your own district's helpdesk, we realize you may wish to use another system. One district recently asked if they could prevent teachers from creating helpdesk tickets, so we updated ODIE to be able to do just that.

This new "setting" in ODIE will allow a contracted district to prevent teachers from creating helpdesk tickets by copmletely shutting off the Helpdesk tab for them. It's a setting that won't be changed too often (if at all), so I haven't taken the time to write a script that allows you to change this setting. We'll just make the change manually in the database for now. :)

So if you would like to have your district's teachers' helpdesk access turned off, or if you have any questions about how this works, just let us know! Thanks!

0 Comments

Internet Access 2009-2010 - Ron Cone

Ron Cone — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 17:57:57 GMT

One topic I failed to discuss at yesterday’s LAN Manager Forum is the planning for Internet Access next year. We have been purchasing off a statewide contract with Qwest through Network Nebraska and the price will be changing next year to $15 per MB per month on July 1, 20009. The current price is $38.

GNENC (formerly Project 42) is tentatively planning to purchase 170 MB next year, up from the 65 MB this year. Several schools and ESUs within this consortium have purchased additional bandwidth making our current total 127 MB. For next year we need to get an estimate of the desired bandwidth so we and the service providers can make the necessary changes to the network accordingly.

Please contact your ESU or myself if your district is planning to purchase Internet access from Qwest next school year and indicate the amount desired as soon as possible. If you haven’t determined the exact amount, the please estimate so we can be close as we must share this information by Friday, January 16, 2009.

As always, if you have questions, please ask.

0 Comments

IMAP vs POP - Jamie Kramer

Jamie Kramer — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 17:08:19 GMT

IMAP and POP are email retrieval protocols. When you configure an email client program such as Outlook, Entourage, Apple OS X Mail, Thunderbird, Eudora, Evolution, or Windows Mail (in Vista) you will be presented with choosing either IMAP or POP. The GNENC email system (including ESUs 10, 11, 15, 16, and PANESU) supports both protocols, but which one should you and your teachers use? It really depends on personal preference and a careful consideration of the pros and cons of each.

If you just want a quick answer from a system administrator, I would tell you to use IMAP. In my experience the IMAP protocol tends to be less problematic. If you want to know more than just my opinion, read on!

If you want to make your own informed decision for you and your users, it helps to know the differences between the two protocols.

The IMAP protocol leaves all email on the server. Your IMAP enabled email client simply shows you email which is stored on the server. Typically you cannot read your IMAP email when your computer is disconnected from Internet access. The exception to this "offline unavailability" is that most modern email clients will cache all of your IMAP email locally on your computer. This local caching allows you to read your previously downloaded email while your computer is offline or disconnected from the Internet.

The POP protocol downloads all email from the server, then deletes that email from the server. The download and delete functionality of POP means that all of your email is stored locally on your computer. When new email arrives to the server, it is only stored on the server until your POP enabled email client performs its next "download and delete." The excpetion to POP's "download and delete" is a feature in most modern email clients which allows you to leave a copy of your email on the server. While you are free to use the "save a copy of my email on the server" feature, I do not recommend it as I have seen many problems with this.

IMAP Advantages

Email is always stored server side. If your computer hard drive crashes, your email is safe on the server
Since your email is stored on the server, your email store will alwayes be backed up in case you somehow delete all of your email (and I've seen this happen!)
You can check your email from more than one computer. This means you can check your email from different computers using a combination of multiple configured email clients and webmail. Your email will be consistent between all of them! I find this to be one of the most valuable features of IMAP, you are never tied to checking your email from one computer.

IMAP Disadvantages

Your computer must be online with an Internet connection to read previously downloaded email. I don't see this as a problem though, since you can configure any modern email client to cache your email locally on your computer.

POP Advantages

In my humble opinion there really aren't any, unless you prefer that your email not be saved on the server and backed up.

Pop Disadvantages

Email must always be checked from the same computer
Email is not backed up on the server (except for new email which still happens to be on the server at backup time)
Cannot use webmail to check email
If your computer hard drive crashes and you don't back up, your email is gone .... FOR GOOD. (You do back up, don't you?)

One more thing, I always recommend that you use our secure email settings, no matter which protocol you decide to use. This web site will tell you all about the secure email settings: http://www.project42.k12.ne.us/secureemailservices

I invite you to add your experiences using either protocol.

3 Comments

Router maintenance - Brett Haffener

Brett Haffener — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 06:00:00 GMT

I have heard several LAN Managers ask if they should keep their router under maintenance. Maintenance on routers provides the following three advantages:

Next day replacement if the hardware goes bad
Software updates
TAC configuration and troubleshooting support

When I have asked Cisco in the past what software you can upgrade for free I have received different answers depending on who I ask. The latest answer that I have received is that you can upgrade as long as you stay within your feature set and major release. This means that you could upgrade from version 12.4(10) to 12.4(20), but you can't upgrade from version 12.4(10) to version 12.5(1). I don't see a huge need to upgrade to version 12.5 when it comes out and don't expect it to come out for a year or two at least.

The other issue that we run into with maintenance is the cost. The latest quote I have seen for router maintenance on a 2821 router was $417. The total cost of this router is around $3000, so you're paying about 14% of the total price per year to have it maintained.

Thinking about the cost versus the advantages gained I have wondered in the past if it would be best to just store some routers on the shelf and drop maintenance. What are your thoughts about this? I have even thought about providing this as a service at ESU 10 at half the price of normal maintenance. I would think that we could recover our costs if most of the schools joined and have 2-3 routers sitting on the shelf each year for replacement.

0 Comments

2 Minute Drill - Jason Everett

Jason Everett — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 06:00:00 GMT

* Nate - for best portrayal as an MC for an athletic event

* Ron - DIY Service Packs. Search for Offline Updates

* Nate/Alan G. - Dell Chat Deal

* Jim - Backup: 1/2 TB External Drive $110 - Backup Software Free Agent

* Tim - YouTube recorder: Free Studio 2.2 - DVDVideoSoft.com

* Marc - zamzar - file conversion utility

* Wade - truecrypt.org - encrypt files

* Don - Daemon Lite - Load iso file as a drive letter

* Don - Nova PDF - print to pdf (not free)

* Cody - PDF Redirect - (free to use)

* Ed - Log Me In - Remote control computer with iPod Touch

* Kerry - Mocha VNC - Remote control with iPod Touch

* Jamie - Synergy - Same keyboard and mouse on multiple computers

* Brian - Projection vs LCD monitors

* Brett - Firefox extention - Foxmarks to sync bookmarks, passwords, saved forms

* John - Polleverywhere.com - web or cell phone

* Jason - online-stopwatch.com

* Ed - Pop bubblewrap

* Brian - Games for kids - Elements game Shepardsoftware.com

* Heather - Keyboard Game - typeingtest.com

* Bryan - Aimsweb - progress monitoring via Palm

* Jason - twitter.com/GoogleTips

* Brian - wordle.net

* Ron - ultraVNC - can push a file to remote computer

* Arlyn - Coconut Battery (mac) - Battery Monitor (Win)

* Jordan - MemTest 86 (Bootable memory test)

* Wade - archive.org - View pages from the history

* Ron - italc - Monitor and control lab computers

0 Comments

Training Report for LAN Meeting - Jason Everett

Jason Everett — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Internet Safety Contest

* Handout

* Link from Agenda - http://nis.esu10.org/ggillmin/InternetSafety

* In the Connector - http://connector.esu10.org/ArticleDetails.aspx?ArticleID=471

NETA - http://www.netasite.org

* Dates - April 23rd - 24th, 2009

* Contests - http://www.netasite.org/awards/index.html

* Groups - Tech Coordinators Group, Laptop Initiative Group

Spring and Summer Workshops

To be published on ODIE soon.

Adobe

PS Elements (Feb 24, Tue)

Acrobat Pro - lab

WordPress via Connect (starting in Feb)

Beginning - first Thursday of each month

Advanced - third Thursday each month (various topics)

Workday - in lab (Mar 17, Tue)

Google via Connect

Docs - Deanna - March 3

SS & Forms - Deanna - March 17

Presentations - Deanna - March 31

Maps - Deanna - April 14

Jason to do daily Google tips on twitter and then podcast those tips biweekly

Office Apps via Connect - Graci

Summer 2.0 Dates

* May 27 & 28 - Science

* June 9 & 10 - Elementary

* June 16 & 17 - Language Arts

* July 21 & 22 - Social Studies

* July 16 & 17, 27 & 28 - TIS

0 Comments

Special Needs software - Brian Gibson

Brian Gibson — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:35:32 GMT

FYI:

Has anyone ever purchased a program they like for the seeing impaired? We are looking for an audible software program that will read text in a really clear language. We need it to be available to read anything on the screen. We may even need beyond this even. Something accessible from a keyboard etc… A product for use by the blind or extreme visual impaired. Imagine someone who is going blind and you need to prepare them now. Any websites or contacts would be beneficial.

3 Comments

ELMO - Brian Gibson

Brian Gibson — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:29:32 GMT

Has anyone priced an ELMO recently? I’m trying to get an estimate price. Just curious if any of you have found any good deals. The projection ELMO not he one with Big eyes that giggles when you tickle him.

3 Comments

Server virtualization and Terminal services - David Evertson

David Evertson — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:16:10 GMT

We’re looking at moving to virtualize our server environment and at the same time incorporate thin clients and possibly using Microsoft’s Terminal Services in some of our student computing environments.

I was wondering if any of you have any experience or thoughts on the pros/cons of terminal services as opposed to running virtual desktops for each client through virtualization software such as VMware or Virtual Iron. As it’s been explained to me, terminal services on a server is not something you want to virtualize, so physical hardware would have to be dedicated to that outside of the virtualization environment of other server roles (email, web, etc.)

Is anyone else considering this sort of thing? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks!

0 Comments

Fix for some slow webpages - Brett Haffener

Brett Haffener — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:49:48 GMT

For anyone that is experiencing slowness to subscription websites that use Java, I may have a fix for you. Most of the schools in this area are using the Cisco (Advanced Security) firewall feature set. When the Cisco firewall has to inspect Java traffic it seems to slow things down a little bit if the router is busy. One way to fix this is to modify the access-list on the router to explicitly permit web traffic from the subscription web server. Thanks to Brian Garey for helping figure this out.

If you have a website used for teaching that uses Java and is slow, please create an ODIE ticket and we will apply the fix as quickly as we can. We'll need to know the URL of the website as well as whether the website uses HTTP or HTTPS.

For anyone interested, here are the router commands:

ip access-list extended <School>_WAN_IN
remark <Name of Website> access
permit tcp host <IP address of webserver> eq <80 or 443> any

Brett Haffener
ESU 10

0 Comments

POP Problems With the Email Server - Jamie Kramer

Jamie Kramer — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 06:00:00 GMT

On Monday we experienced a failure of 2 hard drives on the server which stores email. This caused the file system on which email is stored to become corrupted. One effect of this was the creation of "blank" or "unknown" email in some users' email inboxes. These "unknown" email are not real email in the sense that they are just blank files, but they do cause some POP clients to lock up and not download anymore email.

The workaround is to log in to the user's email account via webmail. One you are logged in, look in the inbox for a file of 0 KB in size, or email from "Unknown." If you do not see the size column, you can enable that column by following these steps:

Go to Options
Click on "Index Order"
Add the Size Column

Once you are able to see the size column you should be able to easily find the blank "unknown" email of zero size. Just delete those zero-sized email, and your POP enabled email client should work.

So far I have only heard of OS X Mail.app being affected by this when configured for POP, but it could affect other email clients.

1 Comments

iSight camera not working in iMovie '08 - Marc Regenos

Marc Regenos — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 06:00:00 GMT

In iMovie 7.1.2 or later, you may not be able to use your built-in iSight camera to capture footage in iMovie. iMovie may not recognize the camera. This may occur even if you are able to activate the camera in other applications, such as iChat.

Products Affected

iMovie 7.x

Resolution

If you are experiencing this behavior, follow the steps below:

In Finder, navigate to /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/
Select the file com.apple.mio.VDCAssistant.plist and delete.
Restart your system.

You should now be able to use your iSight camera with iMovie.

1 Comments

Fun Little Word Puzzle Game - Nathan McClenahan

Nathan McClenahan — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 06:00:00 GMT

I've had fun making dumb little programs for fun. The inspiration for this came from the need to host a gathering where some group games were to be played. So knowing that I could project my screen from my laptop I created this game to have a little fun. It is a very basic version of hangman or Wheel of Fortune.
This will only run on windows with .NET Framework 2.0 or greater installed.

Let me know how you like it.

WordPuzzle.zip

0 Comments

8e6 Wildcard in Exception URL - Jamie Kramer

Jamie Kramer — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 21:08:35 GMT

A recent update to the 8e6 filter now offers you more control with your district's filtering profile. One of the new features is the use of the wildcard in the block and allow URL exception lists. Previously the wildcard functionality was only available in custom categories.

A wildcard exception URL is helpful in blocking sites such as Myspace, Facebook, and Youtube, because these sites often have hundreds of sub-domain URLs by which they can be accessed. It is difficult, if not impossible, to block all of the possibilites within your 8e6 exception URL lists.

To use a wildcard URL you prefix the domain you wish to block with the wildcard character. The wildcard character is the asterisk *. Here are some examples which you could use to block Myspace, Facebook and Youtube, respectively:

*.myspace.com
*.facebook.com
*.youtube.com

Information on exception URL wildcards can be found on page 396 of the 8e6 R3000 Administrator User Guide. The guide can be downloaded from the 8e6 website at http://www.8e6.com/product-documentation.html

1 Comments

Great Article on Computer Viruses - Marc Regenos

Marc Regenos — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 02:39:18 GMT

I found this article on Gizmodo, it offers a view of viruses on Windows vs. OS X.

Article link

0 Comments

Screen Capture Software - Jason Everett

Jason Everett — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:04:14 GMT

There has been some discussion about screen capture software. I have used a couple on the Mac side. I like the price of Jing. The only downside to Jing is editing the video once it is captured. I use Snapz Pro from most projects.

What do you use?

Macintosh:

Jing Project (Free) http://www.jingproject.com/
iShowU ($20) http://www.shinywhitebox.com/home/home.html
Snapz Pro ($69) http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/

Windows:

Jing Project (Free) http://www.jingproject.com/
Camtasia Studio ($299.00) http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp
SnagIT ($50) http://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asp

6 Comments

Wii Whiteboard Remote Lessons - John Stritt

John Stritt — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 06:00:00 GMT

If you are interested in creating your own IR remote pen that will support the Wii Whiteboard, you can go through a series of lessons from introduction to whiteboards, to making an IR remote, and connecting your Wii Remote with support from the IR pen.

To access the Wii Remote lessons, follow these steps:

Go to http://techs.myelearning.org
You do not enroll but you scroll down to "Public Information" and select "Public Surveys"
Select "Wii Remote Whiteboard"
The password is "techs"

Feel free to use any of the activities with your students.

2 Comments

Network Performance Testing - Jamie Kramer

Jamie Kramer — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 06:00:00 GMT

We discussed some network performance testing tools at the 11/25 LAN Managers Forum. One of those tools is Iperf. You can use Iperf to test performance to the GNENC Internet gateway.

Instructions for OS X can be found here:
http://blog.esu10.org/jkramer/2008/11/25/network-performance-testing-with-iperf/

Another site with some good network and performance testing tools is http://www.dslreports.com/tools

Keep in mind that any offsite tools you use like DSLReports may not have the most reliable or consistent results due to the fact that the traffic these tools generate must travel through the Internet, which by its nature is inconsistent. They can however compliment the results you get from Iperf.

Feel free to share your favorite network performance testing tools.

3 Comments

Trans-Community Portal doohickey - Brian Schanbacher

Brian Schanbacher — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:19:58 GMT

We've added a "Trans-Community Portal" doohickey. At the top of each community you will see this bar:

The first link, "ODIE Communities", is a link back to the list of communities in ODIE. You will also see the list of communities when you hover over the link, and can jump directly to any other community. If you are logged onto the current community, this link will automatically log you out of the current community and log you into the new community! This will hopefully help you from having to log on and off of each community separately.

The second link, "My Community Preferences", takes you to ODIE where you can manage your preferences for all the communities that you're a member of at the same time (rather than separately in each community).

If you have any questions about how it this works, or suggestions on how we can improve the Communities or ODIE, let us know! :)

0 Comments

Mass Communication Solutions - Graci Gillming

Graci Gillming — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:24:07 GMT

Several schools are using a mass communication application, such as Connect Ed and School Beacon, to notify the public about school information, such as weather-related postponements and cancellations, etc. These solutions may use phone calls (telephony) as well as email, web, or text messaging.

If you are using one of these or another solution, please post a comment about what you are using and the pros/cons about that mass communication application.

We'd like to have a discussion about this topic at the next LAN manager's meeting on Tuesday, 11/25.

6 Comments

Project LEAP – 21st Century Learning "In Realtime" - Graci Gillming

Graci Gillming — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:20:09 GMT

Hershey Public School is hosting. . . .

Project LEAP – 21st Century Learning "In Realtime"
Hershey Public Schools, Hershey, NE
301 S. Lincoln
Hershey, NE 69143

November 18, 2008
9:30-4:00

Please register to attend. Lunch will be provided by Lenovo and GovConnection.
Attendance is limited.

Hershey Public School is currently in year three of our 9 through 12 grade 1:1 student laptop initiative entitled Project LEAP “Laptops Enhancing Academic Performance”. Come and see a working 1:1 program.

Please register by clicking on this link

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=9_2bgH3QPF89Yq_2f68zcwbK5g_3d_3d

Topics to be covered include:
Preparation and planning for a 1:1 laptop initiative
Budgeting
Deployment
Policy/procedures
Staff development
Wireless infrastructure and offline file synchronization
Curriculum integration
Hardware/value added services

It is recommended that you bring a team from your district. That team could include: Administrators, Teachers, Technology Coordinator, Curriclum Coordinator and Board Members.

Additional information can be obtained from:
Jane Davis, Media and Technology Coordinator
Hershey Public Schools
jdavis@esu16.org
308-368-5573

0 Comments

Halloween gotcha at Kearney Catholic - Graci Gillming

Graci Gillming — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 22:43:38 GMT

Check out the Happy Halloween-gotcha video on Kearney Catholic's website.

http://www.kearneycatholic.org/

May your sins be forgiven, Kris Conner!!

3 Comments

NSSRS Approval & other info - Graci Gillming

Graci Gillming — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:38:49 GMT

RE: Approval of NSSRS data, Completers & Dropouts from 2007-08, and NDE Data Quality Workshop

NSSRS Data Approval

Administrators, if you haven’t done so already, make sure you ‘approve’ the NSSRS data before midnight tonight, October 31. To do so:

1. Log on to the NDE portal http://portal.nde.state.ne.us

2. Click on the Student & Staff (NSSRS) tab

3. Click on NSSRS Data Management (If not active, go to Step 7.)

4. Click on the Approval link in the navigation bar at the left. (If the Approval link is not there, see Step 7.)

5. Click on Approve for Data Migration

6. When you return to the previous screen you’ll see a padlock in the middle of the screen, indicating that no more changes can be made to this year’s data until the next NDE submission window. If this appears, you’re done! Kudos!

7. If Approval is not visible on the Data Management screen, you need to add the Activation code

a. Return to the Portal home page http://portal.nde.state.ne.us

b. If necessary, log in

c. Click on Dist Admin tab

d. In the Choose Collection drop down, select NSSRS Data Manager

e. Look for UserType of District Approve

f. Copy the Code for District Approve in the left column

g. Click on the Student & Staff (NSSRS) tab

h. Click on Change or Apply to the left of NSSRS Data Manager

i. Paste the code in the Activation Code

j. Click Add

k. If applied, click the blue link Return to Previous Page. If no applied, double check the code.

l. Complete Steps 2-6

Kudos to you and your staff for successfully entering NSSRS data for fall 2008. The time and effort for the process is beyond anyone’s comprehension…unless you’ve done it yourself! Please let the data collectors and submitters know of your appreciation. They’ve gone above and beyond in many instances.

Completers & Dropouts

The Oct 30 NDE Bulletin contained an attachment listing districts and the recorded number of 2007-2008 graduates. If the number of graduates for your district is incorrect and/or you need to report any dropouts, you will be able to change those items during the open window of Nov 3-12.

An NSSRS Workday is scheduled for Tuesday, November 4 at ESU 10 from 9:00 – 3:30 for those needing assistance with completers and dropouts. Russ Masco from NDE will be here to help. Register at https://odie.esu10.org if you plan to attend.

We will also work on updating the UniqID file that day. All currently enrolled students, not just those needing an ID, should be updated each year to help identify students.

NDE Data Quality Workshop

The Data Quality Strategic workshops are focused on the roles and responsibilities of superintendents, principals and school board members. The workshops are designed to assist leadership in the implementation of a data quality culture to protect school funding, services provided, and the image of the school district. For more info, visit http://www.nde.state.ne.us/nssrs or print the brochure at http://www.nde.state.ne.us/nssrs/docs/DQbrochure.pdf

Administrators, if you haven’t already attended one of the NDE Data Quality workshops held across the state, I encourage you to attend one of the three remaining on:

- November 5 (Wakefield, ESU 1) Call 402-287-2061

- November 13 (Kearney, ESU 10) Register at https://odie.esu10.org

- December 2 (Beatrice, ESU 5) Call 402-223-5277

Graci

<>< <>< <>< <>< <>< <>< <>< <>< <>< <>< <>< <>< <>< <><
Graci Gillming
Technology Training Coordinator
Educational Service Unit 10
PO Box 850, 76 Plaza Blvd
Kearney, NE 68848
Bus: 308-865-5664 X-229
Fax: 308-233-9066
ggillmin@esu10.org

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop. Mother Teresa

0 Comments

Laptop Schools Meeting - Graci Gillming

Graci Gillming — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:07:22 GMT

Posted on behalf of Nicole Badgely

Laptop Schools:

On January 23rd, 2009, at ESU 11 in Holdrege, a meeting for all laptop schools will be held. This group is open to those who provide technical, administrative, or integration support to Nebraska’s laptop schools in which every student has their own laptop. The agenda for meetings focuses
on different aspects of having a laptop initiative and is largely platform independent. Typically the group addresses issues where technology is the object rather than the subject of the discussion. We have a loose agenda, hopefully compiled by the participating schools.

Meeting Details:

Location: ESU 11, 412 W 14th Ave., Holdrege, Nebraska
Date: January 23, 2009 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Pricing Information: $5.00 per person (to cover expenses for the room)
Materials Required: Samples of policies, agendas, and other documentation pertaining to your laptop initiative to share with the group.
Materials Fee: $0.00
Lunch: provided courtesy of the Nebraska Educational Technology Association
Registration: by email to Robert Hays, ESU 11, rhays@esu11.org or Phone (308) 995-6585. (Just let him know of your intent.)

Possible Items for Discussion:

How do we continue forward to keep improving?
What are your results and successes after implementing a laptop initiative? (How can we be accountable for its success and improve our scores?)
What current projects and lessons are going on in your districts that you might share for others?
What obstacles are you having, and how are you overcoming them?
What did you do to prepare your teachers for this initiative to start? (What trainings, workshops, etc.)
If your district were to do the roll-out again, what changes would you suggest?
What would you like to implement in your district if you could?
Pros and cons of taking laptops home
Problems when updating laptops, i.e. to a new OS or new Office suite
Privileges given to teachers and students--how much is enough or too much?
Question and Answer time for new participants

While this group was originally intended to be support for schools with laptop initiatives already in place, we want to invite schools considering this to come listen in on the discussions. That is why we have included the Q and A time for potential or new schools at the end of the agenda.

The minutes of the last meeting are posted at http://laptop.communities.esu10.org so you can see what we have talked about. (If you have an Odie account you can simply log in, otherwise
please make a free account and login.)

Often administration wants to see an agenda of what we plan to cover before approving leave so if you have any suggestions of what we might need to add to the agenda, please send them to nbadgley@esu10.org. We will send out a reminder in January with the compiled agenda.

Please share this information with other interested schools in your area.

Nicole Badgley
Arnold High Schools
http://sites.arnold.k12.ne.us/arnoldhome
405 N Haskell
Arnold, NE 69120
308-848-2226 ext 9

0 Comments

Service Outage - Jamie Kramer

Jamie Kramer — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:22:12 GMT

In order to make preparations for our server room move on Saturday, we
are planning a brief outage today (Tuesday) at 4:30 PM. During the outage you will
not have Internet access or access to any of the electronic services we
host, including email. We need to cycle power on a core device and move
some equipment to a temporary rack. Outage could take from 10 to 30
minutes.

Please let us know if you have any concerns.

0 Comments

Quick tip for Mac users - Marc Regenos

Marc Regenos — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Here's a quick way to make your toolbar more effective. I've added Eject and Delete to my toolbar and it does save a little time.

To change the contents in the Finder window toolbar, choose Customize Toolbar from the View menu.
In the dialog sheet that slides down from the window, drag whatever items you want to add onto the toolbar (such as Burn, Eject, Get Info, and more).
To remove a toolbar item, simply drag it off the toolbar.
To rearrange stuff in the toolbar, just drag an item to the desired location.
To group items so that they appear separated from others, drag a "Space" or "Flexible Space" item to the toolbar to create a separation.
You can have the toolbar display only icons, show icons and text, or display text only. From the Show pop-up menu at the bottom of the dialog, choose your preference.
When finished, click Done.
You can also add items to the toolbar by dragging an item in a Finder window to the toolbar.

0 Comments

My afternoon blunder - Brian Schanbacher

Brian Schanbacher — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 20:41:21 GMT

I came back from lunch with peak caffeination levels, ready to get lots done! I was trying to track down an error in an article from the online connector community, and had copied the contents of the article looking for something weird in the html. I thought I'd copy it back to the database, just in case there was a burp in the text on disk. But I ran into an error when I tried to paste the contents back into the field, because the paste would only paste up to the first line break into the field. Easy fix, I thought, and removed all the line breaks and tried pasting again. But my terminal service session had burped and I lost copy/paste from my machine to the server. So I thought I'd do it manually with an update statement. I tried to type...

UPDATE Articles SET Contents = 'blah blah blah' WHERE ID = 186

...which would update the contents of article 186 with "blah blah blah". But instead I had mistakenly typed...

UPDATE Articles SET Contents = 'blah blah blah WHERE ID = 186'

...which sets the contents of all articles (in all communities) to "blah blah blah WHERE ID = 186"! In short, because of one little apostrophe, I had overwritten every article's contents!

Nate gave me a hand in restoring from backup and "un-updating" the articles using DPM. We had an easy time getting the information back we needed. I "re-updated" the table with the correct values, and breathed a sigh of relief! Nothing was lost, and no one would have ever known if I hadn't just told you! :)

The moral of the story? Like Jason, I learned the importance of backups. I learned the value of having quality support from guys like our own Nate McClenahan! Oh, and I also learned to be careful when working with production data! :)

11 Comments

Cisco VPN fix - Brett Haffener

Brett Haffener — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Some LAN Managers have mentioned that their Cisco VPN is no longer working this year. I worked with Cisco to find a fix for this. We need to enable proxy-arp on the LAN interface in order to fix this with the following commands:

interface GigabitEthernet0/0
ip proxy-arp

If your Cisco VPN is broken and you would like us to fix it, please start an ODIE ticket at https://odie.esu10.org. If you have never VPNed into your network and are interested in getting a VPN setup, please start an ODIE ticket as well.

0 Comments

Outgoing Email Filtering - Jordan Clark

Jordan Clark — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Last year we started filtering outgoing SMTP traffic to only servers that should be sending mail traffic out. This was to prevent rouge machines from sending mail out causing us and you to end up on email naughty lists.

We disabled this filter over the summer because of some major network topology changes that we had. It is now time to re-enable the SMTP out filtering.

What does this mean to you? Nothing unless you have added / changed a server that does not use Project42's/GNENC's mail gateways to send outgoing mail. If that effects you, you will need to set your outgoing smtp server to mail.gnenc.org. If you have any questions or issues with this contact me at jtclark@esu10.org.

We also are working to set up different outgoing smtp servers with different filtering levels based on type of traffic. This is to allow separation of email by type (i.e. User email vs Distribution lists). The reason we would separate the email is that it would reduce the risk of normal email getting filtered by other MTA's on the Internet. We will let you know more about this in the future.

0 Comments

Application Process: Technology Planning - Stacy Peters

Stacy Peters — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 05:00:00 GMT

From USAC's News Brief sent on September 26th, 2008

The first document prepared by recipients of service under the E-rate program is usually a technology plan. A technology plan is a written document that describes the technologies and associated resources, both existing and planned, that will assist a school to provide educational services or a library to provide library services.

Technology plans are required for all discounted services other than basic telephone service. So, if you are requesting discounts on a PBX or a T-1 or DSL line – or if you are applying for any services in the Internet Access, Internal Connections, or Basic Maintenance categories of service – you have more than basic telephone service and you will need a technology plan.

Here are the basic requirements of a technology plan:

It must be created (written) before the Form 470 is filed.
It must cover all 12 months of the funding year for which you are applying.
It must contain all five required elements (see below).
It must be approved by a USAC-certified Technology Plan Approver (TPA) before the Form 486 is filed or services start, whichever is earlier.
In general, it cannot cover more than three years.

Let’s look at each of these requirements in turn.

The technology plan must be created before the Form 470 is filed.

Your technology plan will form the basis for the services you are seeking on your Form 470 and the services you then order on your Form 471. The services you request on your Form 470 must therefore be consistent with your technology plan. Your technology plan should be specific enough to allow you to reach your goals and strategies for providing educational or library services, but flexible enough that you can consider different available technologies to attain those goals.

Note that the technology plan written before the Form 470 filing is not necessarily the final version of your technology plan, nor the version that eventually is approved by your TPA. It should, however, be far enough along in its development that it can reasonably support your requests for discounted services.

The technology plan must cover all 12 months of the funding year.

Services beyond basic telephone service that are received during the funding year must be covered by the technology plan. In most cases, services are received during the entire funding year, so the technology plan must cover the entire year.

If your current technology plan expires before the end of the funding year for which you are applying, you must write a new technology plan that covers the remainder of the funding year. As above, that new technology plan must be written before the Form 470 is filed and approved before the Form 486 is filed so that your services for the entire year are covered by approved technology plans.

The technology plan must contain the five required elements.

Those elements are:

goals and strategies for using telecommunications and information technology;
a professional development strategy;
an assessment of telecommunications services, hardware, software, and other services needed;
budget resources; and
an ongoing evaluation process.

Your technology plan should address each of these elements at a level of detail appropriate to the size of your entity. For example, the technology plan for a one-room rural library with dial-up Internet access would be much shorter and simpler than the technology plan for a large urban library with 50 branches and high-speed Internet access in all of the branches.

The technology plan must be approved by a USAC-certified Technology Plan Approver (TPA).

USAC certifies certain entities to approve technology plans. In general, state departments of education and state libraries can approve plans. Other agencies can approve technology plans for non-public and other entities, such as diocesan schools or special libraries.

You can access a list of agencies that are certified to approve technology plans using the Technology Plan Approver Locator tool in the Search Tools section of the website. If you cannot find an appropriate approver for your state or entity type, use the email link on the webpage or Submit a Question (choose Topic Inquiry "Technology Planning" and Specific Inquiry "I can't find my Tech Plan Approver on your website") to ask USAC to help you locate an approver.

The technology plan must be approved before services start. However, because some applicants are eligible to file a Form 486 early if they meet certain requirements, the technology plan must be approved before the Form 486 filing if the Form 486 is filed before services have started.

The technology plan should not cover more than three years.

New technologies and services develop and change rapidly. Funding can be reduced or increased. Staff changes can lead to modifications of organizational goals. For these and other reasons, technology plans can become out-of-date in a relatively short period of time. Consequently, with two exceptions, your technology plan should not cover more than three years.

The exceptions are:

State five-year plans required by the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) meet E-rate requirements for state library agencies applying for discounts.
School five-year plans required by the U.S. Department of Education’s Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) program meet E-rate requirements if they are accompanied by information on the school’s operating budget.

However, we recommend that technology plans under these exceptions that cover more than three years be updated after three years.

0 Comments

Easy file conversion - Brett Haffener

Brett Haffener — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Have you ever wanted to convert a file to a different file format, but didn't know how to do it? I found a handy tool for solving this problem at http://media-convert.com. This website will quickly take video, audio, text, images, presentations, database files, and compressed files and convert them to your desired format. The best part is that it is free! I also like the fact that you don't have to install anything in order to convert a file, you just need a web browser. Files can be up to 150 MB in size and the file is hosted on the website for a day, so you can send a link to someone else to download the file. You might ask what the catch is, because I asked myself the same question. After reading through the site (and switching browsers) the main catch I see is that you have to put up with a lot of advertisements on the site. The first time I visited the site using Firefox I didn't get any advertisements at all though, so I might also put a plug in for "Ad Block Plus" for Firefox.

Has anyone else found any file conversion tools that they like better than media-convert.com?

2 Comments

TECHS Expo - October 21 - John Stritt

John Stritt — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:01:28 GMT

Note – Ron Cone will be getting out an announcement that the LAN Manager meeting scheduled for October 21 will be moved until November. In addition to the new building activities, several of the ESU 10 staff is interested in attending the TECH Expo.

I hope you will consider this opportunity and hopefully bring some students to the event.

John Stritt

-------------------

The Heartland Expo Technology Conference will be held at the University of Nebraska – Kearney Student Union Center on Tuesday, October 21, 2008. Registration and vendor display will open at 8:00 am with the conference beginning at 9 am.

The EXPO is targeted for IT professionals, end users, business owners, and students. Program highlights include:

Keynotes:

Brenda Decker, CIO for the State of Nebraska will open the conference sharing about “How technology keeps changing our world.”
Dave Taylor who is listed as an industry guru will be the lunch keynoter with his topic of “Building buzz in a Web 2.0 world. Dave also has his own web presence known as “Free Tech Support – Ask Dave Taylor” - http://www.askdavetaylor.com/

Sectional breakouts include:
IT Professionals -

Virtualization Hyper V
Disaster recovery
“Budgeting and planning for IT” - The time value of money

End user -

Office 2007 - Tips and Tricks
Security
Google Tips and Tricks

Business owner -

Green Computing – E Waste
E Marketing/Blogs
Ebay 101

Students

Innovative curriculum using Ebay
New Ways to Drive Old People Crazy – Cool Gadgets
Jobs – Careers in Technology

As students are an added focus for this year’s EXPO, a special deal is available to the first 20 schools that register for the conference. Each school may receive up to 5 free student admission passes and 1 sponsor. If you wish to register more then 5 students, the cost will be $12.50 per student or additional sponsor.

As I am part of the planning committee for the Expo, I am requesting that you send your registration intent to me at jstritt@esu10.org Please include the names of your students and sponsor name and email contact address. To insure that you are one of the first 20 schools, please send your email to me as soon as possible.

Additional information about the Expo can be found at http://heartlandtechexpo.com

Sponsors for the Heartland TECH Expo include the Kearney Area Chamber of Commerce, University of Nebraska – Kearney, and Education Service Unit 10.

John Stritt – jstritt@esu10.org

0 Comments

Email Delay - Jamie Kramer

Jamie Kramer — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 05:00:00 GMT

One of the GNENC email servers had a problem and began queuing up email since yesterday around 5 PM. Now we have that server working hard trying to deliver its queue. If you notice that an email was delayed or didn't get delivered immediately, it was probably due to this server. This problem would not have affected all email so you may not have noticed. No email should be lost, only delayed. We apologize for this inconvenience.

0 Comments

Firefox Add-ons - Adam Griebel

Adam Griebel — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 20:39:47 GMT

It's quite simple. I love Firefox. In fact, I love it so much my wife bought me a Firefox t-shirt for Father's Day. For anyone who doesn't know what Firefox is, it is a web browser like Internet Explorer or Safari. In my opinion, Firefox is the best browser out there. While I appreciate the tab browsing and the built-in spell checker, my favorite aspect of Firefox are the add-ons. Here is a list of my top seven add-ons for Firefox:

1. NoScript. It does exactly what you think it would do. When enabled, it basically shuts off all scripting languages of any website you visit. You can specify on which sites you wish to allow active content to run. Basically, if you have the latest version of Firefox installed along with the latest version of NoScript, you will have the safest Internet browsing experience. That being said, unfortunately it may not be the best solution for the least tech-savvy users.

2. Cooliris. This add-on allows you to view photos from a number of different photo-sharing websites using a "3D wall" of pictures. It allows you to skim a group of photos using a very cool 3D effect with the ability to zoom in and out.

3. Foxmarks. As I have 3 different computers that I use on a regular basis, I use this add-on to synchronize all my Firefox bookmarks automatically in the background.

4. DownThemAll. This add-on is an extremely useful download manager. Not only does it allow you to queue a bunch of files to download later, the best feature of DownThemAll is that you can have it automatically scan a certain web page and create a list of files of a given type. For example, my favorite use is to go to Mashuptown.com and use it to automatically download all the MP3's for me instead of clicking on each individual link. I simply start downloading all the MP3's and go to lunch, then in an hour I have fifty new MP3's of mashup goodness waiting for me. You can even use regular expressions if you want to get really particular.

5. Firebug. This is a must-have for web development. It is very valuable for viewing HTML and CSS in any webpage. It allows you to view the entire web code for the page as a whole and you can even drill down to see the CSS values of a particular element very quickly.

6. Video DownloadHelper. This is incredibly effective for downloading and saving video from sites like YouTube.

7. Flashblock. Flashblock stops Flash animations and in their place, displays a little "Play" icon. If you want to see the Flash, simply click the "Play" button. It is very useful for blocking annoying Flash advertisements.

2 Comments

Web Caching - Jordan Clark

Jordan Clark — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 05:00:00 GMT

During the period of time that there was a known issue with lost packets on our circuit between ESU 10 and Grand Island, July to present, we disabled all web caching to simplify trouble shooting. Now that issue is resolved and we are consistently running at our maximum allowed bandwidth. Caching in the past has saved around 30% of our bandwidth. So we need to reinitiate web caching. Thursday afternoon the 25th we will bring caching back on line. We do not cache traffic from schools that have guaranteed bandwidth so if your school has guaranteed bandwidth this change will not effect you in any way. For everyone else, If you have subscriptions that are based on source IP addresses there could be an issue and we will need to work around it. Let us know if that is the case.

4 Comments

Technology Integration Specialist Meeting - Graci Gillming

Graci Gillming — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 22:07:59 GMT

Announcing….

Technology Integration Specialists Meeting

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

9:00 – 3:00

ESU 10 – Kearney

https://odie.esu10.org

Do you have a Technology Integration Specialist (TIS) in your district? If so, kudos to you! If not, consider such an assignment for one of your staff. A Technology Integration Specialist should be someone who desires to work with their peers and with students to enhance and improve the educational process via the use of technology. A TIS is a change agent who will suggest new ways of teaching, demonstrate new equipment, bring in new resources and help create new policies. They will use their credibility as a classroom teacher and their knowledge of teaching strategies to help design lessons and plan projects with teachers, thus helping educators develop the necessary skills for students to compete in the 21^st Century.

You may be thinking of someone right now who would be good as a technology integration specialist. Please encourage him/her to attend the Technology Integration Specialist Meeting at ESU 10 on Tuesday, September 30, 2008. Register at https://odie.esu10.org.

If you have any questions, please contact Deanna Stall dstall@esu10.org, Jason Everett jeverett@esu10.org, or Graci Gillming ggillmin@esu10.org .

0 Comments

ATA hard drives - David Evertson

David Evertson — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:48:00 GMT

Does anyone have a good source for 40-80 GB IDE ATA hard drives? My older computers still in use don't use SATA, but you can hardly find the IDE drives anymore. What I have been able to find are too expensive to justify in a 5 year-old PC.

Thanks

1 Comments

Reporting students NSSRS - Brian Gibson

Brian Gibson — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 05:00:00 GMT

FYI:

Make sure you tell your staff that are entering State Unique ID's that if the student came from another Nebraska school, they should have a State Number. If they do a search and don't find the student, their name may have changed or they are using a nickname. Have them contact the school the student is coming from for the number and cross check the number on NDE.

Also, just because a student is a kindergardener doesn't mean they need a State Unique number. If they attended a preschool or received state services, chances are, they already have a number. Check NDE first!

Just a suggestion

0 Comments

Document Cameras - Deanna Stall

Deanna Stall — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:38:01 GMT

I am doing a little research on document cameras for a local school. I am looking for a good one for less than $1000 that is easy to use. This would be for an elementary classroom. Also, from where should I purchase this doc cam? I have heard that the AVerMedia AF300+ works well. Any other suggestions or feedback?

1 Comments

Online Storage - Brian Gibson

Brian Gibson — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 22:31:08 GMT

FYI:

Does anyone use a secure online storage backup system for their office files, PowerSchool, etc...? Do you recommend any?

4 Comments

Security systems - Timothy Dodd

Timothy Dodd — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 18:12:20 GMT

We are looking at security camera systems for our high school and possibly our elementary school and I wanted to know who already has them and what companies you are using. Also, I'd like to know if the systems you are using are very user-friendly as far as managing them and ease of training principals to use them with minimal assistance from the tech person once they are installed.

1 Comments

Office 2008 SP - still searching - Brian Gibson

Brian Gibson — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 18:09:53 GMT

FYI:

I still haven't gotten the Service Pack for Office 2008 to install.
I've tried everything you have suggested and what I can find online but I still get the message that software is missing that is required for the install. Has anyone gotten this message.

I'm wanting to see if the update will fix one of my office problems.
It seems that when a user double clicks on an attachment (word, excel,
etc..) it opens a blank page. They have to save the attachment, open word, click file open and browse to the file. I was hoping the SP would fix this problem.

0 Comments

Proxim and Airport wireless APs available - David Evertson

David Evertson — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:01:38 GMT

Cozad is in the process of upgrading our wireless infrastructure, and as a result we have several Proxim AP600 and AP700 access points available. In addition will have over a dozen Airport APs available, several from each generation. The Proxim 600s are 4 years old, the 700s are two years old and are capable of carrying VLAN traffic. They have worked well, but with the implementation of district-wide wireless and our security needs, we have decided to adopt the Cisco wireless infrastructure.

If you are interested in any of this hardware, please let me know at deverts@esu10.org. We’re not asking for any money, just hate to throw out equipment that is still working. If you use airports exclusively, what we have might be ideal for you. I’m not sure yet how many of each generation of airport we have.

0 Comments

Time for Tech Plans!!! - Stacy Peters

Stacy Peters — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Technology Plan Update Information

The Technology Plan interface for the 2008-09 funding year opened on July 1. All schools need to have their Technology Plans updated by October 1, 2008. Remember that you can not file your Form 470 until this is completed.

Be sure to read the USAC Technology Plan guidelines at http://www.usac.org/sl/applicants/step02/

Please note that the online interface has been changed slightly.

1. The Inventory section has been modified to include separate counts for instructional and administrative computers.

2. To assure authorized access to modify or create a Plan, access to the Administrative site now requires a login and password.

To complete (create) your Tech Plan for E-rate FY 2009, go to http://edweblab.unl.edu/retc and log in with your Co-Dist number (including the hyphen) and password. If you cannot find or do not remember your password please contact SuAnn Witt at suann.witt@nebraska.gov.

After logging in to your account, you will be given the choice to "Edit Existing Tech Plan" or =Create a New Tech Plan." Click on "Create a New Tech Plan." You will now be presented with two options when creating a new Tech Plan; one (Option I) will be to select a Tech Plan (probably the previous year) from which to transfer contact information and School Improvement Goals and Strategies; two (Option II) will be to =Create a New Empty Tech Plan˜. More than likely, most will want to choose Option I, and transfer information from the FY2008 plan. You will then be asked to "Select Year for Plan:" that you are creating (this will, of course, be FY 2009). It will then confirm that the new Plan has been created.

Update the contact information and School Improvement Goals and Strategies as needed. Also, you will need to enter technology inventory and budget information for FY 2009. The budget information, of course, will be estimates.

When you have finished editing the 2009 Tech Plan, click on the Notification section, click the appropriate responses, and then click the "Submit" button. If the Tech Plan is, indeed, complete you will receive a certification notice and Certification Number within 5-7 days. PRINT THIS CERTIFICATION NUMBER NOTICE EMAIL and put it in your new FY 2008 E-rate file folder. You do have a file folder for each E-rate year, right? This is very important if you are ever audited in the future.

Anyone who wishes to receive updates on Technology plan developments and the E-rate program are encouraged to register with the NE-ERATE listserv on the Nebraska Library Commission website at: http://www.nlc.state.ne.us/libdev/erate/eratelist.html

0 Comments

Policies/Procedures for personal laptop use - Kathy Dobesh

Kathy Dobesh — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 05:00:00 GMT

I'm wondering what policies other schools have in place about students using personal laptops to access the school's network (hardwired and wireless). Do you have specific policies and procedures, and advice? Thanks.

Kathy
Litchfield

3 Comments

Internet outage - Brett Haffener

Brett Haffener — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Some schools have mentioned recently that their Internet access seems slow. I am going on-site to Grand Island this afternoon to troubleshoot. Between 4:00 - 5:00pm CST today I will be making some changes that may bring your Internet access down briefly. I don't want to bring Internet access down this entire time, but wanted to make you aware that it may be intermittent during this time.

0 Comments

Blogs - Jason Everett

Jason Everett — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 05:00:00 GMT

I think blogs are about the most important communication tool of our time. There is much research to support this claim but what I really want to tell you is you should be blogging. You should be reading blogs for professional growth and personal pleasure. You should be commenting on others blogs. And lastly, you should have your own blog. We are ALL educators. You have experiences and opinions that matter.You have knowledge stored up in that gray matter - share it!

We are currently starting a new project at ESU 10 to support blogging on a whole new level. In the past we have provided a web presence for every teacher using Manila. We are refocusing our efforts and will be installing and implementing WordPress mu. A rough mission statement I created for the project:

Every educator should have access to easy to use, reliable and well supported technology infrastructures to support 21st century classroom communications. This project will yield a system of technology, support and training, established by ESU 10 staff and partners, to provide educators the opportunity to have a modern web presence.

Along these same lines, I ran across an article from Merlin Mann. The article is "What Makes for a Good Blog?" Check it out. I think you'll enjoy it. In the article, Merlin mentions a great blog directory if you are looking for a good place to start finding great content.

Enjoy!

1 Comments

Erate documentation still needed! - Sue Rains

Sue Rains — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:20:16 GMT

REMINDER!

We still have not received the Form 479 and Letter of Agency from several of our schools. We MUST have these forms for ESU 10’s documentation purposes from each school district, regardless of whether you file for Erate discounts, and we must have them on file each year.

Below is a link to each of these forms. You can click on the link, fill the form out on your computer, print it off, sign it and return it to either Sue or Stacy at ESU 10. If you have questions you can contact either of us at erate@esu10.org or call us at 308-865-5664.

Let us know if you have any questions.

Letter of Agency - Please print on your SCHOOL LETTERHEAD

Form 479-CIPA Compliance

Also, please remember that your Technology Plans need to be updated as soon as possible. For more information on how to access them you can go to: http://lanman.communities.esu10.org/ArticleList.aspx?m=c&filters=clear&TagID=166

0 Comments

New 1 to 1 laptop community - Brian Schanbacher

Brian Schanbacher — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:36:50 GMT

There's a new community for schools with laptop initiatives! laptop.communities.esu10.org is available for support, information sharing, questions, sharing, stories, and even some laughs! :) Here's more information about this community.

0 Comments

filter Hacking - Brian Gibson

Brian Gibson — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 21:44:30 GMT

Has anyone read the recent article in Network administrator. I usually throw most magazines (junk mail) away but this front page caught my eye. It describes how students are getting around filters. Particularly 8e6.

Google 8e6 and you will be shocked.

Check this out.

http://www.peacefire.org/bypass/8e6.shtml

3 Comments

Windows Server 2008 Task Scheduler - Nathan McClenahan

Nathan McClenahan — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:01:03 GMT

With the new server 2008 from MS, there are of course many changes. One of the great changes for the better is the task scheduler. I've always used it to set something to go at a given time of day, but the new program here is outstanding! I was very happy with the new options in scheduling a task. I can't possibly cover all the new features, but I want to highlight a few: triggers, organization options, and easy email notifications.

First, where to find the new task scheduler. Like anything there are many ways to get to it, but probably most common is using the server manager. The picture on the right shows where it is tucked away in the server manager.

Triggers:
A trigger is just something that happens that the system knows about that can be used to start a task. The task scheduler allows multiple options for starting a task, and allows for combinations of options for getting them going. An interesting one is triggering something to happen on an event. I can see this as useful if you were trying to track down a reoccurring problem and wanted to send yourself an email every time a certain event happened. (Example: Please send me an email every time event #1200 happens.)

I don't see all of these triggers as especially useful, but a whole new world of options opens up with these additional features. I find it interesting that Microsoft has placed many tasks in the task scheduler by default. Even a scheduled defrag is there by default. How long have we been waiting for that?

Organization Options:
If you browse thru the task scheduler library, you'll notice a big folder labeled microsoft, with all sorts of tasks that are there out of the box. Many you won't care about, but the nice thing about them is that you have many examples of how to set up a task. When you are creating a new task, you need to be aware of the location in the library where you are creating it. I'd recommend against putting it in with the Microsoft tasks, as it will be hard to find later. There is an option in the "actions" section of the application that allows you to create your own folders. This way you can keep your stuff set asside for easy access. Another excellent organization feature is the import / export options. If you have multiple servers, and want to sechedule a backup on each, this could make things very easy. Just creat the task, and export it. The xml file that is created can then be move to another server and imported. You'd just have to tweek it to be sure the details of that task (i.e. paths to batch files) are changed to match the server setup. Additionally, by exporting the tasks, you can include those xml files in a backup for easy restore.

Easy Email Notifications:
I'm not sure if you are the OCD type, but I sure am. So if I have a backup scheduled to run, I want to know it runs. Since I'm also lazy, I want the computer to email me when the task is complete. Each task can have multiple actions. And actions consist of opening a program, sending and email, or displaying a message. Below is a screen shot of the email configuraton screen. Configure it this way... Put your email in the to and from fields. Set the subject and text to what you'd like. Yep, you can attach a file if you want. Perhaps a log file if you are generating one with your other action. The smtp server is important. It could be your own mail server, or an ISPs, but if that server doesn't allow relaying (which is common because of spam) then you'll need to request that it does. If you are an ESU0 school use mail.esu10.org. If you are in other ESU areas, use mail.gnenc.org. One of the nice things about setting it up this way is that you won't have to have a mail server running on your network to do this.

0 Comments

Photo text wrapping in Manila - Stacy Peters

Stacy Peters — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 05:00:00 GMT

You may want to insert a photo on your page and have text wrap around either the left side of the picture or the right side.

In the Manila editing window, type:
{pictureRef("imagename", align:right)}

Replace imagename with the shortcut name for your image. This macro places the image to the justification you choose (i.e.: left or right).

Other variables you can add to this macro are the horizontal space and vertical space options. The text or content of the page will often butt right up next to the photo and it would be nice to have some white space between these. Use the following to add 10 pixels of white space around the whole image:
{pictureRef("imagename", align:right, hspace:20, vspace:20)}

0 Comments

LAN Manager Introduction - Jason Everett

Jason Everett — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Nate started the discussion about everyone's favorite computer and/or web site. Enter your site so we can all get to them.

Thanks!

6 Comments

New Community Feature: "Drafts" - Brian Schanbacher

Brian Schanbacher — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 05:00:00 GMT

The Question: How do you add an article now, and what's with this new "draft mode"?

The Answer: Drafts are articles that only you, the author, can see. Maybe you're working on the article and haven't finished, or maybe you're just brainstorming possible articles to share. Whatever the case, draft articles are for your eyes only. Not until you take the article out of draft mode will it be available to the whole community.

When you create a new article, it will by default be a "draft". You can save the article as a draft to come back and work on later as often as you wish. To make the article available to the whole community, click on the "Take out of Draft Mode" button.

After clicking on the "Take out of Draft Mode" button, the "normal" article options will be seen (dates available & article tags).

Once an article has been made available to the community, it cannot be returned to draft mode. This is largely because emails are sent out to the community when the article is made available, which would lead to confusion if the article were to be made unavailable again.

If you have any questions about how drafts work, or if you have any problems creating an article, let us know! :)

0 Comments

The $50 Wii Whiteboard Solution - John Stritt

John Stritt — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 05:00:00 GMT

You may have heard that you can now have your own smartboard for $50 or less. The keys to creating such a whiteboard is a) having a Wii Remote, b) have an infrared pen c) have software that supports this solution, and d) have a computer - mac or PC- that has bluetooth capability.

The best way to learn more about this product is to do a search on Google for "Wii Remote Whiteboard".

Two hotspots for support are:

Tom Sextro (http://tsextro.wordpress.holton.k12.ks.us/category/wii-whiteboard-project/)
Johnny Chung Lee (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/).

Wii Remote - The Wii Remote is a $40 to $50 item. Key piece is to have a couple of extra AA batteries to make sure you are charged up and ready to go.

Infrared Pen - There are many ways to make the pen. Take a browser search for "Wii Infrared Pen". Also take a look under google images to see examples. For information on what supplies are needed to create a pen, go to http://www.terracode.com/IR_Pen/DIY_IR_Pen.html

Software - The following are examples of software that supports the Wii Whiteboard project:

Macintosh
- WiiMote Whiteboard - http://www.uweschmidt.org/wiimote-whiteboard
- Free Interactive Whiteboard - http://kindlelab.com/software.html
Windows
- DirectX SDK

The following site is a video sharing how to up Wii Remote. This site is on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlrgHcnTNLU

0 Comments

Video Control - William Bolen

William Bolen — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Here’s a “blast from the past” that is making a comeback ina big way. Final Cut Pro and other programs now utilize “J– K – L” to view video in play mode:

Forward ( L )

Stop ( K )

Reverse ( J )

Pressing the L or J keys multiple times will increase thespeed of the video.

Holding J+K or K+L will play the video in slowmotion.

The newest program to utilize the “J – K – L” function keysis QuickTime 7.5. Open a video and give it a try.

The reverse mode brings backmemories of the old 8-millimeter film projectors (for those of us from the“good old days”).

0 Comments

Tech Word of the Day - William Bolen

William Bolen — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Textpectation: Waiting with great anticipation for the arrival of a new text message.

If you work with children, you need to be familiar with the tools they use. Do you text?

0 Comments

Apple, DNS, security - Gary Needham

Gary Needham — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:18:14 GMT

I apologize for the cross-posts, but I feel this is a significant security risk and would like to help educate users who may not have kept up on the summer security news.

Another list I'm on has had some significant DNS conversation on it related to the Apple OS X DNS server. In case you are not aware, an exploit was released earlier this month that takes advantage of a flaw in the DNS protocol. Translation: every DNS server in the world is vulnerable until patched. If you read further, the patch only makes the exploit significantly less likely rather than fixing the entire problem.

Microsoft has released patches for its operating system (have you applied yours?), as have many UNIX vendors. ISC released an updated copy of BIND, which is the DNS server on most UNIX-like (including OS X) systems today.
Apple has not yet issued a security update for any OS that includes an appropriate patch.

With that as a preamble, here's a copy of my contribution to that list discussion, which I believe is worth sending to you all as well. While some technical details are OS X-centric, it is also mixed in with some all-around good security practice:

-----Forwarded message follows-----
Yes, this is still a hole at the moment. Go to your terminal and run "named -v"
to find your version of BIND, then compare to the ISC versions in the security advisory (http://www.isc.org/index.pl).

That being said, it is important to note that this has been a known hole since 2001. The thing that has changed is that there is now an easy-to-implement exploit. There are people who have been working on a solution since that time and after this, we'll see some changes, perhaps painful, to DNS in the next year or two.

In terms of action to take, here are some good current steps:

* Someone with some good UNIX package-building experience build a BIND distro that adequately replaces the binaries while leaving the config files from Apple alone.

* Everyone call in to tech support or file an online bug report related to this issue. Be sure to mention the number of Apple machines (servers and clients separately?) you have that are affected by this bug. I would also specifically mention how many OS X servers you have running the DNS server, and which versions of server. It sounds trivial, but it will get Apple's attention to make the update, and that's what we really need.

* As mentioned in the article quoted [earlier in the list discussion] (http://db.tidbits.com/article/9706), use forwarders in your DNS configuration to known secure servers. This prevents your servers from asking the world for DNS information and therefore limits its vulnerability by limiting the number of servers from which it will receive information.
Typically, you should be able to do this to your own ISP without any difficulty. Hopefully, you can make a quick call to them, they'll be amenable, and give you a couple forwarder IPs. Another good option [...] would be an [adequately patched] internal Active Directory server.

* Have a firewall. Only DNS servers for which port 53 is allowed through the firewall will be vulnerable to rogue queries or outside bots. Bear in mind, this does not protect your internal servers from internal hostile users (but it limits your vulnerability to primarily your own students and whoever else would hop on your wireless).

For more reading: http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=4687

Regards,
Gary

0 Comments

Critical Thinking Skills - Jamie Kramer

Jamie Kramer — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 21:17:03 GMT

Do we teach critical thinking skills to students? How are your information analysis skills? Do you believe everything you are sent in an email?

You occasionally receive email messages from hackers trying to obtain passwords and other secure and personal information. Although we try to block most spam and hacking attempts, they do get through the system every once in a while. We recently saw several attempts to obtain passwords to email accounts on our system.

For your security and to make sure no one but you has access to your email accounts, please read through the following scam email sent to one of our users. Can you find the suspicious parts?

Subject: Comfirm Your ESU10.ORG Webmail Account !!!
From:    didierdockier@euphonynet.be
Date:    Mon, July 7, 2008 8:44 am
To:      undisclosed-recipients:;

---------------------------------------------------------------

Dear ESU10.ORG Webmail Account Owner,

This message is from ESU10.ORG messaging center to all ESU10.ORG email
account owners. On Monday, July 7th, 2008, from 4:35 PM until 5:05 AM, all
Mailhub systems will undergo regularly scheduled maintenance in ESU10.ORG
Access to your e-mail via the Webmail client will be unavailable for some
time during this maintenance window. We are currently upgrading our data
base and e-mail account center - see homepage. We are deleting all
ESU10.ORG email account to create more space for new accounts.

To complete your ESU10.ORG Webmail account, you must reply to this email
immediately and enter your CORRECT PASSWORD here (*********) immediately
for upgrading, Failure to do this will immediately render your Email
address here(***************************) deactivated from our database.
Once we have updated your account current records will be sent your Online
Account and your service will not be interrupted and will continue working
as normal.

Your Email Address Here *************
Correct Password Here *********
Date of Birth ***********

Final Notification, Please Protect Your ESU10.ORG Webmail From Being
Closed.

To provide easy access to all your account administration functions, we
have moved these functions to easy Webmail at http://webmail.esu10.org you
can also confirm your email address by logging into your webmail account.

Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience.

Thank you for using ESU10.ORG!

The ESU10.ORG Webmail TEAM

Suspicious parts are:
   1. Asking for your password.
   2. The From address is not an ESU 10 account: didierdockier@euphonynet.be
   3. The outage is not posted anywhere else or distributed by a known/trusted person.
   4. Asking for you to reply with secure information in an email.

If you were able to spot one or more of these suspicious items in the email, then you were probably not scammed. If you could not identify any suspicious items and you followed the instructions, then you've been scammed and someone else is probably using your account.

IF YOU SUSPECT YOUR ACCOUNT HAS BEEN COMPROMISED, CONTACT ESU 10 IMMEDIATELY.

Information such as passwords will only be shared over a phone or through ODIE. ESU 10 staff will not reqest passwords via email, instant messaging or any other unsecure medium. If you have any questions or concerns, contact the ESU 10 helpdesk at 308.865.5664 or helpdesk@esu10.org.

1 Comments

Getting rid of the "Comment on this Page" Link - Stacy Peters

Stacy Peters — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 05:00:00 GMT

I have had several teachers ask me how to get rid of the "Comment on this Page" link, so I thought for this month's Manila tip, I would tell you how.
To get rid of this link, you must be a managing editor. Once you are a managing editor, log in to the site and choose 'Prefs'. Under 'Prefs', choose 'Membership'. You will see two options under the "Discussion Groups" label that are turned on by default. They are "Is the discussion group open to all members?" and "Can everybody read discussion group messages?". Set these to 'No' and 'Submit' your changes.

Please note that when you enter the 'Membership' page, the very first option is "Do you want membership enabled for this site?". You will want to leave that at yes. By setting this option to no, you will lose your 'Login' link on your page. Don't fret, if you accidentally switch this to 'No', you can still login by adding /admin to the URL. For example, http://teachers.esu10.org/jdoe/admin.
After logging in, you can go to 'Membership' and click 'Yes' to enable membership.

0 Comments

ESU 10 2008-2009 Support Contracts Available - Brian Schanbacher

Brian Schanbacher — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 18:02:53 GMT

We've got 3 weeks left until the new ESU 10 contract year! The list of 2008-2009 contracts is now available on the NIS website, including internet filtering, support contracts, standards database, and E-Rate information.

Remember: The current support contracts expire at the end of July, and without a new contract, you will not have access to contracted services in ODIE. If you have questions about this, let us know! :)

2 Comments

How do YOU spell relief? - Jason Everett

Jason Everett — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 20:20:57 GMT

Cross-posted at EdTechTrainer blog.

Let me start by telling you a little story that happened to me recently.

About five or six years ago, we started using a web content management system from Frontier called Manila. Manila has allowed us to provide web page services to teachers who otherwise would probably not have a web presence. It has been a great addition and a tool that has helped countless teachers, students and parents. But it has not been without its problems. Although we know about every issue a Manila server could throw at us, there is the occasional curve ball. The service grew and grew to the point we needed multiple servers and it required quite a bit more maintenance. We have about 2000 accounts with I don't even know how many pages, files and other resources on these servers.

Well, about two weeks ago, two of my colleagues walked down the hall and into the workshop I was presenting in to inform me they were unable to access the Manila server. Although rare, it did happen that the server web service would die and we would need to restart it. So I informed our workshop participants we need to take a little break while I assessed the situation.

As we walked down to our server room, the first words out of Marc's mouth were, "Just a flashing question mark on the server screen." That's when I knew we were in trouble. But that was only the beginning of my troubles. The drive was not responding to anything we tried. Booted from a recovery disk. Didn't work. Put the drive in another server. Didn't work. Took the drive out of the sled and put it in a desktop machine. Didn't work. Starting to sweat now. Need to get back to my workshop. I asked my colleagues to hunt for the backups so we could start rebuilding the drive. At least we would be able to get thing back on track by the end of the day.

That's when things really started to fall apart. After much searching, no backup was found. I had realized I was working with no off-site backup solution for the last 3 months. And the firewire backup drive that we were using also had hardware problems. I had NO data! My stomach turned. I started sweating. I felt the world crashing down around me. My head was in a fog. What could I do? There were many people who relied on this server to host their websites with very important information. Phone calls were coming in. "I can't get to my website. What's wrong?" "I'm doing a presentation that uses my site. When will it be back up?"

I was off to the boss to keep him abreast of the news. Crushed, I had to admit my failure to keep a good backup and ask him for permission to send the failed drive off to a data recovery service. That meant BIG BUCKS to fix my mistakes. Oh - I didn't feel real well. I had to face up to the fact that there were a lot of people who relied on this and it need to be fixed. ASAP!

The boss was great. He told me to get the drive off to the data recovery people and do whatever we needed to get the sites back. So to the UPS store I went. And to California the drive went. A week later, the data came back on another drive. All sites restored to full capacity. With the exception of a few uploaded supporting files, everything was back. A HUGE relief. (Contact DriveSavers.com if you happen to run in to the same problems. They were great and offered an educational discount.)

What did I learn from this lesson? Since this post, we have a redundant off-site backup for all of our Manila sites. I have 2 daily local backups with an archive copy going off-site to another city over our high-speed wide area network. With all of the nasty weather such as tornados, thunderstorms and flooding around here lately, I didn't feel we could be too safe.

Everything is back to normal and I feel much more relief since we have our automated backup plan in place. However I still had something bothering me. A nagging pang that just wouldn't quit. And it hit me. What about my personal computer? Of all the stuff I have and everything that is now digital, what would it be like to have to recreate all of my data? What about all the documents, presentations, movies, music and everything else that is there? What would I do? CRY!

Last night a brown box arrived at our doorstep. Opening it revealed a new "Time Capsule" from Apple. After about 5 minutes of unboxing and setup, it was up and running. It took about 2 hours to do an initial backup of my 67.7 gigs of data (and that wasn't the system or application files.) Now, every time I open my laptop at home, it will have an incremental backup done in the background.

So how do you spell relief? I spell it B.A.C.K.U.P. What are you waiting for? Back up your digital life NOW. Don't wait until something happens. You'll regret it. Automate it with something like Apple's Time Machine/Time Capsule product. It will be worth every penny you invest.

Here is my Wordle image for this article:

2 Comments

Google Academy Summer 2008 - Deanna Stall

Deanna Stall — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 05:00:00 GMT

ESU 10 hosted its first Google summer academy May 28, 29, June 5, & 6, 2008! This workshop focused on the tools from Google for classroom use. In all, there were twelve participants over the course of the four days. The first day of the workshop was focusing on personal organizational tools. Leon Stall from Gibbon High School came and shared how he is using Gmail & contacts, and Google Groups with his social studies students. The second day we spent time on Google's Docs, collaborative word processing/spreadsheet/presentation tool; iGoogle, personalized dashboard for the Google homepage; and Google Reader, an RSS Feed reader used to read those blogs they may not otherwise have time to read. The third day we used Blogger to create a blog and Google Earth & Maps to create kml files for sharing and teaching. The fourth and final day of the academy was a day for Picasa, a photo editing & storage tool and for Google Sketch-Up, a 3-D model creator. Jim Terry from Cozad High School joined us in the morning for a lesson in Google Sketch-Up and how he uses it in his classroom with students.

Google is a workshop we will be doing in the fall and in the spring. We are planning what we are calling "After School Specials", a new training conducted after school online where Google tools will be among the topics.

If Google is something you feel your school would like to get into, give us a call or send us an email and we can come to your school for training! Contact: Jason Everett, jeverett@esu10.org or Deanna Stall, dstall@esu10.org or call 308-865-5664 for more information.

0 Comments

Top Sites for LAN Managers - Deanna Stall

Deanna Stall — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:13:30 GMT

I thought I would compose a list of the top sites for LAN Managers. But where do I start? I think I should ask the experts. So I am asking YOU! What are your favorite sites? What are your favorite tech tools? What helps you do your job? Where do you go to get the help you need? Click the comment link below to add your two cents!

1 Comments

Hot Topics in Ed Tech - Jason Everett

Jason Everett — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 12:13:16 GMT

Here are the hot topics as posted by the NECC website for 2008. http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2008/program/ The conference starts next week and I look forward to sharing many of the sessions with you all. We have also started a wiki that you can subscribe to and watch updates that happening. Take a look: http://netaatnecc.wikispaces.com/

Hot Topics

Podcasting, Wikis, Blogs, and other Web 2.0 tools
Leadership
Digital Images and Video
Digital Storytelling
Global Collaborations
21st-Century School Design
Differentiated Instruction
1-to-1 Computing
Digital Content
Funding
Open Source
Online Professional Development
Virtual Schools
Technology Literacy and Assessment
Instructional and Administrative Productivity Tools / Resources
Serious Games and Simulations

0 Comments

OS X Admin Account - Jason Everett

Jason Everett — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 12:01:14 GMT

To reset your OS X password without an OS X CD you need to enter terminal and create a new admin account:

Reboot
Hold apple + s down after you hear the chime.
When you get text prompt enter in these terminal commands to create a brand new admin account (hitting return after each line):
- mount -uw /
- rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
- shutdown -r now
After rebooting you should have a brand new admin account. When you login as the new admin you can simply delete the old one and you’re good to go again!

0 Comments

"Bookmarking" a Ticket in ODIE - Brian Schanbacher

Brian Schanbacher — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 22:32:33 GMT

You can now bookmark your helpdesk tickets to get to them quickly within ODIE. These bookmarks are different than bookmarks in your browser in that they're in ODIE itself so they'll be there when you login from any computer. Bookmarks are different than the recent ticket list both by you specify which tickets are in the list and they persist until the next time you logon. You can bookmark a ticket from the ticket details by clicking on the "Bookmark This Ticket" page task:

A "bookmark" icon will appear after the page title for all tickets that you've bookmarked. You can click on this icon to remove the bookmark:

To see a list of all your bookmarks on a separate page, under the Helpdesk section of ODIE, there is a new menu item called "My Bookmarks":

You can also remove a bookmark from this page by clicking on the remove bookmark icon on the left side of the list. If you use the older "classic" layout, your bookmarks will appear as a list in a menu at the top of the page:

Notice: This list is not available in the newer layout yet. This is because we've kept this layout simplier to work in Safari. We're working on getting a better left-side menu working in Safari for this layout, and will add the "Recent Tickets" and "Bookmarks" lists as soon as it's working. Thanks for your patience! :)

If you have any questions or feedback, let us know. We always want to hear what we can do to improve ODIE for you!

3 Comments

Getting Site Stats for your Manila Page - Stacy Peters

Stacy Peters — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 20:17:48 GMT

Have you often wondered how many of your students, parents, colleagues, or the general public have visited your Manila site?? There is an easy way to find out.

To get statistics for your site, use the following URL replacing "mySite" with your site name:

http://sites.esu10.org/mySite/stats

It will show you Hourly Hits on your page and Most Read Messages.

Pretty cool!

0 Comments

Ipod Touch - Dan Sich

Dan Sich — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 09:59:40 GMT

For those of you that own an ipod touch, I've found a great little tool. It's called TouchPadPro. It basically allows your ipod touch to control any computer. It works a little bit like a mini version of Apple Remote Desktop. Cool thing is it works with any computer Mac or PC. Before using the ipod has to be jailbreaked and than the application can be added to you ipod. Great instructions for jailbreaking your touch are located at http://www.ipodtouchhacks.com/ipod-touch/detailed-instructions-on-how-to-jailbreak-114. Apple doesn't recommend doing this, but I've done it numerous times and have never had a problem. After the ipod was jailbreaked you just set your computers up as per the instructions and you can control it from anywhere, puts the screen of your mac or pc on your touch. If you do it on a home network make sure you use port forwarding to access you computer, not your local ip address as this will only work when your touch is connected to your network. If you use remote desktop to access your macs at school it's super easy to set up. If you use a vnc for your pcs at school it's also real simple. One great use I've already found is here in Ansley we have power problems at the school and during storms, which we've seemed to have a few of lately, I can turn off my servers without going to school or even having to start up my laptop and remote desktop them. I just turn on the touch and they're shut down in less than 20 seconds. In all I'd say it's a great little application. I've already used it several times. If you want to try it and are hesitant give me an email and I'll walk you through it. By the way, jailbreaking you touch gives you access to hundreds of neat little applications and games to help you waste some time.

2 Comments

Windows 2008 Server Backup - Nathan McClenahan

Nathan McClenahan — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Hi,
This is Nate. Well, I have recently installed Win 2008 Server. Mostly I like it. I like a lot of the security and management features. I was happy until I tried to back up the server. I found that my good friend from previous windows server implementations called NTBACKUP didn't exist anymore. After the mist cleared from my eyes, I started looking for other solutions to the problem. I firmly believe that the best solution would be to buy a commercial backup solution. With that said, and being a tight wad myself, I have experimented with a free solution using a product called 7-zip to create and archive file of the data I want backed up.

Let me summarize the process...
1. Install 7-zip
2. Create and edit the backup script* to specify the location of where the backup should be stored.
3. Create and edit backup job text file listing directories that need backed up.
4. Schedule the backup.

1. Install 7-zip (www.7-zip.org)
7-zip is an open source program that works similar to win zip, but it has a command line interface that allows us to put it into a batch script. It has many options of compression, encryption, and password protection. In this example I'm only leveraging the compression options, but depending on the sensitivity of your data, you might want to encrypt and password protect the backup. The install did not make me reboot the server, so I liked that. The batch script* is using the default location of the 7-zip installation to get to the executable file that does the work.

2. Create and Edit the backup script* to match your server's settings.
To make the backup script you need to copy and paste the text below into a batch file. Start by making a folder in your c: drive called sysbackup. Then open that folder and create a text file and name it backup.bat. Right click on the file and select edit from the menu. This opens the file in notepad and allows you to paste the text below into the file. There is one thing that needs modified. Modify <backup file> to be the file and path of where you want the archive to be stored. It is best if you end the filename with a .7z extension for easier recovery. This could be placed on a local drive, rev drive, UNC location, or a mapped network drive.

3. Create and Edit backup job text file listing directories that need backed up.
7-zip has a nifty feature that allows you to place a list of all directories you want backed up into a text file (one directory per line) that it reads as you run the script above. In the same folder as your backup batch file create another file called localbackup.txt. Edit that text file so that every line contains a directory path of data you want backed up.
Example:
D:\users
D:\mystuff

Before proceeding to the next step test this by double clicking on the backup.bat file. At completion, you can view the backup.log file that is created in the same folder as your backup.bat script to see how it went. You can also view your archive file as 7-zip can open it. Be sure you can view all you wanted to back up.

4. Schedule the backup
Once you are satisfied with how the script works let's schedule it to run on a regular basis. As much as I'm disappointed with the backup on windows 2008 server, the scheduler is way cool but I'll try to detail scheduling things in a different article, so keep checking back for that information. I haven't found any good stuff to refer you to yet, but I will tell you to start by going to administrative tools and the task scheduler.
Here is a link to more information on the task scheduler.
http://lanman.communities.esu10.org/ArticleDetails.aspx?ArticleID=210

Thanks, Nate

P.S.
Perhaps you are wondering about system state. Well, that is important as NTBACKUP used to be able to handle that. But no longer. In fact I'm not impressed with the systemstate backup either. However there is a command line option to back up the system state and then we can run this backup script against that to get it into a combined archive file. We need todo more research on this, so I can see some update coming. Big problem with the systemstate backup is the size. It is generally huge. I did it on a server with very little installed and it was 6 gigs. Again, I want to learn more about this as to why it is so big and how it should be used for recovery. Another reason for a commercial solution.

* Backup Script
_____________Copy all below here ______________
echo off

REM 7-zip backup script
REM
REM Modify the script before using according to the following.
REM
REM Change <Backup File> to be the desired path of the backup archive
REM Example: d:\backup\backup.7z
REM
REM NOTE: Make the above changes everywhere in the lines below
REM
REM *****BEGIN Script********

echo "------ Begin Backup --------" >> backup.log

date /t >> backup.log
time /t >> backup.log

REM Doing the Archive

"c:\Program Files\7-zip\7z.exe" a <Backup File> @localbackup.txt
IF errorlevel = 1 goto Error

REM Test the archive file

"c:\Program Files\7-zip\7z.exe" t <Backup File>

IF errorlevel = 1 goto Error
Goto Success

:Error
echo "-----------Backup Job Error-------------" >> backup.log
goto Finish

:Success
echo "----Backup Job Completed Successfully-----" >> backup.log
:Finish

echo "--------- Backup Script completed ---------" >> backup.log
date /t >> backup.log
time /t >> backup.log
echo "-------------------------------------------" >> backup.log

_____________Copy all above here ______________

4 Comments

IP Phone Systems - Bryan Williams

Bryan Williams — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 20:01:55 GMT

I am installing an IP phone system here at Ravenna this summer. The project will be completed in two phases. Phase one will be to install IP phones in all elementary classrooms and tie it into our existing Avaya phone system. Phase two will be to replace all high school phones and decommission the Avaya system.

I debated for a long time which route I should take. Should I go with an open source solution such as Trixbox or FreePBX or more of a commercial solution like Fonality, Cisco or 3com. I am about 95% sure that I will be putting in the 3com NBX V3000 solution. One of the reasons I am going with this solution is support. It’s not that I couldn’t support an open source system; it’s the part of if I ever leave the district who would support it? With the 3com NBX system there are a number of vendors within the state that can provide immediate remote support for the system if needed. If the open source route was taken, would my successor have that type of background needed to support a Linux based IP phone system?

So here is what I would like to get out of this discussion. One, are there any other districts out there currently utilizing an IP based phone system. If so, what are you using and are you happy with it? Two, even though my mind is pretty much made up, I could always revaluate my plan and go with an open source solution if support would be available locally. Meaning is this something that ESU10 would support in the future? I doubt they could support every IP telephony system out there but if they said, “yes we will support Trixbox with Polycom phones because that’s what we use” then that option would be available. Finally, is anyone using VOIP service at home?

Just curious what others think on this.

1 Comments

"Watching" a Ticket in ODIE - Brian Schanbacher

Brian Schanbacher — Fri, 30 May 2008 22:00:58 GMT

You can now manage what tickets you're watching in ODIE. If you're watching a ticket, you'll get alarms for it even if you're not in the ticket's queue history. You can add a watch by going to the ticket details and clicking on "Watch This Ticket" at the bottom of the page tasks:

If you are watching a ticket, a "watch" icon will appear after the page title. You can click on this icon to stop watching the ticket:

To see a list of all tickets that you're watching, under the Helpdesk section of ODIE, there is a new menu item called "Tickets I'm Watching":

You can also remove a watch on this page by clicking on the remove watch icon on the left side of the list.

Notice: You may already be watching one or more tickets. This is because when you update a ticket that you aren't getting alarms for, a "watch" is created for you.

If you have any questions or feedback, let us know. We always want to hear what we can do to improve ODIE for you! :)

2 Comments

Great link to Mac keyboard shortcuts - Marc Regenos

Marc Regenos — Fri, 30 May 2008 16:00:55 GMT

I found a link to a CNET site that has a great collection of keyboard shortcuts for the Mac.

http://www.cnet.com.au/desktops/pcs/0,239029439,339289468,00.htm#12

0 Comments

Network outages this summer - Brett Haffener

Brett Haffener — Fri, 23 May 2008 21:04:00 GMT

We are planning two network outages for this summer on June 6 and July 1. On June 6 we will be moving circuits over to College Park in Grand Island as well as our Internet access. We will try to keep downtime to a minimum, but I wouldn't be surprised if Internet access is up and down on this day. Please notify your users of this.

The other major change will occur on July 1(and the evening of June 30) for the SWDL schools. We need to move the SWDL 7204 router that is currently at North Platte Community College to College Park.

This second outage will only affect Southwest Distance Learning Schools.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks,
Brett Haffener
ESU 10

1 Comments

YAMS Account Password Bug - Jamie Kramer

Jamie Kramer — Fri, 23 May 2008 15:57:49 GMT

We have recently discovered a bug in the YAMS account manager's "Change
Password" utility. It is not properly setting a password when the
ampersand "&" character is part of the password. I am amazed we have not
become aware of this sooner, so I wonder if this bug has only been
introduced recently. We always encourage strong passwords which include
non-alphanumerical characters, but for some reason setting a password
which contains the ampersand just isn't working. So until further
notice, you should avoid using the ampersand when setting passwords, but
please do continue to use other non-alphanumerical passwords. We will be
looking in to this problem and will let you know when this is fixed.

If you or your users have recently set passwords via YAMS and the
account is no longer able to log in to email, you might check if the
password that was set contained an ampersand. The simple fix is to set a
new password which does not contain the ampersand.

Note that accounts which already utilized a password containing the ampersand before this YAMS bug will continue to work.

We apologize for this inconvenience.

0 Comments

ODIE Recent Tickets List - Brian Schanbacher

Brian Schanbacher — Thu, 22 May 2008 22:36:30 GMT

If you use the classic (older) ODIE layout, then you should see a new menu in the helpdesk! Right after "Menu" and "Tasks", you should see "Recent Tickets".

This menu will show you up to the last 20 tickets that you've looked at, with the most recent on top. I hope this makes it faster and easier to get to all your tickets!

If you aren't using this layout and would like to see it, you can change your layout in your preferences. To change your preferences, click on the edit icon next to preferences on your "My Account" page.

If you have any questions or feedback, let us know. We always want to hear what we can do to improve ODIE for you! :)

0 Comments

Using OpenDNS for Internet Filtering - Adam Griebel

Adam Griebel — Wed, 21 May 2008 04:05:40 GMT

I wanted to share with you a wonderful little service called OpenDNS. I am asked by a lot of parents if there is an easy and convenient way to monitor and restrict what websites their children can access. A lot of the time people use programs such as Net Nanny which they install on their computer. But I think an easier solution is to use a free DNS resolution service called OpenDNS (www.opendns.com).

OpenDNS can be used as an alternative to your own ISP’s DNS servers. There are several benefits to using OpenDNS, such as faster turnaround for DNS queries than the average ISP’s DNS server. It will also allow you to block certain categories of websites (e.g. pornography, sexuality, web mail, etc.) and will allow you to view a number of different charts and graphs to view recent activity.

To use OpenDNS, you do not need to sign up for an account. Simply input their two name server addresses into the DNS fields in your network configuration, 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220, and you are ready to go. If you want to do more advanced operations such as web filtering and charting, you will need to sign up for an account at OpenDNS, which is a fairly painless process. Click on the link “Create a Free Account” at the top of the OpenDNS home page. All that is required of you is to input a user name, e-mail and password. Now you are ready to take advantage of all that OpenDNS has to offer.

Now that you have an account, the first thing you have to do is insert their DNS IP’s into your network configuration. If you simply wish to use OpenDNS on a single computer, go to the TCP/IP properties and manually put in their DNS server IP’s. However, in this day and age, most people have more than one computer at home. Therefore, it may work better to change the DNS IP’s in your router configuration, so that your router will send them out to any computer that attaches to your router through DHCP.

One thing to note is that if you are excited about testing the category or domain filtering features of OpenDNS, you will need to make sure that it is not a website that you have visited recently. Otherwise, it will still come up because of the local cache on your computer. For example, as a test site, I blocked the domain kittenwar.com in my OpenDNS settings. But because I go there every day, my browser did not have any trouble resolving www.kittenwar.com.

A cool feature of OpenDNS is that it will automatically filter out and flag phishing sites, which might be an extremely useful feature for those of who have family members who are less than tech savvy (a/k/a Grandma).

An added benefit of OpenDNS is that it allows you to create shortcuts for websites you frequent. It can be a single word or even a single letter. For example, I use ESU 10’s web front end on the exchange server to check my e-mail when I am at home. But who wants to type in that long address? Certainly not me. So I routed that address to “email”. Therefore, all I have to do is type “email” in the address bar of my browser and it will take me to my e-mail.

Even if you decide that OpenDNS isn’t something you want to use now, keeping their DNS server IP’s around might come in handy in an emergency situation when your own ISP’s DNS servers are down.

2 Comments

If these walls could talk... - Jason Everett

Jason Everett — Mon, 19 May 2008 19:43:52 GMT

Reposted from http://edtechtrainer.esu10.org/2008/05/if-these-walls-could-talk.html

As I was sitting in Kearney Public School's graduation yesterday, a recent sermon I heard played through my mind. It was of our pastor visiting his alma mater. His story detailed driving by places he had hung out and places he had studied. But as he visited these places, he noticed they weren't the same. Over the years, these places had changed or were torn down. What he was really looking for was the stories of friendships, study partners, and all the other memories that went along with his college days. It wasn't about the buildings, but the stories share with people.

So, back to the graduation. One of the students who spoke talked about all the stories these halls could tell. The superintendent spoke of a song lyric containing the words "I'll remember you, will you remember me?" As I sat there, I couldn't help but think of the number of school buildings that are abandoned or torn down each year. Of all the students who walked through the halls of these old dilapidated buildings that are getting torn down, sold or repurposed. So many memories. And such emotional attachment.

Emotional attachment to the building? Or to the stories, friendships, hardships, teachers, and such, that made up their education.

I think if this concept were introduced properly, it could have a healing effect on the community who is facing such emotional attachment to the school they attended. Why not open up a forum for student, teachers, administration, alumni, and community members to share their stories. The forum could take several shapes of which I think the easiest would be a written blog with the option to include audio or video podcasts. Each person wishing to share their story could have the opportunity to do so in written form, audio form, or with video. It could even be a project for students to interview alumni and those still in the community to keep these memories for posterity.

If started soon enough, the school/community may have a contest so that when the new building opened, one memory from each category could be shared at the ribbon cutting.

"If these walls could talk..."
Memories of Your Public Schools

0 Comments

Anonymous Proxies - Brett Haffener

Brett Haffener — Mon, 19 May 2008 19:14:24 GMT

Web proxies in the network world are machines designed to make Internet based web requests for you. We have a farm of proxy servers setup at ESU 10 to decrease response time and save on bandwidth. Pages are stored (cached) on our proxy servers and you receive a faster response getting to one of these proxy servers that are only a few hops away than from a web server on the Internet that may be 10 or more hops away.

Anonymous proxies are proxy servers that are used to try to bypass web filtering. By sending web traffic through an anonymous proxy, the web filter sees the URL of the anonymous proxy rather than the URL of the website that the user is getting to. End users access anonymous proxies most often by either opening up an anonymous proxy website in a browser and typing in the URL that they want to access or by installing an application on the machine.

What can we do about anonymous proxies?

We currently have anonymous proxies blocked by default within 8e6. This blocks some of the anonymous proxies out there, but is far from blocking them all.
Lock down machines so that additional programs can't be installed without appropriate privileges.
Some browsers and other applications can be run off of a USB drive, so be aware of users that always use a USB drive and don't seem to use it to store or retrieve data.
Some virus scanners have the option to block "potentially unwanted applications". You can turn that option on in order to keep some of the proxy anonymizer applications from being downloaded or installed.

1 Comments

Erate Forms for FY2009 (YES...ALREADY!) - Sue Rains

Sue Rains — Thu, 15 May 2008 21:54:54 GMT

Stacy and I are going to try very hard to get a ‘jump’ on the MOUNDS of paperwork for Erate for Funding Year 2009. You can now find the following forms for Funding Year 2009 on our Erate website at: http://nis.esu10.org/eRate/stories/storyReader$4

E-rate Support Services Agreement

Indemnification Agreement

Letter of Agency - Please print on your SCHOOL LETTERHEAD –ALL ESU 10 SCHOOLS MUST FILL OUT ONE OF THESE REGARDLESS OF WHETHER OR NOT YOUR DISTRICT FILES FOR ERATE!

We would greatly appreciate it if you could fill out ALL of these forms for FUNDING YEAR 2009 and return them to us as soon as you can so we can get started with the documentation process for FY2009. We will be sending update Form 479’s and requesting School Membership Reports and Free and Reduced Lunch information in the fall! So be looking for those forms sometime in late July or early August!

If you have an E-rate Support Services Agreement this year and would like to renew for next year please fill out the form and return it to Stacy or I. Please be sure to select the option you would like for the coming year. If nothing has changed on the contact information and Billed Entity and NCES numbers you can leave those blank. However, if there are changes please fill out the correct information and send them to us.

Please let us know if you wish to be billed in this fiscal year or next and we will do our best to accommodate you.

We would encourage you to please read over the items in the contract that your school district is responsible for. Again we would also like to stress that you must make sure that Stacy or I receive any and all copies of correspondence that you receive from the SLD. We are unable to complete the next step in the application process if we do not have copies of this information. We sincerely appreciate you assistance with this.

If you do not have an Erate Support Services Agreement with ESU 10 and would like more information you can check out the contract for the 2008-2009 school year at: http://nis.esu10.org/eRate/stories/storyReader$4

If you have any questions feel free to call us.

Stacy & Sue

0 Comments

Web 2.0 Astronomy Software - Nathan McClenahan

Nathan McClenahan — Thu, 15 May 2008 16:25:24 GMT

Microsoft Research has a new service called the World Wide Telescope. I read about it in Popular Science (http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-space/article/2008-05/new-virtual-telescope-online) This is a free online virtual telescope that allows you to use images from real telescopes to explore space. Which since the warp drive and inertial dampening has not yet been invented is the best way to go where no man has gone before. http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/

Google has a similar product called google sky. http://www.google.com/sky/

2 Comments

Changing Your Manila Password - Stacy Peters

Stacy Peters — Mon, 12 May 2008 20:08:24 GMT

How do I change my password?
To change your password, log in to your site. Once you are logged in , add a /member/changePassword to the URL. For example: sites.esu10.org/jyoyo/member/changePassword

I have forgotten my password, now what??
If you have forgotten your password, go to your Manila site and simply click on the login link under "Membership", enter your email address and click login. Our server here will email your password to you.

0 Comments

Product Demo - Brian Garey

Brian Garey — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:43:00 GMT

This is a quick notice to let you know that we will be installing a demo product into the network sometime today. There should be a few seconds of interruption as we change connections in our wiring closet. This device will be monitoring traffic only, no change to filtering, email, or other services so it should be transparent to you as an end-user. In order to adequately assess the performance of this product, we need to put it in during full load on the network. With schools beginning to end later this week, we only have a few days of “full load” left.

As always, please let us know if you see any abnormalities in network performance.

0 Comments

Vista Movie Maker Question - Thomas Sullivan

Thomas Sullivan — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:34:44 GMT

Does anyone have experience with turning a windows movie maker project in vista 6.0 into a DVD? I have read about it, have downloaded DVD maker but am still having trouble.

0 Comments

Cisco NOW Van in Grand Island - Thursday, May 15th - Ron Cone

Ron Cone — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:31:53 GMT

Some of you might be interested in attending this equipment display.

Thanks,
Ron

From: Phil Velardi (phvelard) [mailto:phvelard@cisco.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2008 9:21 AM
Subject: Cisco NOW Van in Grand Island - Thursday, May 15th

The Cisco Network On Wheels demonstration vehicle is scheduled to be on the campus of Central Community College on Thursday, May 15th. There will be on board demonstrations of a wide variety of technologies by a Cisco network engineer. This is great opportunity to learn about the latest on Unified Communications, Wireless LAN and Network Security.

Attached is the invitation with the registration link and a second attachment with a description of the technologies that are available for demonstration.

Please let me know if you have any questions. I hope to see you there.

Thanks,
Phil

FY08 NOW Van invite.pdf
NOWVan-ShifttheWayyouLearn.pdf

0 Comments

E-rate Starts Funding for FY2008 - What's the NEXT step??? - Sue Rains

Sue Rains — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:23:21 GMT

Good Morning Everyone,

In case you aren’t aware the SLD has started sending out Funding Commitment Decision Letters to schools.

When you receive your Funding Commitment Decision Letter (FCDL), JUST DON’T FILE IT!!! Receipt of your FCDL triggers the need for the next required form, Form 486 "Receipt of Service Confirmation". Applicants cannot receive discounts or reimbursements on funded services until the SLD receives and approves a completed Form 486.

Form 486 is now available for online filing for the 2008-2009 funding year on the SLD website at http://www.sl.universalservice.org/menu.asp

Applicants may file Form 486 "early" (after receipt of the FCDL but in advance of services starting) if certain conditions are met. If the Form 486 is filed in this manner, it must be received by USAC or postmarked on or before July 31 of the Funding Year.

You may be eligible to file the Form 486 on or before July 31 of the Funding Year if:
• you have received your FCDL and
• you have confirmed with the named service provider that the services you ordered will start on the Service Start
Date, which must be in July of the Funding Year and
• you are able to accurately make all of the relevant certifications in Block 4 in advance of the date of the start of
discounted services. (i.e. CIPA certification, Tech Plans and etc.)

IF you signed an Erate Support Services Agreement with ESU 10 you MUST make sure that Stacy or I receive any and ALL copies of correspondence that you receive from the SLD. We CANNOT complete the next step for you if we do not have copies of this information.

Please be sure to get those forms filed as soon as you can. As always if you have any questions don’t hesitate to give either Stacy or I a call or email us at erate@esu10.org.

Have a Great Day!
Stacy and Sue

0 Comments

Technology Integration Specialists - Deanna Stall

Deanna Stall — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:22:12 GMT

The tech training team is gathering information from schools on the Technology Integration Specialists (TIS). Many schools have recently or are thinking about hiring this position and we would like to be able to support this group of teachers as we have the LAN Managers. Thanks for your cooperation on this. If you have not received an email or survey from us, please email us with names and email addresses of your school's Technology Integration Specialist (TIS). Please include your Technology Committee Members contact information as well.

3 Comments

Backup solutions - Todd Dahlke

Todd Dahlke — Thu, 01 May 2008 13:51:30 GMT

Many of you are looking to Summer purchases right now and for some of you that means a new server. When purchasing new server hardware, one usually reconsiders how to handle the backup of data. One solution that several schools have started using is the Iomega REV drives; they can be purchased as internal or external drives (most all have chosen external for the portability factor).

The REV drives utilize a disk cartridge that can easily be taken offsite and is recognized by the server has removable media. The drives have a one year warranty and the disks themselves carry a five year warranty.

The latest REV drives read a 120GB disk and can be purchased from several vendors. One vendor, popular to schools, is GovConnection www.govconnection.com. You can purchase the drive and disk separately, but they also sell a starter 'kit' http://www.govconnection.com/IPA/Shop/Product/Detail.htm?sku=8529081 which gets you a better value when first starting out.

Another solution is to perform backups to hard drives, which are located in another physical box or externally connected via USB cable. The thing to keep in mind with these solutions is that it is advisable that you have some means of taking backups 'offsite' to safeguard against your backups being destroyed in natural disasters that might strike the school.

What other solutions and/or suggestions do people have for backup solutions?

1 Comments

iMovie support article from Apple - Marc Regenos

Marc Regenos — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:11:15 GMT

Credit to Apple for this article, I took it right from their website.

Using iMovie with NetBoot or a network user account

Symptoms

Apple does not recommend using any version of iMovie in a NetBoot environment or when logged in as a user whose home directory is stored on a remote server. iMovie requires reliable data transfer at a high rate, and network latency issues can interfere with it.

Products Affected

iMovie

Resolution

You could try the server-based user account (but not NetBoot) if you configured iMovie to store project data on a local volume such as /Users/Shared. However, Apple will not provide technical support for this configuration.

The best solution is to create local accounts for using iMovie.

0 Comments

JOTT - Handy Tool for Audio to Text - Deanna Stall

Deanna Stall — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:23:01 GMT

Jott is a simple, free web tool that converts your voice into emails and text messages. So many uses! Try it out for yourself! Here's how...

Go to http://jott.com
Get your free account
Call Jott using their 800 number
Tell the nice lady who you want to jott
Speak clearly and plainly. It will record what you say and convert it to text.
Hang up.
The person you jotted will receive an email or a text.

After you try it once for yourself, you will need to upload your contacts so that it knows other people to jott. If you include an email address, your jotts will go their email. If you include cell phone numbers in your contacts, your jotts will go to them as a text message.

Why do you need to use Jott? Ever find yourself needing to leave your spouse a shopping list or a reminder? Ever wanted a reminder for yourself to go to your email instead of ANOTHER sticky note in your office? We took my mother-in-law to the hospital early one morning where we had no computer or connectivity. My husband jotted his lesson plans to one of the teachers at school (school was already in session and didn't want to call her on her cell phone). These are some simple ideas of ways people are using Jott.

Try it out! I think you will like it! What are some other ways you could use Jott?

0 Comments

Free computer recycling from Apple..... - Marc Regenos

Marc Regenos — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Got this in an email, thought I would share.

It’s the perfect time to go green.

This spring, Apple will recycle your school’s old, unwanted Mac computers, PCs, and qualifying peripherals from any manufacturer—for free. There’s no purchase required, and all accredited K–12 and higher education institutions with at least 25 pieces* to be recycled are eligible to participate. Just register in time, follow the steps, and we’ll do the rest.

Security and processing matter.

When you dispose of your equipment through the Apple Recycle Program for Education, rest assured that 100% of Apple’s recycling is done domestically in the United States, that all asset tags and other identifying marks will be removed, and that all hard drives will be ground into confetti-sized pieces to help ensure that your data is secure.

How it works.

To take advantage of this opportunity, you’ll need to register between April 1 and June 30, 2008, and package your systems according to the instructions. All products must be collected by August 31, 2008. Remember, you must recycle a minimum of 25 pieces in order to participate.

To register for the program, you may:

Call 1-800-APPLE-LN (1-800-277-5356) to speak with a representative.

This offer expires June 30, so register now—it’s never been easier to go green.

1 Comments

NE ESU Coop 2008 Net Trekker Information - Graci Gillming

Graci Gillming — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:15:30 GMT

2008 ESU-ntdi Commitment Form.doc

If you have any questions about the following, please contact the Brenda or Paul (see below).

To all:

Please see the attached information flyer for Net Trekker d.i. for 2008. Coop Coordinators may pass the information along to your schools, or if you are a school staff person, you can use the commitment form for your own school's personal needs. If you have any questions, please contact Paul Utemark at 402-387-1245 Ext. 103.

Brenda Libolt

NE ESU Cooperative Purchasing
1292 East 4th Street
Ainsworth, NE 69210
Phone: 402-387-1245 Ext. 101
Fax: 402-387-2530

Paul C. Utemark, CEO
Priscilla Quintana, Business Manager
Brenda Libolt, Programs Assistant

www.neesucoop.org

0 Comments

NSSRS End of Year Workdays - Graci Gillming

Graci Gillming — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 18:39:00 GMT

Please pass this message on to the person responsible for NSSRS reporting in your district.

The NDE End-of-Year Acceptance window for NSSRS is now open. To assist your district in this process, ESU 10 is hosting three workdays in May and June. The new NDE NSSRS specialist for Central Nebraska, Russ Masco, will be here to share what’s new this spring and to help with the submission of data. For more info about NSSRS and to see what reports need to be submitted this spring, visit http://www.nde.state.ne.us/nssrs/ Note the new templates (bolded) on the Documents page as well as the updated Calendar.

What:   NSSRS Workdays
Where:   ESU 10, Kearney
When:

Monday, May 5
Tuesday, May 27
Tuesday, June 17

Time: 9:00 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.

For NSSRS workdays, please register on ODIE https://odie.esu10.org

As a reminder, NDE is hosting a Data Quality Retreat, Monday, April 28 at the Holiday Inn in Kearney. For more info and registration, visit http://nedatapartnership.org/

Graci

0 Comments

Web Sites With a Tilde ~ Are Being Phased Out - Jamie Kramer

Jamie Kramer — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:32:00 GMT

Does your school web site URL contain a tilde? Do any of your users utilize a web site that contains a tilde and an email address? If so please continue reading! A tilde is the ~ character.

In the very near future all web sites hosted by ESU 10, ESU 11, ESU 15, ESU 16, or PANESU will no longer support URLs containing the tilde character.

Examples of URLs that will no longer work are:
http://userweb@esu10.org/~sunnyside@esu10.org
http://schoolweb@esu10.org/~sunnyside@esu10.org
http://userweb@esu10.org/~jyoyo@esu10.org

If your website or your users' web sites contain the tilde please notify ESU 10 as soon as possible. We will migrate websites containing the tilde to a new web hosting server and create a more friendly URL for you.

Phasing out the tilde web sites is necessary so that we can move forward with newer web technologies and end support for older high maintenance web servers. The additional benefit to our users is a more human friendly URL. We have mentioned this over the last several years and now is the time to end support for the tilde.

Please keep in mind we are always happy to host your educational web site and will be happy to work with you in phasing out the tilde.

0 Comments

District data - Denver Hartwell

Denver Hartwell — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:32:00 GMT

Hi Lan Managers

Here is a question for all. What does your school use for its census data?

Do the school have a program that has this info? We have the program for lunch and schoolmaster for students. Right now we use a filemaker pro that keeps messing up everytime it is run.

Denver Hartwell

Amherst Public School

2 Comments

Photoshop Elements 6.0 Workshop - Jason Everett

Jason Everett — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 15:04:49 GMT

Please pass this along to those who may be interested in learning more about Photoshop Elements. This is a new version we are working with so we’ll cover a few of the new options along with those standard features that have been a part of all versions of PSE.

Thanks! Let me know if you have any questions.
Jason

----
Students Who Are Visually Literate:
Have Working Knowledge of Visuals Produced or Displayed through Electronic Media

Understand basic elements of visual design, technique, and media.
Are aware of emotional, psychological, physiological, and cognitive influences in perceptions of visuals.
Comprehend representational, explanatory, abstract, and symbolic images.

Apply Knowledge of Visuals in Electronic Media

Are informed viewers, critics, and consumers of visual information.
Are knowledgeable designers, composers, and producers of visual information.
Are effective visual communicators..
Are expressive, innovative visual thinkers and successful problem solvers.

Internet Source: enGage
http://www.ncrel.org/engauge/skills/vislit.htm

0 Comments

IBM issues MacBook Pro Computers to Employees - Stacy Peters

Stacy Peters — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Check out this interesting article!!!

http://is.gd/6A3

0 Comments

KeePass Password Management - Jamie Kramer

Jamie Kramer — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 05:00:00 GMT

If you are like me and your brain has reached its capacity for password storage, then KeePass is for you. Read the following excerpt from the KeePass website:

What is KeePass?
Today you need to remember many passwords. You need a password for the Windows network logon, your e-mail account, your homepage's ftp password, online passwords (like CodeProject member account), etc. etc. etc. The list is endless. Also, you should use different passwords for each account. Because if you use only one password everywhere and someone gets this password you have a problem... A serious problem. The thief would have access to your e-mail account, homepage, etc. Unimaginable.

KeePass is a free/open-source password manager or safe which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key-disk. So you only have to remember one single master password or insert the key-disk to unlock the whole database. The databases are encrypted using the best and most secure encryption algorithms currently known (AES and Twofish).

I like KeePass because my passwords aren't stored in a text document which anyone can read if they get access to my computer hard drive. Even if somebody gets the KeePass password file, the passwords are safe because the file is encrypted. The encrypted file can only be unlocked with your secure master password and/or your key file.

If you do use a key file, do not store it on the same computer as your KeePass password file. It is best to store your keyfile on an external device such as a USB flash drive.

The URL for the Mac and Linux versions of KeePass, known as KeePassX, can be found at http://www.keepassx.org/

2 Comments

Learning with iPods - LAN Managers April 15, 2008 - Deanna Stall

Deanna Stall — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Did you think that students can only use their iPods for listening to music? Have you seen an iPod in the classroom and told your student to put it away? During this presentation, you will see why you will be asking students to bring their iPods and other mobile devices to class with them! Link to the presentation here and join in the conversation about using iPods with students.

http://tinyurl.com/6j5uhj

0 Comments

Web 2.0 Digital Dashboards - Jason Everett

Jason Everett — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Crosspost from: http://edtechtrainer.esu10.org/

We all know there is no one silver bullet when it comes to suggesting a technology to support a learning endeavor. We mix and match and use the latest/best tools, the tools our colleagues or students have access to, and the ones they are familiar with and will use. It sometimes gets to be quite a chore keeping track of all of different sites we created to support the specified endeavor. Tweets, Google Discussion Groups, Calendars, Social bookmarks, blogs, Project management, etc., etc.

There are a couple of tools that help keep these all together in one, easy to use location - digital dashboards for our online learning environment.

* iGoogle - http://www.google.com/ig

* PageFlakes - http://www.pageflakes.com/

* Protopage - http://www.protopage.com/

* Netvibes - http://www.netvibes.com/

* Eskobo - http://www.eskobo.com/

* Favoor - http://www.favoor.com/

Personal Disclaimer - I have only used iGoogle on a regular basis so am not familiar with all the ins and outs of each service. If you have real life experience with any of these, please comment.

Netvibes Real World Example - Advocates for Digital Citizenship, Safety, and Success

? of the day: Would any of these fit into your classroom learning environment?

0 Comments

Safari Bookmarks (OS 10.5.2 & Safari 3.1) - Dan Sich

Dan Sich — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Safari Bookmarks

Don't know if you've noticed, but if you sync your safari bookmarks to anything like an ipod touch or palm there is a conflict that causes any new bookmarks not to sync. I noticed this because I use .mac to sync and synced my laptop at school thinking I could get my bookmarks at home. Didn't work. Got home and my bookmarks weren't updated did some searching around and found a fixhttp://support.apple.com/kb/TS1333. It says it applies to the iphone, and ipod touch, but I noticed the bookmarks will not sync right with any device. This seems to have fixed the problem since it hasn't returned. Check yours out to see if it's doing it as well.

2 Comments

Ipods on the go - Nate Miles

Nate Miles — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Since many people have Ipod's and we spend so much time using them for listening or watching training pod casts, the problem arises that we can only sync our Ipod to one computer easily. And since we also are dedicated to our work and tend to take it home, we run into the problem of wanting to add or remove this media from our Ipod on another computer. I found the program EphPod which allows you to do this quite easily and allows you to edit your media on your Ipod from any computer. It can be downloaded from www.EphPod.com. I have had a lot of success with it myself and hope you can find it useful as well. It is only for Windows/Linux.

0 Comments

Internet Safety Contest 2008 - Graci Gillming

Graci Gillming — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Internet Safety Contest 2008 Results

The State Attorney General and ESUs of Nebraska have sponsored an Internet Safety Contest for the last several years. Student entries are sent to each ESU where one selection is made from each of three different grade levels and from several categories (hand-drawn posters, computer-generated posters, as well as audio or video Public Service Announcements). The ESU selections are then sent to the state level where winners are chosen. The state winning entries are used by the Nebraska Attorney General, Jon Bruning, is his Internet Safety Campaign throughout the year. For more on his efforts to promote Internet Safety, visit http://www.safekids.ne.gov/.

Internet safety awareness is a vital part of a student’s education to ensure that his/her use of the Internet is safe, educational and entertaining. We thank all who entered the contest and hope that Internet Safety and Digital citizenship concepts are more meaningful for each student having their creative skills.

The ESU 10 and state winners are on display at http://nis.esu10.org/ggillmin/InternetSafety .

0 Comments

What type of bandwidth might a CODEC require? - John Stritt

John Stritt — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 05:00:00 GMT

As no one has infinite amounts of bandwidth, it is a good idea to know just how much bandwidth your school might be using. For this article, I will share about CODEC bandwidth requirements.

What are the top end CODEC bandwidth requirements? Most schools in the state have or will soon have a minimum of 40 MB of bandwidth. Although some CODECS might require as much as 2MB per connection, it is probably safe to say that most connections will require no more then 1MB per connection.

What are the lower limits for bandwidth requirements for a video conference? CODECS can operate as low as 128K but 384K is considered as the lowest "workable" rate.

What is the future needs for bandwidth requirement for CODECS? Because of improved compression standards, the bandwidth requirements have gotten lower while the quality has improved. The following are reasons why bandwidth requirements might change:

More codecs are purchased.
CODECS go from standard definition to high definition.
CODECS can connect to more then the current 4 site limit.
Software added to computers enable stations to be portable codecs.

3 Comments

Priority Two Funding for 2007 set. - Sue Rains

Sue Rains — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Funding Year 2007 P2 Threshold Set at 81%
April 14, 2008

USAC will begin issuing Internal Connections and Basic Maintenance of Internal Connections funding commitments at the 81% discount rate for Funding Year 2007. The 81% discount rate will mark the final discount threshold for the year as USAC will reject any Priority Two request at 80% or below.

0 Comments

YAMS Account Management System - Jamie Kramer

Jamie Kramer — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 05:00:00 GMT

The YAMS Account Management System is a control panel available for use by both LAN Managers and end users. Any esu10.org, esu11.org, esu15.org, esu16.org, or panesu.org account holder can log in to YAMS to perform basic tasks such as changing one's own email account password, searching for other users, and opting in to the DSPAM anti-spam system. We encourage all users of our email system to periodically change the password on their email accounts.

The search feature of YAMS can be one of the most useful offerings of YAMS to end users. One can search by first/last name and school district. The search feature provides a valuable means for educators to get in touch with other educators. There is also a search saving feature which is most useful for saving a search of all users in a particular school district. After a search has been saved, one click on a saved search can quickly show a list of users in a particular school district.

YAMS' distributed management ability allows LAN Managers to manage account settings for other users. LAN Managers are given permissions to change accounts settings for the districts they manage. LAN Managers have usually have these abilities:

Change user passwords
Change user forwards
Remove users (to a temporary "trash" group)
Search for users
Opt users in/out of DSPAM

We ask that LAN managers use the "Remove User" feature to remove accounts of users who are no longer employed at a school district. When an account is removed, the account is placed into a temporary group known as the trash. Accounts in the trash are fully functional and remain in the trash for 180 days. If after 180 days the account is still in the trash, it is permanently removed from the system.

Because of the trash removal policy, it is also important that LAN Managers search for accounts of new employees entering a school district. New employees may already have an account on the system within the trash. If an account is in the trash and should belong within a school district group, contact your ESU to have the account moved to the correct group.

The YAMS URL is http://yams.project42.k12.ne.us

1 Comments

VOIP - Voice Over Internet Protocol - Jamie Kramer

Jamie Kramer — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Voice Over Internet Protocol, commonly known as VOIP, is a common buzz these days. VOIP is basically the implementation of a telephone system on data networks instead of the plain old telephone system (POTS) using copper wires. In other words, you can have a telephone conversation over your Internet connection. VOIP phone systems can be integrated with existing traditional telephone systems as well.

There are many implementations of VOIP. One you may be familiar with is the NBX IP phone system, which includes the IP phone most likely found (or previously found) in your distance learning room.

Another very popular and free VOIP implementation is Skype. Skype allows you to call other Skype users for free from your computer. You can also call any telephone number (house, cell, business, etc) for a fee.

A great open source VOIP implementation is Asterisk. ESU 10 has been experimenting with Asterisk over the last couple years and has used it to transparently "bridge" remote workers to the ESU 10 phone system. This allows traveling workers to make outgoing calls from a computer as if the call were originating from ESU 10. Think of it as being able to take your office phone with you on your computer wherever you go!

MSN, Yahoo, and Google also offer VOIP services through their instant messaging clients.

VOIP can be an attractive telephony alternative for many reasons, including potential cost savings, use of existing IP network infrastructures, integration with other existing electronic communications services (such as Email, instant messaging, etc), and many others. VOIP is an exciting technology you will probably be hearing about more and more.

9 Comments

Embed Quicktime Audio Gem To Your Manila Site - Stacy Peters

Stacy Peters — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 05:00:00 GMT

There are several uses for embedding audio in your stories. The most common use is entertainment. Having a nice beat playing in the background of the page to enhance the content. You may also have language classes and want to teach correct pronunciations of words. Music teachers have also embedded audio to get a taste of different sounds around the world.

Log in to your site.
Upload your audio file as a File.
- There are several allowable audio formats. Vist Apple's QuickTime site for more information.
- There are several allowable audio formats. Vist Apple's QuickTime site for more information.
Allow 3 tags under "Prefs", "Advanced", then "Legal Tags".
- Put a check next to 'embed'
- 'param'
- 'object'
- Submit your changes

Insert the following HTML code in your story. (If you are using the WYSIWYG editor in Internet Explorer or Firefox, make sure you click the option to view HTML source FIRST! Then check it back to the normal view before you submit your changes.) Change the value of the PARAM "src" to reflect the URL of your uploaded audio file. You will want to put the same URL in the "src" section of the embed tag. This code will allow both Windows and Macintosh users with Quicktime to enjoy the audio.

<OBJECT CLASSID="clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B"
WIDTH="200" HEIGHT="15" CODEBASE="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab">
<PARAM name="SRC" VALUE="http://manila.esu10.org:8000/gems/manilaSupport/trumanjapan.mp3">
<PARAM name="AUTOPLAY" VALUE="false">

<EMBED SRC="http://manila.esu10.org:8000/gems/manilaSupport/trumanjapan.mp3"
WIDTH="200" HEIGHT="15" AUTOPLAY="false">
</EMBED>

</OBJECT>

0 Comments

Great Resource for Spyware - Marc Regenos

Marc Regenos — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 05:00:00 GMT

I know, a Mac guy posting this?

I ran across a great site as I was helping a friend the other night and thought this would be helpful to others. When you click on the details, it offers manual instructions for removal. It helped us, hopefully you'll find it helpful as well.

http://www.spywareguide.com/product_list_full.php

0 Comments

This is COOL! - Marc Regenos

Marc Regenos — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Johnny Lee and Wii Remote hacks

He talks about schools without a ton of money....

3 Comments

Your District's Contract Status Report - Brian Schanbacher

Brian Schanbacher — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 05:00:00 GMT

The Contract Status Report is a 3 page report that gives you an overview of how many contract hours you have available, how many you've used and when you used them, and how many hours are remaining on your school district's contract. LAN-Managers, superintendents, and principals can see this report under "Account Reports" in the Accounts section of ODIE.

We have also tried to make this information available in ODIE on all pages that can affect your contract status. Wherever you see this icon , you can hover over it to get a preview of the contract status report, or you can click on it and you will be taken directly to your current contract status report.

Following are the different sections found on each of the 3 pages of the contract status report:

1: Pie Chart Legend: This legend identifies the colors on the contract status pie chart for helpdesk, hardware, and miscellaneous hours used. It also provides actual values, so you can see the hours used at a glance.

2: Contract Status Pie Chart: This chart visually represents the amount of your current contract that you have used. Green represents helpdesk hours used, purple represents hardware hours used, and orange represents miscellaneous hours used. Unused contract hours will appear in that cream color I couldn't give a definite name for! :)

3: Hours Used By Month Graph: This graph shows the number of hours used each month, for helpdesk, hardware, and miscellaneous. This is different than the hours shown in part 5 on page 3. Part 5, "Billed Hours", shows what hours appear on each billing statement (created each month). Helpdesk and hardware hours only show up when the ticket in question is closed, so if a ticket had 10 hours that were "worked" in January and February, but the ticket was closed in March, then all the time from that ticket will show up in the March billing statement. But this graph, on page 2, shows when those hours were actually worked, so the time from the hypothetical ticket would appear in January and February appropriately.

4: "Contract Hours Available": This shows the total number of contract hours available to your district, via member school hours as well as any Tiered contracts you have.

5: "Billed Hours": This section shows you the total hours billed during each billing statement created during the contract year specified. The first column, "Non-Contract Hours", are hours that are billed per-incident, either for per-incident contracts or after all available contract hours are used. The second column, "Contract Hours", are hours that are billed against available contract hours.

6: "Unbilled Hours": This section list unbilled hours that have yet to appear in a billing statement. Hours in closed helpdesk tickets, closed repair tickets, and miscellaneous items can be expected to appear in the next billing statement. Hours in open tickets (helpdesk and repair) will be billed when the tickets are closed.

7: "Total Hours Used": This section lists the total hours used, in different combinations of billed vs. unbilled and contract vs. non-contract hours, as well as the total sum of hours used.

8: "Remaining Contract Hours": This section gives you the number of contract hours remaining, based on total hours available and total hours used.

If you have any questions about your contact status, or about ODIE in general, please let us know !

0 Comments

Microsoft Office Live Workspace and Windows Sharepoint Services - Don Erickson

Don Erickson — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS) is a collaboration tool that is built into Windows Server 2003. It allows users to create "Workspaces" when they can securely share information via a web browser. You can share documents, pictures, contact lists, calendars, surveys, task lists, and a lot of other types of information to collaborate on projects among the staff or among students in a classroom. It's a very flexible product and integrates tightly with authentication in a Windows domain.

It also works with all the Microsoft Office products. That is, within Office you can easily update or save information to a Windows Sharepoint site.

There is another "online" tool available from Microsoft called "Office Live Workspace" that does not require WSS to be installed locally on your server. It allows users with a "Windows Live ID" to create their own online "Workspaces" that look and act a lot like the Sharepoint workspaces. If you're interested in getting a feel for what Windows Sharepoint Services looks like and some of the features it presents, then you might want to setup an "Office Live Workspace" first.

You can "share" your Office Live Workspaces with other users that have Windows Live IDs. One note on Windows Live IDs. . . A Windows Live ID is a new name for the old Windows "Passport" IDs. If you currently have a Passport ID, the you already have a Windows Live ID. If you don't have a Passport ID you can create a new one, or you can associate a current email address (like your esu10.org address) with a Windows Live ID account instead.

For more information on using Windows Sharepoint Services take a look at:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointtechnology/HA100242771033.aspx

For information on using and signing up for a Microsoft Office Live Workspace see:

http://workspace.officelive.com/?WT.srch=1

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Windows workstation deployment tools and techniques - Todd Dahlke

Todd Dahlke — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Summer is just around the corner and with that time of year comes the cleaning of old workstations and the configuration of new workstations. I would like to start a discussion around the various deployment tools and techniques people are using to install or reinstall their Windows workstations on their network during the Summer months.

I will be adding information in the future around the 'relatively' new Windows Deployment Service (WDS) made available for free from Microsoft using Windows 2003 SP2, which was made available last Spring.

What other software or techniques do people use during their 'Summer Cleaning'?

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Exclusive Discounts on Microsoft Software - Lynda Francis

Lynda Francis — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 05:00:00 GMT

As most of you are probably aware, Nebraska Schools' Staff and Students, as well as member ESU Staff are able to purchase a variety of Microsoft products at a discounted price through an agreement between Microsoft and NE Coop through eAcademy. This process has changed recently for those with an institution issued email address (i.e. xxxxxxxx@esu10.org) now can order without getting a regsitration number first. These are greatly discounted prices.

For details on ordering, see the following flyer: K12 Software new e-academy flyer.pdf or call Lynda Francis, ESU10 NIS Dept., at 308-865-5664.

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Preparing your network for Distance Learning - Brett Haffener

Brett Haffener — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Is your network ready to handle the load of additional Distance Learning classes? Here is a checklist to see if you are prepared:

Is my cabling at least up to Cat 5 specifications? (Cat 5e or 6 are preferred)
Do I have any copper cabling runs over 100 Meters? (Anything over this length should be fiber)
Am I using the correct types of cables in all locations? (Straight-through or cross-over)
Is my network completely switched with all switches at least 100Mbps?
Are my switches capable of handling multiple VLANs? (Most managed switches are)
Is my router capable of handling the amount of traffic that will soon be passed through it?
Does my circuit have enough bandwidth for both my video and data connections?
Do I have the appropriate ports open on my firewall for DL applications?
Do I have a way of prioritizing DL traffic to ensure good video quality? (QoS)
Are my staff trained to be able to use DL applications and equipment effectively?

3 Comments

Top Talkers on Cisco router - Brett Haffener

Brett Haffener — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Netflow is a powerful tool for seeing the top talkers on a Cisco router. This command was not introduced until IOS version 12.2(25)S, so you'll need a newer router to run it. Here are the commands used to enable Netflow:

Global commands:
ip flow-top-talkers
top <number of talkers>
sort-by-bytes

Interface command:
ip flow ingress
ip flow egress

Example:

ip flow-top-talkers
top 20
sort-by-bytes
!
interface GigabitEthernet0/1
ip flow ingress
ip flow egress

Visit the following URL for additional information about Netflow:

www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/12_3t/netflow/command/reference/nfl_a1gt.html

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DVD Error Correction - Adam Griebel

Adam Griebel — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 23:01:17 GMT

Dvdisaster is an open-source program that allows you to create error correction data for CDs and DVDs. All CDs and DVDs will eventually develop read errors over time, even though it could take several years. Dvdisaster is not necessarily useful for getting data off of a DVD that has developed errors before you have used it to create the error correction data. That is not the primary purpose of this program. The file system of the DVD does not matter because dvdisaster works at the image level.

There are two ways to store the error correction data for a DVD. The first way is to make an ISO image file with a program like Nero. You should strive to keep the ISO image file under 3.6GB. You will then open the ISO image file with dvdisaster, have the program augment the error correction data to the end of the ISO image file, and finally burn the augmented ISO image file onto a new DVD. The second way to use dvdisaster is to save the error correction data at another location, other than on the DVD. This is especially useful if you wish to create error correction data for a DVD that has already been burned. I prefer to augment the error correction data at the end, which will ensure that I do not have to keep track of the error correction data separately.

To create a DVD with error correction data augmented at the end, simply follow these steps:

Step #1: Open Nero and select new DVD-ROM compilation.

Step #2: Make your image and fill it up to around 3.5GB.

Step #3: Go to Recorder > Choose Recorder, then select Image Recorder.

Step #4: Click Burn and save the ISO image file on your desktop.

Step #5: After the ISO image file has been created, open dvdisaster. Go to Preferences > Error Correction, and change the storage method to Augmented image (RS02).

Step #6: Go to File > Select Image and select the image you just created with Nero. Then click on the Create button to have dvdisaster augment the image with the error correction data.

Step #7: Once the augmented image has been created, go back to Nero and change your recorder back to your DVD burner. Then select Burn Image from the Recorder menu and open the ISO image file that you just augmented with dvdisaster. Make sure you have a blank DVD in your drive and click Burn.

The error correction data that has been augmented to the end of your DVD will not be visible to your computer. You do not even need to worry about it being on there until you begin having troubles reading your DVD. Simply insert your DVD into your computer, then open dvdisaster click on Scan. Dvdisaster will now scan the DVD for defects and, if it finds any, will use the error correction data on the DVD to repair the damage and make a new image file that can be burned to a new DVD.

As a side note, you should know that not all DVD media is created equal. Most of the DVD media you buy from places such as Wal-Mart is not necessarily high quality. If you wish to see the quality of your DVD is, then you will need to get the actual media ID off of the DVD using a program like DVD Decrypter (use Google to find it). Once you have the media ID, go to http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/dvdmedia.htm and look it up in the tables and see what class your DVD is in. In the following example, my DVD’s media ID is: CMC MAG-M01-00. From the Video Media Guide, it looks like my DVD is 3^rd class media out of 4 possible classes.

8 Comments

PIA Review Process - Sue Rains

Sue Rains — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Overview of the PIA Review Process

Program Integrity Assurance (PIA) is the process used by USAC to review applications for compliance with program rules and policies. During this process, USAC reviews the information on your Form 471 and may contact you with additional questions on specific items.

Initial Review

After your Form 471 has been assigned to an initial reviewer, the initial reviewer prepares the questions that USAC must ask based on the information you provided (or did not provide) on your application. In a limited number of cases, the information on the Form 471 is sufficient to complete the review without applicant contact. In most cases, USAC must request more information.

Once the questions have been prepared, the initial reviewer contacts you using your preferred mode of contact.

In general, you have 15 days from the date of the email or fax to provide responses to USAC's questions.

If USAC has not received a response after seven days, USAC sends you a reminder and forwards a copy of the reminder to your state E-rate coordinator.
If USAC does not receive a response after 15 days, USAC will continue to process your application with the information on hand, which may lead to a modification or denial of funding.

In summary, to be prepared for PIA review, be sure to do the following:

Check your Form 471 and your Receipt Acknowledgment Letter (RAL) to make sure all of your entries are correct. If you find a mistake, submit a RAL correction by following the instructions in the RAL.
If you have not already done so, submit your Item 21 Attachment. You can file online, by email, by fax, or on paper by following the Item 21 Attachment guidance on the USAC website.
Organize all of the documentation related to your application and have it readily available to assist you in answering any questions.
Monitor your preferred mode of contact so that you will know when PIA attempts to contact you.
Answer all questions promptly and completely.
Ask for more time to respond if you need it.
If you are having problems, ask to speak to a manager.

To read more about PIA Reviews, click here.

0 Comments

Changing default format of screenshots - Marc Regenos

Marc Regenos — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Great Article from themachelpdesk.com

Some people have voiced frustration at the change of the screencapture format from PICT in OS 9, to TIFF in OS X 10.1, to PDF in OS X 10.2 & 10.3, and now to PNG in OS X 10.4. Most people don't realize that Apple isn't really changing much about the screencapture process (not at least since 10.2, when many of the features we missed from OS 9 were added back to OS X). This procedure will work with Panther or Tiger.

As a matter of fact, you can change it to whatever format you wish, as long as it's supported by Preview.app.

Simply open up the Terminal, located in /Applications/Utilities and enter the following command (since this only affects your user account, you don't need administrator privileges for this to work):

host:~ username$ defaults write com.apple.screencapture type pdf (or jpg or tif or pict or whatever format you want, as long as it's supported by Preview)

Then simply log out and back in to your computer. Your screenshots will now be in the format you want!

Just to review, for those who don't already know, taking screenshots in OS X is pretty nifty.

1) to take a screenshot of the entire screen do command + shift + 3

2) to take a screen shot of a a selection of any part of the screen do command + shift + 4, make your selection with the crosshair, then click the mouse. If you'd like the screenshot on the clipboard for easy pasting into other applications, hold down the control key while clicking the mouse. If you want to cancel, use the escape key.

3) Repeat the same procedure as above, but instead of selecting something, tap the spacebar once and the crosshair will turn into a camera which can be used to snap any active window, no cropping! Way cool! Of course, if you want it on the clipboard, use the control key, and the escape key to abort.

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Opinions on Open Source software - Marc Regenos

Marc Regenos — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 05:00:00 GMT

I'd like to know what you're using.....

I'm always on the lookout for new "toys" and the open source community never fails to satisfy. Plus, the price is right! So, what freebies do you use?

Audio

I like Audacity.

Video

VLC is a great player, haven't found anything it won't play.

Productivity

OpenOffice seems to be the de facto standard, I have it on everything at home.

Tried Thunderbird, sticking with OS X mail

16 Comments