Edunotes: February Newsletter for Educators (by Educyber, Inc.)

Number 2		February 12, 1999
Announcements - Educyber publishes two editions of Edunotes, one for Educators and one for Computer Users. To change or add to your subscription, contact Educyber (303-421-2223, info@educyber.com) - Educyber is listening. If you have story ideas or articles, let us know and we might publish them. Inside Edunotes Newsgroups Mac is Back Censorship? President's Day WebFocus Lesson Plans Books for Teachers Customizing Word School Websites Educyber Site Guide Edunotes www.educyber.com/ edunotes/index.php Educators www.educyber.com/ educator/ Computer Users www.educyber.com/ homeuser/ www.educyber.com/ books.html	What Are Newsgroups? Those of us who use them, swear by them. Those of us who don't probably say "Huh?" In a nutshell, a newsgroup is like a great big bulletin board. Anyone and everyone can post their thoughts and/or ideas (not necessarily the same) for all comers to see. If you have an email reader such as Netscape, Outlook Express or Outlook; and you have an ISP or Internet connection that has a news server, you can easily connect to news groups. If you have these and don't seem to have access to newsgroups, make sure the name of your news server is entered in the correct space in the options or preferences of your software. There are news groups to fit just about any need. Some good possibilities for educators include: bit.listserv.edtech (topics relating to education and technology) alt.education (a broad discussion about anything education related) schl.sig.k12admin (for K-12 administrators) k12.ed.comp (Computer Education for K-12) To learn more about newsgroups, visit http://www.dejanews.com	Mac is Back If your school, like most in the U.S., is equipped with Macs, you can breathe a little easier this year. In 1997 it appeared as though Apple was about to collapse. Then Steve Jobs returned to the helm as Acting CEO. Jobs polished the Apple and set it back on track. The number one seller in the '98 holiday season? The iMac of course. The company that blazed the trail in the early 80's looks to be blazing the trail into the next millennium as well. Look for beige computers to disappear over the next few years as PC makers realize that computers can also make a fashion statement. So what does all this mean for education? The news just keeps getting better. Software companies that had abandoned development for the Mac platform have returned. Even the folks at Microsoft have rethought their Mac software. Instead of taking their PC software and adapting it to the Mac platform, they are now developing for the Mac from the beginning. Educators can expect to have more and better choices for software without giving up the interface they have learned and used for so long.
Edunotes Newsletter This newsletter is created by Brian and Maki DeLaet at Educyber, Inc. Subscriptions in the U.S. are free. Subscribe online at www.educyber.com or call (303) 268-2245. Educyber is based at: 4251 Kipling St. #190. Wheat Ridge, CO 80033	Edu Words (a glossary for computer users) Monitor: The display screen of a computer. Often the term monitor means the whole case that holds the screen. Pixel: From PICTure ELement, a pixel is a single dot on your screen. Lined up in rows and columns, the pixels are so close they appear connected. Resolution: Refers to the clarity and sharpness of an image. The two most common screen resolutions are 640 X 460 and 800 X 600. The first displays 640 dots on each of 480 lines or 307,200 pixels. LCD: Liquid Crystal Display. Technology that allows display of images on a thin screen by passing an electrical current through a liquid crystal solution. FED: Field Emission Display. Cutting edge technology that combines the best of the traditional cathode ray tube and LCD's.

Where Do You Draw the Line?
(or Do You?) A recent editorial in the Denver Rocky Mountain News praised the Englewood City Council for their decision to require all Internet users to have a "smart card". Users under 18 will have codes that indicate whether parental permission has been granted to access the whole Internet. If not, access is restricted to 5000 "child-friendly sites" in a database.
While this may seem like a neat answer to many parent's concerns, the obvious question is "Who decides which 5000 web sites are accessible?" Anyone who has ever gotten the 404 error is probably aware of the ever-changing nature of the Internet. Who is to say that a web site deemed acceptable today will still be acceptable next month, or next week, or even tomorrow? Just as one example of the weakness of such a system, I have surfed with my own children to supposedly child-friendly sites that had advertising I considered inappropriate for their age.
As a parent, I am concerned. But that concern is only magnified for educators. What are you to do as an educator? Suddenly you have the values and beliefs of all of those families, all of those parents, to consider when taking or allowing your students online.
The New York Times also reported that many of the more than 1000 Internet-related bills appearing before state legislatures in 1999 are concerned with censorship and protecting children. Obviously this is a problem that many people are concerned about.
What do you do? How can we sensibly deal with this concern? If you have solutions or suggestions on how to deal with Internet censorship, send them to info@educyber.com. We will post your ideas on our website and share some of the best with you in a future newsletter.

President's Day on the Internet

If you need information on President's Day or want to take a class cybertrip, try this site:
President's Day
http://www.computingcorner.com/holidays/
Presday/Presday.htm
While it is essentially a list of links, they are well organized and take you directly to places like the White House presidential information pages, and the United States Information Services.
Sites for President's Day
http://www.effingham.k12.il.us/central/5thgrade/
smithhen/pres/presidnt.htm
This page was created by a fifth grade class in Illinois and is another list of links to things presidential.

Customizing MS Word

Microsoft Word is probably the most powerful word processing tool on the market today. However, a tool is only useful if it's used properly. One of the most beneficial aspects of Word is that it can be customized to fit your needs.
If you are frequently changing the default font to a different font face or size, perhaps you need to change the default. Go to the Format menu, choose the Font, Font Style, and Size that you prefer to be the standard or default, and click on the Default button. When Word asks if you want to change the default settings, say OK. Now every time you start Word, you will start with your new settings.
If you are constantly changing other settings such as page orientation, tabs, margins or the like, you should create a template. To create a template, simply create a document with the settings you want (but no content) and choose Save As from the file menu. At the bottom of the dialog box that appears, there should be a choice "Save as Type." From the drop-down box, select "Document Template (.dot)." Then type in the name for your new template and click on save. The next time you want to create a document with those settings, choose "New" from the File Menu. Double click the name of the template you created and you're ready to roll.
The hardcopy version of this newsletter is created from a template. The template has the headers and footers as well as the text boxes and the book image behind the Edu Words text.
Another way to customize Word is by adding often used commands to an existing toolbar or by creating a completely new toolbar with the buttons of your choice. For example, to add the double space button to your toolbar, you would follow these steps:

Click the View Menu.
Highlight Toolbars and click on Customize.
Click on the Commands Tab at the top of the dialog box that appears.
In the Categories box, click on Format.
Scroll down the Command box until you get to the Double Space button.
Click and Drag the button to the place you want it on the standard toolbar.
Drop it in place and close the dialog box.
Now you can double space text simply by clicking on the button.

Notice that you can also choose to have various toolbars (like drawing, tables and borders, WordArt) remain on the desktop. At Educyber we keep the Standard, Formatting and Drawing toolbars visible. Just like with any desktop, you don't want it to get too cluttered. Keep the important ones there and use the others as needed.

WebFocus PreK- 3rd Grade Web Site
LITTLE EXPLORERS
Picture Dictionary with Links from EnchantedLearning.com
http://www.littleexplorers.com/
This picture dictionary, currently with 1121 entries, contains a lot of fun activities and educational materials to help little ones learn the ABC's. When you click a letter of the alphabet, you see lists of words that start with that letter. For example, A is for Aardvark, Acorn, Addition, Africa, Animals, Apple, and so on. Each word then expands into different activities such as reading, coloring, word hunts, paper crafts and more. The site has selected themes such as Zoom Dinosaurs and Zoom Whales with detailed information about the topic. It also has an "educator's guide" and "easy web tips to teach children" as well as simply showing how to print the material(s) you like. The site also links to Enchanted Learning's educational software selections.

Lesson Plans

Want a great source of K-12 lesson plans? Subscribe to the Lesson Stop, a weekly email publication that is an annotated list of links to resources on the Internet.
Lesson Stop is a free service for educators provided by Therese Sarah. The lessons, both on the web site and in the email, are organized according to subject categories and grade level so you can quickly find the resource(s) that are right for you.
Visit them on the web at http://www.lessonstop.org or send a message to majordomo@frii.net that says: subscribe lessonstop.

Books for Teachers

Educyber, in association with Amazon.com, provides books to help you use technology in the classroom. Go to http://www.educyber.com/educator/ and click on the bookstore link to order one of these titles:

Netlearning : Why Teachers Use the Internet (Songline Guides) by Ferdi Serim and Melissa Koch
Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect Our Children's Minds--for Better and Worse by Jane M. Healy and Jane A. Healy
The Busy Educator's Guide To The World Wide Web by Marjan M. Glavac
Technology for Inclusion: Meeting the Special Needs of All Students by Mary Male

Every School Should
Have a Web Site

Does your school have a web site? I mean a real web site, not a static page that was published in 1997 and hasn't been touched since. If not, you should have one. Even if you do have one, are you using it as well as it could be used?
A website can serve several functions. The following are reasons your school should have a web site
It can . . .

Tell parents and the community about your school.
Communicate with parents and others in your community.
Promote special activities and events.
Provide current news and information about your classes and school.
"Answer questions" and "greet people" 24 hours a day.
Communicate with colleagues (intra-school)
Communicate with colleagues around the world.
Recruit new students / volunteers / parents
Provide a forum for feedback from the community
Provide detailed information about your school (without paying the cost of publishing).
Provide maps and directions for visitors.

This list could go on for quite some time ( if you have something to add, we'll be happy to post it on our web site) but the point is, in 1999 there is no excuse for not having a web site.
Instead of taking additional time from your busy schedule to work on a web site, why not make it a class project? Too complicated? It needn't be. There are countless programs available (many for free!) that can make web page design as painless as possible.
Netscape (3.0 Gold and Communicator) has a web page composer with an easy-to-use interface. Many Word processing programs like MS Word and AppleWorks (the company formerly known as ClarisWorks) allow you to save word processing files as HTML documents. Newer versions of these word-processors are increasingly sophisticated at creating and editing HTML. PowerPoint users can save their slide shows as web pages and a wizard will walk them through the layout choices they need to make. If you're teaching HTML or otherwise want to work with the code itself, nothing beats a simple text editor like SimpleText (Macs) or Notepad (PC's).
There are also some reasonably priced programs available like MS FrontPage, Allaire's HomeSite 4.0, Adobe PageMill, or HotDog 5 Webmaster Suite.

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