With the advent of Zangle, parents have a ‘one-stop’ location to find all of
the information about their students’ schooling. Unfortunately, students do not have access to
Zangle at this time and Zangle
does not handle odd web addresses smoothly.
This set of instructions outlines a reasonable solution to this.
The idea is that you
create a mini-web site (no experience necessary). You then post a News Item in Zangle that points to this site
for parents to see from their all-purpose login. A link on your main SiteBuilder
page will allow students to access it independently of Zangle.
Items that you might wish
to post would be assignment lists for chapters, worksheets to be downloaded,
web-links to auxiliary resources, etc.
Unfortunately, I have not
been able to make links directly into the sitebuilder
calendars and other pages work properly in the Zangle
News items. They evidently cannot handle
web addresses with ‘funny’ stuff at the end of them. Consequently, you can put them in your own
web page.
Instructions are given at
three levels:
I.
Basic Outline. This serves as a reminder of
all of the necessary steps.
II.
Expanded Outline. Depending on your background
with computers, this may be all you need. Or to follow along the second time.
It is found below the Outline.
III.
Hyperlinked instructions. Follow the
hyperlinks to expanded, step-by-step instructions. It is not a difficult procedure, but some of
the steps might be completely new to some teachers. Don’t worry, you can
learn it and it might be fun!
First, plan the structure
of how you wish to put your folders and files up. The simplest would be one folder (eg. postedfiles)
that has one basic page (eg. index.html) that links to other files in the folder. These instructions are based on that
model. Some teachers might want to have
a separate folder for each chapter or unit.
The only change that you need to make is to make a different Zangle News Item for each unit and to use different folder
names.
The instructions will use
the names mentioned above.
1) Create a folder (postedfiles) for all files used
in the unit. (no spaces in name)
2) Create a Word (or Pages) document that is your
overview of your unit. (see disclaimer at bottom of document
as to another alternative)
3) Save all the other files that you want in your
folder
4) Go back to your Word overview and add links to
the other files
5) Save the Word document, then save it as a web
page (suggested name: index.html)
6) Move the entire folder to your SiteBuilder folder
7) Create a Zangle News
item with a link to this folder
8) Add a link on your main SiteBuilder
home page to the folder
Check you link on your SiteBuilder home page.
You are done.
The instructions are given
with the assumption that you create a separate link and set of files for each
unit (chapter) of your lessons. Adjust
as needed.
1) Create a folder for all
files used in the unit. (no spaces in name. suggested
name: postedfiles)
If
you put all of the files into one folder, it will be easy to post, easy to
navigate to, and easy to keep track of. While technically you can use spaces in
names on the internet, they needlessly complicate things. (you’ve seen those addesses with A%20space%20between%20each%20word). You should also stay away from odd
punctuation, things like / \ ,: etc.
2) Create a Word (or
Pages) document that is your overview of your unit.
This
document that you are reading now is my Word document that I created for this
unit. The document could be as simple
as a list of Assignment Pages for each chapter.
Or links to additional resources. Format it
appropriately, but keep it simple (stay clear of pictures, word art, etc. But Bold, Color
and Styles are ok.) You can use other programs besides Word
(Dreamweaver, Kompozer, etc.) to build fancier pages,
but I want to emphasize the simplicity.
If you know to do that, go for it! (Or talk to me…)
3) Save all the other
files that you want in your folder
Some
teachers are using this Word file as an overview/outline, then putting in
worksheets or assignment lists as pdf files or Word
documents. (Or this file could be an
entire course outline for one class, with the assignment lists for each
chapter, all in one folder.)
There
are three formats to consider:
Adobe
Acrobat files (.pdf)
Word
Processing Files (Microsoft Word or Apple Pages)
Web
pages (.html)
Advantages
/ Disadvantages, instructions are on a separate page.
4) Go back to your Word
overview and add links to the other files
The
central Word document serves as the link to all of the other pages. Highlight the text that you want linked,
insert a hyperlink, and enter the name of the file. Capitalization, spelling, and spacing must be
EXACTLY the same. Some computers hide
the file extension (the .pdf or .doc) – it MUST be
included. Note that if all the files are
in the same folder, you only need to include the filename. Otherwise, you need to be very careful to get
the correct navigational path to the file.
5) Save the Word document,
then save it as a web page [how to create html files (web pages)]
Word
is a very convenient program to use to type up the central document. From the Save As choice, change the file type
to a simple web page (.htm / .html). It will be converted automatically. The default name for a central file like this
is ‘index.html’. If you use that, you
can leave off the filename in steps 7 and 8.
6) Move the entire folder
to your SiteBuilder folder
Use CoreFTP (Windows) or Fetch (Macintosh) to copy the entire folder to your SiteBuilder site.
For those of you who posted grades with Easy Grade Pro, it is the exact
same procedure.
7) Create a Zangle News
item to link to your folder
Create
a Class News Item in Zangle and set the dates to
cover the length of time you wish it to be available. Paste in the address of
your folder. Submit the News Item.
8) Add a link on your main SiteBuilder
home page
Create
a link on your main Home Page in SiteBuilder. The key
line is
<h3><A
href="http://www.asdk12.org/staff/lastname_firstname/pages/postedfiles/index.html">
Link to Posted Homework for Algebra II</A></h3> If you named your main Word document index.html when
you converted it, you can skip filename and end with postedfiles/
. (Internet Browsers assume the file being looked for is named ‘index.html’
unless you put something else down). The two red tags set it as ‘heading 3’
which is optional. It makes the font
bigger. (you could go with 2 or 1, also)
Check you link on your SiteBuilder home page.
You are done.
Tryon’s disclaimer: I made this page using the methods described.
The idea is that you can do everything with a traditional word processing
program. I would suggest that it might
be worthwhile to learn to use a web design program. It’s not hard! SAHS has a site license and has Dreamweaver
on all of the computers. I would use
it. Many years ago I posted instructions
on building such a site. I would be
happy to hold a class after school tailored to doing this connected to Zangle notes. I can
also help people individually. Dreamweaver
Site instructions
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