Busy Times / Steep Learning Curve

These past two weeks have been quite busy as my first two weeks as the "sole" webmaster, now that John is gone. I'm sure he's having a blast traveling the east coast on his bike. I am truly jealous. John bought a new laptop and video camera for his 6-week trip and promised to put up pictures and possibly videos to his site.
Yesterday, I spent quite a lot of time with David Craig from Eastside. He took my place as webmaster at Eastside and will no doubt do a great job. He pointed me to some links of interest that you may want to check out. One website is coffeecup.com and has a free download for teachers at the bottom of the page. You have to fill out a form with your school info. One part of the software is a neat flash calendar that I found impressive. You can see it in action on David's Eastside Athletics page. This little calendar seems powerful and occupies a small amount of real estate.
Next week will be the Webmaster training courses. There are still spots available. We'll hold our class in room 114 at Greenville Middle School - just down the hall from ETS. We will talk about the new teacher websites briefly and then get right in to the content. I'll generally stress the importance of separating content from design. Basic classes will go over site organization and archiving. Intermediate classes will go over the dhtml menus and staff directories. The advanced class will involve communicating with the database through forms to turn over content responsibility to others.
Podcasts with onscreen tutorials are still in the plans.