Bruna's Blog

Computer Backup Strategies for Teachers

bruna2786 — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:28:52 +0000

Your desktop/laptop plays a vital part in your workday. It is important that you maintain backups of your data. It is your responsibility to implement a backup strategy.

Why backup?

All of your digital documents, spreadsheets, presentations, photos, music, and more live in your computer. If your computer happens to get corrupted or misbehaves, you could lose all your data. To keep your data safe, you must backup on a regular basis. You do not want to risk losing your data.

**Note** Laptops are especially fragile and easily stolen. You might want to check this out: How to Take Good Care of Your Laptop Computer. When not using your laptop, please be sure to store it in a locked drawer.

What files do I want to keep?

At the very least you want to backup anything that you have created and saved on your computer. Before you backup you might want to delete files you no longer need. This makes your life easier and makes backups quicker.

What data do I want to backup?

Documents: To make the backup process easier you should store your documents in your My Documents folder. This is a folder designed to hold all of your documents. Storing documents to the desktop is not recommended. Having an organized file management system (documents organized by folders) will make it easier to backup your data.
Photos: The best place to keep your school photos is in the My Pictures folder found in My Documents.
Videos: The best place to keep your videos is in the My Videos folder in My Documents. Videos are often very large and will consume a lot of space on whatever device you use for backup.
Internet Explorer Favorites: You can export your Favorites using the Import/Export Wizard. This file will be called bookmark.htm and is saved to My Documents.

Where should I back up my data?

Ideally, you should create two backups. Here are some choices:

Server. If you have access to a department or school server, your documents will be in a public area. Your Department/School Server is probably available to others. **Note** Your Department/School Server is not private.
USB drive. Purchase information.

Walgreens USB information

Staples USB information

Target USB information

External Hard Drive. An external hard drive is a hard drive that connects to your laptop. You can purchase an external hard drive at Best Buy or Walmart.

You can back up the following school-related items to you department /school server:

Word documents
Presentations
Pictures
Spreadsheets
IE Favorites
PDF files

Files that should NOT be backed up to your department server include:

Any personal document
Videos
Music (including iTunes)
Personal photos

How often should I backup?

Ideally, to be safe, it is wise to backup your data on a weekly basis. You should backup at least once every 1-2 weeks and You should never go more than a month without backing up your data.

Change It UP!

bruna2786 — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:04:25 +0000

Check this post out from Teach Paperless. It’s great.

We often forget that we need to change our perspective. We need to change our ways of viewing/looking at things.

You might wonder WHY?

I often tell my older adult computer students that it is hard to learn from computer users in their families because those users have forgotten what it’s like not to know. They have forgotten what it’s like not to know how to use a computer.

This also refers to us teachers. We forget what it’s like not to know. For example, sometimes we forget what it’s like not to know how to create a chart in Excel but it’s in the assignment. We just assume our students should know. But do we check with out students or review something just to be sure?

I know. TIME. We don’t always have the time to do it. But we can work out some strategies that would help with some of these little gaps that cause tremendous frustration for students. In this particular case, I would set up links to creating a chart in Excel on my portal or in Moodle. By doing this for my assignments, I would soon have a fabulous resource for my students. And in time they would automatically look for help there.

I’m going to try looking at things differently all day today. Just to see what I can see.

Banner week…

bruna2786 — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 23:37:06 +0000

I only say that because Moodle behaved this week. Teachers were pleased and I didn’t have to hold my breath in some of the classes as students were being introduced to Moodle. I hope this lasts. My fingers and toes are crossed.

Now our Moodle has never been a problem outside of school but it has sometimes misbehaved when students/teachers tried to access it from within our district’s network. It was not unusual for students to actually never get to their class on Moodle after they logged in. A bit nightmarish and not a way to build trust with students at the beginning of a school year.

But yesterday, a teacher stopped in to tell me that he had successfully had his classes take two quizzes this week without any problems. Yep, a banner week!

Sample Moodle Course

bruna2786 — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 13:45:06 +0000

I went to the 2009 Goshen Midwest Moodle Moot in July and several sessions were given by a social studies teacher, Patrick Malley. In one session he showed us how he organized his Moodle course for his AP classes. This model can really be used for any Moodle course.

He labels each topic area with the Chapter or a Unit Name. Then in each topic area he creates three directories: handouts, presentations and notes. The directories are folders that contain documents. Odds are that you already have your documents organized into folders. Or, if you don’t, it wouldn’t take you very much time to organize your documents. You can zip those folders and upload them as one document to Moodle. Then once the file has been uploaded to your Moodle space, you will upzip that folder. And, voila, all your documents are in Moodle and available for your students. Easy, peasy.

I’ve created a Sample Moodle Course so you can check this out. Just click on the Login as a guest button and you’ll see what this all looks like.

First Flip Video – Zina

bruna2786 — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 02:11:34 +0000

Zina is my dog. She is a 3 years old and a bichon frise-shih tzu mix. I thought she would be a great subject for my first video. I just bought a flip video so I need to play with it and see what it can do.

I took a short of video of Zina here in our cabin. The flip creates videos as avi so I needed to find a converter. I found a good one from DVDVideoSoft Ltd. and it’s FREEWARE. It’s called Free Video to Flash Converter. Downloading, installing and using this program was a breeze. And I do not have a great internet connection up here in the wilds of Michigan. It was easy converting the avi to a flash video.

I tried to upload the video here but couldn’t. This free version of WordPress will not allow uploaded videos. So, I created an account over at YouTube and uploaded it there. Not too bad. Here is the link so you can see Zina.

Thoughts about this process: As with everything, this involved time. It was easy to convert and upload to YouTube. It would probably be very easy to upload all my class videos to YouTube since my students probably are already familiar with it and I would be avoiding a learning curve. Yet, if I choose a full-blown WordPress site, I think uploading videos would be easy there as well. I could then simply link to it from whatever LMS I will be using.

I realize that some students may not like viewing videos but I will be asking them for feedback throughout the course. I want to see how this affects our class community. I also know that viewing videos can be difficult with a dial-up connection. But some of my students have viewed videos at school, at the library or at work instead of at home. This is also one of the reasons why I want to keep them short.

Perhaps I’m overlooking something. I would appreciate any feedback.

What is an online community?

bruna2786 — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 02:08:38 +0000

At first I was shocked to see that Building Online Communities was dated October 2002. That is soo long ago but then I caught myself because I believe that we often lose valuable knowledge by making assumptions.

And what was I doing? Making assumptions based on the date of a resource.

So I thought that I would take the headings of the article and compare them to my online MA program and this course. At least for what I know thus far. I put it in a table.

Characteristic of Online Community from Building Online Communities	Master’s Online Program	FOC ’09
Exist For A Reason – Context…the why	To earn MA in Adult Education	To learn about facilitating online communities
Users Draw Other Users – group leaders/program/institution	National Louis University	Leigh & Sarah & Otago Poly
Users Will Surprise You – best not to make assumptions	My cohort sure did!	Chris did when he created our PageFlakes
A Sense of Ownership – online identity within group	I noticed that we all fell into specific roles as far as when we posted in our discussion forum.	We shall see…
A Shared History & Culture – this is based on shared experiences in online group and time	We all wanted to finish the program.	We share our online environment /culture.
The Bell Curves – seems like a CoP	We were all required to participate but the distinction was seen in length of posts.	Some are here for credit. We are all here to learn so we can participate as we wish…some might choose to lurk.
Barriers are Mixed Blessings – one way to check commitment	Tuition worked here…LOL	Open to all.
The First Contribution – first toe in the water.	We had a ftf practice orientation weekend.	We have a choice in how to participate.
The Interface – technical hurdles	First Discus, then WebCT	Again, we have choices.
Mischief – governance	Some felt that some cliques developed due to some people only commenting on each others’ posts.	We shall see.
Discuss the Community Openly – change	Not an option.	Open to suggestion/feedback.

Facilitating Online Communities

bruna2786 — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 19:10:08 +0000

This is my first post in my new WordPress blog and for the free course Facilitating Online Communities. I apologize for being a bit late but I will try to catch up.

I am in the course to improve my blogging skills along with other skills needed to facilitate an online community. I am on WordPress because I want to check it out and want to play with it. I realize that this is the free version and more might be possible with WordPress on a hosted site. I’ve heard wonderful things about WordPress and especially about the Thesis theme. This is not the Thesis theme. The picture in the header is S’Annapelago, my hometown, on the Modena side of the Apennine Mountains in Italy. Tuscany is on the other side. We are just a hop, skip and jump from Tuscany and it’s an easy drive for a nice dinner.

Meanwhile I live in the Chicago area where I am a technology integration specialist for a high school during the day and teach two classes at the College of Lake County.

I have some different plans for my CLC students this year. I want to incorporate online videos. Even though my classes are ftf (face-to-face), I want them to be able to review the content whenever and wherever they want. I want to see how this affects my students. I firmly believe that many if not most methods used to facilitate an online community will be equally beneficial in a ftf situation. This is what I experienced in my online master’s program. I was closer to my fellow students & professors in that program then I had ever been in my face to face master’s program.

I am planning on using Jing Pro since I never plan on having any video longer than five (5) minutes. We’ll see how that works out.

I am currently in Manistique, MI which in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It’s a lovely wild part of the USA. We are lucky to be on Indian Lake. It is very windy today and I can see many white caps. This picture will give you a feel for the area.