Using Your NSCC "WWW" Website To Teach and Inform
An informal TLC / NeLSC workshop
(http://nscc-elearningfaculty.wetpaint.com)

The web address of this presentation is:  http://webshares.northseattle.edu/elearning.

The web address of NSCC's faculty e-learning resources wiki:
http://nscc-elearningfaculty.wetpaint.com

The web address of NSCC's "Teaching & Learning Center":
http://webshares.northseattle.edu/tlc.

The web address of NSCC's personal web spaces: http://facweb.northseattle.edu.

The web address of NSCC's department and program web spaces:  http://webshares.northseattle.edu.

Facilitators:

•  Tom Braziunas (tbraziun@sccd.ctc.edu)

•  Carol Howe (chowe@sccd.ctc.edu)

Topics

•  Why use a website instead of printing?

•  News from the New York Times...

•  What can go online ... and what cannot!

•  Technology that fits our "simple-is-good" philosophy!

•  Using your web space to provide documents to students and colleagues

•  How students and colleagues can add their own notes to and highlight online documents

•  Building a basic web page as a "table of contents"

•  Creating your own online "profile"

•  Taking the first steps toward an online course website

•  Blogging in your web space, oh my!

•  Taking the next steps -- come see us!

Why use a website instead of printing?

Sustainability!  Replace the printing paradigm.
Practicality!  Easy access to department/course documents and electronic "course packets" for students.
Support my new terminology: A "webout" instead of "handout"!
Some facts about paper, trees and global warming

	1 tree = 8,333 sheets of copy paper
	1 tree = 88.8 pounds of CO2
	So about 1 less pound of CO2 is released for each 100 sheets of paper saved
	How many trees might your Division prevent from being used in one quarter?
	Sources: http://printgreener.com http://www.conservatree.com/learn/EnviroIssues/TreeStats.shtml http://playgreen.org/Wiki/WidgetTrackC02AndTreesSaved http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/eco-calculator

"Learning and teaching style" factors when considering whether to provide handouts or, alternatively, webouts for your students or colleagues. 

WEBOUT #1: 

Save this "webout" to your desk top!

More information about how students and colleagues can manipulate their personal electronic copies of "webouts" will be provided below.

News from the New York Times...

Publishers are putting textbooks online:   " Don't Buy That Textbook, Download It Free"    NY Times, September 15, 2008, page C3 --»

These textbooks are less expensive for students.
Authors can update information continually, keeping the textbook current.
The newest generation of learners (in their 20's) have used laptops (and coffee shops) as important tools in high school -- with little printing.
The generation in high school now are becoming familiar with mobile phone technologies as convenient ways to access websites and do class work.
The business world is laptop- and mobile-phone-oriented.
So, for many (but not all!) of our students, a "paper copy" is old technology.

©

What can go online... and what cannot!

As educators, we have some rights to fair use of copyrighted materials.
Making materials accessible online can have a much greater "impact on the market value" of those materials, and this is an important factor for fair use.
Repositories of specific content and interactive activities, created by faculty or others through federal grants, are available free for all educators to use.  A couple examples of these collections of "learning objects" are:

  Merlot Learning Objects  (http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm)
  Wisc-Online (http://www.wisc-online.com)
  Creative Commons (http://www.creativecommons.org)
 

For a full consideration of the options for providing materials (including course packets) online instead of as paper, step through the following checklist:

WEBOUT #2: 

Save this "webout" to your desk top as a WORD document!
Open it and use WORD's "highlighter tool" to mark especially important points as we go over this checklist.

Technology that fits our "simple-is-good" philosophy!

We don't want to think too hard about technology, just use it as a tool when and where it effectively enhances our teaching, informing and sharing and contributes to the successful learning of our students.
Here is a short list of tasks along with the technologies that make them easier to accomplish:

*SFTP Drive creates a Drive Letter on your own computer that allows you to access and manipulate all files in your www folder as if they are on your own computer.

Using your web space to provide documents to students and colleagues

You have a web space at http://facweb.northseattle.edu which has an alternative identity as the www folder on your I Drive.
Your web space (or specific folders within it) can be password-protected if you are using proprietary materials.  Check with us (distance@sccd.ctc.edu) on how to get passwords set up.
Your web space can be used simply as a "file drawer" that contains materials (including multimedia files) that you wish to share with...

students (e.g., syllabus, assignments, course packets, announcements)
faculty and staff colleagues (e.g., committee agenda or minutes, large files, presentations)
anyone (for NSCC educational purposes)

You can also create a department or program website as well and share editing privileges with others in your division.  These websites are shown at http://webshares.northseattle.edu.
For a step-by-step orientation to your "Triple-Dub", follow along the workshop presented here:

WEBOUT #3: 

Drag a file to your www folder and then look for it online at http://facweb.northseattle.edu/yourNetID. 

Your NetID will be added to the list at http://facweb.northseattle.edu within 24 hours of when you placed content within it.

How students and colleagues can add notes to and highlight online documents

As you have practiced above, you and your students can "mark up" copies of most documents online for your own study purposes.
Check out the second page of Webout #1 above for a start to instructions on how to edit, rearrange and/or highlight documents in Word, PDF and web page formats.
Consider creating such an instructional handout webout (!) for your students or staff.  If you do, please share it with your colleagues.

Building a basic web page as a "Table of Contents"

You can use a simple web page editor (Microsoft FrontPage) or a document editor which allows you to work on web pages (Microsoft Word) or another web page editor (Dreamweaver or Google Document Editor) to create a web page which can serve as an organized file list so that users can easily find documents in your web space.
An example of such a simple "Table of Contents" can be found at:  http://facweb.northseattle.edu/tbraziunas/index1.html.
To create a web page with a list linked to other files, we will follow the step-by-step instructions in Webout #3 (section 7):

Drag several files into your www folder for this practice session.
Open the FrontPage program (the white-arrow-in-a-blue-circle icon will be on your bottom toolbar).
In the File Menu, select "New".
In the right-side column, select "One Page website".
Select "Browse" and open your www folder.
Click "Okay" and your www folder will open in FrontPage so you can start working on it.  A blank home page (index.htm) will automatically be created. (WARNING:  If you already have a home page, this step may overwrite it.  Change the name of your home page first!)
Just as in Word, create and format your web page to contain a title and an easy-to-navigate organized list of documents in your www folder.  SAVE it as "contents.htm".
Highlight each listing and right-click on it.
Choose "hyperlink" and use the dialogue box to link to the appropriate file in your www folder.  (NOTE:  All files to be accessed by students or others should first be moved or copied into your www folder.  If you link to files outside your www folder, folks on other computers will not be able to access them.)
In the dialogue box, choose "target frame" and select "New Window" so that your documents open in a separate window from your web page.
Repeat this for all your listings, SAVE your work and check out the results online by going to your facweb website.

TIP:  If you create another folder in your I-Drive named "www-storage", you can move documents temporarily out of your www folder when you don't want them available online and move them into your "www-storage" folder which is not online.  Then you can find them easily when you want to move them back to your www web space.

Creating your own online "profile"

Next let's work from a template to create a standard "faculty profile" or "staff profile" home page to establish a "web presence" and introduce yourself to potential students, staff and colleagues.  This "profile" web page might list the courses you teach (with links to document folders for each one), your curriculum vitae, a short autobiography and/or links to program websites for your division.  For staff, this web page might list department forms, meetings, instructions or program information.
An example of this template is:  https://frontpage.northseattle.edu/templates/samples/template1.htm.   
At http://facweb.northseattle.edu, you will find that many faculty and staff are already using this standard "profile" (which will be linked to the online schedule in the future) as a simple, consistent way of introducing whom we at NSCC are to others.
To convert a template into our own home page, we will follow some of the steps found in this workshop resource:

WEBOUT #4: 

To access a simple "profile" template, go to https://frontpage.northseattle.edu/templates and click on "TomB-1".  (We will be replacing all of "Tom B's" information with our own as fast as we can!)
Download it to your www folder.

Process for download in Mozilla Browser:  Right-click and "Save As..." or "Convert to PDF" or "Download to Excel".
Process for download in Internet Explorer Browser:  Click on "Page" and "Save As...".  Select "Entire web page" if that option is not already selected in the download dialogue box.

Update the text such that it contains your name, a short autobiography, a list of your courses and other potential links of interest.
Replace Tom's photograph with one of your own.  If your photograph needs resizing to better fit, right-click on it to resize it. 
SAVE this file as your index.html web page.  In fact, SAVE repeatedly so as not to lose work.  You can also use back arrows to undo any actions you have taken.
Highlight and right-click on the word or phrase you wish to hyperlink to another web page.  If the web page is on a different website, use "new window" as the target frame.
In your www folder, create a folder for each of your courses or programs or committees.  If you wish, each folder can be password-protected so only registered students or specific colleagues will be able to access the contents.  You can link to these folders from your index.html home page.
Create an "under construction" web page to which to link when your other web pages are not ready yet.  This is more "polite" and informative to users than having links which do not work at all.
SAVE and view your work in a browser!

NOTE:  The same procedure can be used for a "webshares" folder and web space.  In this case, you are sharing file-managing access with other NetID folks so you will be collaborating on the design of this web space.

Taking the first steps toward an online course (or department) website

Creating a basic online course (or department) website is beyond this current workshop, but it is not difficult to accomplish if you have come this far!  However, it takes time.
Many faculty have used the same basic layout for their online course design, navigation and content.  A template often used is:  https://frontpage.northseattle.edu/coursetemplate.   Come to see us and we will copy this website into your www folder in order for you to have something to work from.
For department or program or other personal websites, this template can be repurposed while keeping the same navigational structure.
Alternatively, you might create your own website entirely.  Step-by-step tutorials are available at https://frontpage.northseattle.edu/distance.
A better way to create web pages with "clean code" which is ADA compliant and can also be conveniently read by mobile phone devices (the wave of the future!) is to use cascading style sheets and "dynamic web templates."
This will be covered in a more advanced workshop.  You can always stop by our office and we will help you get started.  If interested, Joanne Fall in our office has created an informative document: Introduction to dynamic web templates & cascading style sheets.

Blogging in your web space, oh my!

All of us also have the capacity to set up a NSCC-oriented blog in our web space, thanks to the work of our IT Services folks.
This blog can be set up so that registered students automatically have access through their NetIDs or it can be fully public.  Or the blog could apply to a division or department group.  There are many more options available, one of which will probably fit your communication needs.
We have more information on the NSCC blog in the "Technology and Pedagogy" section of our "e-Learning Faculty Zone" wiki at: http://nscc-elearningfaculty.wetpaint.com/.
Our TLC workshop "webout" on blogging is at: https://frontpage.northseattle.edu/distance/blogs/bloghome.htm.

Come see us ...

...and check out the faculty resources at:

The TLC's website:  http://webshares.northseattle.edu/tlc
Our e-Learning Faculty Resource Wiki:  http://nscc-elearningfaculty.wetpaint.com.

 

Thanks for joining us today!