As we approach the start of another school year, we’re preparing to unveil a new intranet web site for teachers and staff. Following the lead of our new public website, www.wps60.org, Inside Edition will provide convenient access to all of our internal information, including:

• District News
• Superintendent’s Bulletins
• Calendars and Upcoming Events
• Web Help Desk
• Internal Systems (Tera, Online Grading, Staff Development)
• Department and Staff Directories
• Internal Forms from all departments

Stay tuned for the more information about Inside Edition!

Patrick Schwisow
webmanager@waukeganschools.org

As you may have noticed, the new Waukegan Public Schools web site is up and running at http://www.wps60.org/. We are still working to get incorporate all the information from the old web site, and we appreciate your patience in the transitional period.

If you are currently managing a Manila site, it will continue to be available at its current address even though some of the links to it are no longer posted. If this is a problem for you, please e-mail me.

Thank you,
Patrick Schwisow
webmanager@waukeganschools.org

As the school year comes to a close, most Waukegan Public Schools employees are preparing for a well-deserved vacation, and those of us who work a twelve-month schedule are planning for completing all the things we can’t do while school is in session. I realize this is a hectic time, but I do have to ask you do a few things to summer-ize your web sites.

Read More...

• Superintendent's Bulletin - A new weekly publication from the Superintendent, the Web Manager (me), and other district administrators. Check your e-mail every Monday, or go to the archives.
• "New Look" for District Web Pages - I will soon be unveiling a new look for the district home page, and other district pages will follow soon after.
• Staff Development System - Joe Frichtl and I have developed an automated system to handle enrollment in all professional development courses offered by the district. It will be up and running in the near future.

Have a great year!
Patrick

I have moved offices within Lincoln Center. I am now in Room 122 (formerly the Office of Program Development).

Patrick

The school year is over, and I just finished some end of the year training classes. I will be here over the summer, so please feel free to call or e-mail me. I have several projects scheduled, but I will respond as quickly as possible.

Those of you who have the summer off, enjoy it, and I'll see you in August.

Patrick Schwisow
webmanager@waukeganschools.org
(847) 263-2300

The Manila Phase 3 course on February 9th is full. If you wanted to attend, I can put you on a waiting list or contact you about attending at a future date.

Patrick

Patrick

A new Training Schedule is posted for January and February 2006.
Please sign up with the training signup form or e-mail webmanager@waukeganschools.org.

Thanks,
Patrick

I am looking for some new projects to feature in the district showcase. Please e-mail me if you have any personal or student projects that you are proud of.

Thanks,
Patrick

Patrick

I am looking for some new photos for the District Home Page. I'd like to feature another school or an event, so please contact me if you have some photos that would be appropriate.

Thank you,
Patrick
webmanager@waukeganschools.org

Thank you for your patience,
Patrick

Sincerely, Celeste

Celeste

Celeste

Highlights from the meeting:

Medical Absence
I will be out of the office on maternity leave from mid May (hopefully) until mid July. All web work will need to given to me no later than 1 May. Hopefully, I will be able to get to it before I leave. If not, then there will be a summer web manager position, which leads me to my next highlight.

Summer Web Manager Stipend Position
There will be a summer web manager position available for interested candidates. The job will start at the end of the school and last until mid July. The position is a Manila only position (i.e. no computer maintenance and no fancy web site development). So if you have taken all three phases of our training program and are comfortable using and working in Manila you can apply for the position. You must have an active website on our system to demonstrate proficiency. Experience can be used in lieu of website training. I know that we have some people that haven't taken all the training classes yet they are still as qualified for the position. The position will require about 80 hours of work and will be strictly maintaining current Waukegan School websites. The summer position will also monitor updates on all Waukegan School websites. All people interested should email me. Pay is roughly a $2500 stipend for all 80 hours.

Update your site
Remember to update your site within a 12-month period. All sites that are inactive for 12 or more months will be removed to make room for new sites. When I come back from maternity leave any sites that have not been updated in 12 months will be removed to make room for next years training program. So that should give you until the last weeks of July to make any necessary changes.

On a similar note, you must update the home page of your Manila sites manually. If you make changes to any of your web pages, make sure you update your home page. Unfortunately, when you update pages on your website the only date that changes on your website is the page you are working on. So if people come to your site and look to see the last time the site was updated, the first thing they will see is the last date your home page was updated and not the most recent changes. So, when you update your site, take the extra step to also update the date on the home page. This doesn't affect the 12 month rule, any change to your site in 12 months is logged in our system so no matter what your home page says, if you updated in the last year I will know so don't worry.

WYSIWYG Editor
There were some questions about turning on the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor. This editor will make it easier to do web work without having to deal with HTML code. By default all new sites are using this editor but sites older that 8 or 9 months may not have the option. It also depends on the platform you are using. People using Mac OS 9 and Mac OS 10 Internet Explorer and Safari don't have the editor. I posted a story on that today and it can be found at http://www.waukeganschools.org/webcentral/stories/storyReader$114

Printer Friendly Feature
In some case you might want to allow people to print only the content of your site and not the background Manila stuff. To do this all you need to do is link them to a page that has ?print-friendly=true at the end of the address. Don't use the underline you see here, it's just for demonstration purposes. So for the calendar website, I wanted the pages to display without a background so instead of a regular link I used http://www.waukeganschools.org/calendar/February2005?Print-friendly=true. Check out the district calendar for examples of using the printer friendly feature. There is also a story on Web Central dedicated to the topic. Remember that any graphics or pictures that you can see in the editor box will show up in the printer friendly page. So this option will not strip out all images from a web page and leave only text.

Online Discussion Groups
We will be testing out our first student/teacher online discussion groups. This is a feature of Manila that can be used to enhance your classroom websites by allowing students to post comments on a topic or just by allowing parents the option to drop a comment on a site. I think that the online discussion groups can be used at any level of student that can proficiently write/type. All Waukegan School websites have this capability and all you need to do is turn it on. I will be creating a detailed set of instructions next week on how to turn on and use this feature. If you are interested and need some help getting set up please let me know. I would really like to see more of these online discussions being used.

School Website Updates
For all those who maintain school websites please make sure that your sites have: School Hours (to include breakfast hours and any other unique hours the school may have), Dress Code, School Supply Lists (English and Spanish) and the District Resources story. If you don't have a dress code then post that there is no dress code. These are the things that will become necessary during the summer months.

Celeste

Celeste

During a recent Phase 3 training, we came across some problems with the newest Netscape Navigator and Manila. The way Netscape 7.x converts code does not allow for easy cut and paste into Manila. So, for that reason, I have changed the link on the left to allow you to download a much older version of Netscape. This version does allow you to cut and paste code quickly and easily into Manila.

For Mac users, you may use the page to download Netscape 4.8 but chances are you already have it on your computer. For users using Mac OS 10, to find Netscape 4.8 you must go into the Classic Environment. I will work on posting a tutorial on that this month.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to email me.

The trainings for September 29th through October 1 are set to go on. If you haven't signed up but want to attend please email me before the 28th.

The Web Editors meeting is scheduled for September 28th from 4-5 pm at Lincoln Center in room 129.