Mid-Life Crisis

This week marks my first official vacation since becoming district webmaster in June of 2007. I have to take two more weeks of vacation sometime betweeen now and January 31 or I lose those days. I've enjoyed working around the house getting caught up on repairs and maintenance. It's been great getting away from my cubicle and sitting in front of the computer - which is exactly what I'm doing now - but only briefly!
Mid-Life Crisis?
Some people might call it a "mid-life crisis", but I've always wanted a motorcycle for as long as I can remember. Up to now I either could not afford it and/or could not convince my wife. A friend owned the bike - a Kawasaki 1000 Concours - and was trying to sell it After some "wheeling and dealing" and a visit to the credit union (and some concessions to my wife), I purchased the bike! For some of you, this might bring back thoughts of John Woggon, retired district webmaster and mentor to us all. Well, I actually consulted John about the motorcycle before I bought it to get his opinion. Thankfully, his "thumbs up" was the final push in making the purchase. John wanted to see the bike so I stopped by his house after work one day last week to show it to him. He gave me some gear (I had nothing) and sold me some gear that he had and we set a lunch get-together.
I have met John for lunch several times since his retiring just to keep in touch and get his feedback on the changes to the site. We always meet at Baily's on Laurens Rd. This is a pool (billiard) hall. John and I play several rounds of pool over lunch, and I don't mind being John's victim (he's quite good and I'm pathetic!). It's always a good, relaxing time. He always asks about the school webmasters. Working with the school webmasters was the most exciting and rewarding part of the job for John, as I concur with him that it is the same today with me.
Many have asked about the onscreen tutorials that I had promised. I have actually made some tutorials, but have had some synching issues with Camtasia and have not been happy with how they turned out. This summer working on the curriculum portal and with everything esle since school has started (including the demon-possessed teacher website upgrade), the schedule has been very full, but I hope to get some time soon to resume and resolve the problem with the tutorials.
I usually get at least two or three calls daily from webmaster with questions. VNC is a wonderful way to resolve issues and I recommend those of you who have questions, to call and let me VNC to your computer. I prefer talking you through issues rather than resolving them myself so that it is a "learning experience". Please don't hesitate to call if need be. I can usually drop what I'm working on and help.
Well, back to my vacation projects - and maybe some piddling on the bike. Regards.

School Website Winners!

The last day of the UTC conference is tomorrow. It has been a wonderful, information-filled conference. The pre-sessions yesterday were fairly well attended. I presented a pre-session for an audience of Grenville County School Webmasters and a second session for an audience of teachers interested in learning more about the Teacher Website Tool (EdPoint). At the end of the webmasters session I announced the winners of the school website awards. This was extremely difficult as our school websites have vastly improved this year and fewer awards are given. Here are this years winners:

Bronze

• Elementary - Greenbriar and Chandler Creek
• Middle - Woodmont
• High - Greer

Silver

• Elementary - Mitchell Road and Brook Glenn
• Middle - Northwest
• High - TR
• Other - Roper Mountain Science Center

Gold

• Elementary - Alexander and Oakview
• Middle - Bryson
• High - Mauldin
• Other - Fine Arts Center

Congratulations on the winners. I have your certificates and will have them at UTC tomorrow. I'll send by courier those who do not pick them up.

Due to suggestions during our session (Dee Jacobs), I've decided to offer specific training sessions in late July - early August rather than general sessions like last year. The purpose is to come to a session and leave with a newly implemented tool working on your website. Topics will include. ASP Calendar, Dynamic Faculty Directory, Flash Menus, and Spry Accordion. I'll set these up on the portal and let everyone know. I'd prefer to meet at a school for these. If anyone is able to host these sessions, it would be easier for connectivity to be at a school rather than at our office.

Hope to increase blog post frequency!!

I have two sessions tomorrow entitled: "Technology Tools for Teachers: Curing the Content Conundrum". Perhaps I'll see some of you there.

A New Blogpost - This is NOT an April Fools Joke!!

The temptation of course is to pull some sort of April Fools joke on you guys, but since my blog posts have been so rare and sparse, I thought I would try to make this post useful and profitable for you all.

First, if you are a prankster, you can get some ideas about how to add excitement (or anxiety) to those at your school. Here's the link - Top Ten Harmless Geek Pranks.

Now to something that may be useful. Adobe has released a free version of Photoshop - Adobe Photoshop Express. If you've always wanted to play with photoshop but couldn't afford it, here's the link for a new free version.

If you need some new icons, here's a link to a free package of 60 icons that you might find useful.

Now, on to some business. I will be sending out a form to the web committee that was designed earlier for judging school websites. They will be judging websites based on the criteria that has been established in years past. The specific criteria will be as follows:

• Site content (15)
• Design (10)
• Navigation (10)
• Timeliness (10)
• Parents (10)
• School Calendar (10)
• Staff Directory (10)
• Student Work (10)
• Student Resources (10)
• Legal Guidelines (5)

There will be one gold, one silver and one bronze for high schools and middle schools. There will be two of each for elementary schools. This year there will be no "Best of the Web". The four gold winners will receive $1000, silver winners will receive $500, and bronze winners will receive $300. This will not be a cash award but credit toward the purchase of technology or professional development. The winning school webmasters will select the technology or professional development of their choosing.

Lastly, I'll be soon sending out directions for selecting top teacher websites from your school. I know that you all are insanely busy, so don't spend an inordinate amount of time on this. This will be somewhat "low key" since the criteria has not been published. I'll attach a copy of the criteria that you should use. You may share this with your faculty if you wish - I hope to also have something on the teacher area of the district website. This year there will be no awards - just recognition (as in times past). In the future we will attach an award of some sort. There will be a total of 20 elementary teacher sites, 10 middle and 10 high teacher sites which will be recognized (fewer than in years past). I'll send a link to a form (as John did in the past) to make it easy to submit. We'll need to do this by the deadline that I'll send so that the web committee can select the winners. Thanks so much for all your help.

Reminder - Upstate Technology Conference will be held at JL Mann this summer (June 24-26). Please consider presenting. We will have some great presenters and fantastic keynote speakers - Ewan McIntosh and David Jakes. These are nationally know speakers who speak at the major technology conferences. I'll be presenting some preconference sessions geared specifically to Greenville County Webmasters. The UTC website is http://www.greenville.k12.sc.us/utc/

Webmaster Tool Chest

Here are some powerful tools which I have used from time to time to help with my websites.

PageRacer - This site will simulate your website loading with a 56K modem.
Google's Webmaster Central - Great place to get webmaster resources and "best practice" information.
Sitepoint's CSS Reference - This is a great resource for CSS coding.
Enjoy.