Quick Info. What is GO? A Brief Summary

Transcription

1 Quick Info Parent/Student URL: Faculty Center URL: What is GO? A Brief Summary GO (formerly Grades Online) is a web-based application that allows students, parents, and teachers to login via a web browser from any Internet connected computer to view class schedules, assignments, attendance, fines, and grades. As you can see from this list, most of the features of GO are geared for secondary schools. However, additional features have been added to GO that have also made it a great tool for elementary teachers as well. Two of the biggest features are; access to a Standards Based Lesson Design (SBLD) tool and the ability to create a GO Classroom Website. The GO Classroom Website (GOCW) allows teachers to quickly and easily create and update web pages directly through their web browser. This means you don't need to use web development software like Dreamweaver, and you can make changes to your website anytime and from any computer (Mac, Linux, or PC) connected to the Internet. How to access GO for the first time: 1. Point your web browser (Internet Explorer or Firefox) to: 2. Click on the 'Receive a GO Password Reminder' link (just under the Login button.) 3. Fill out the form by entering your District Employee ID. If you have a GO account, you ll receive a FirstClass with your GO password. If you don t have an account, you ll receive a message that reads There is no account set up for that #. the ITS Help Desk with your request for a GO account. You can have your GO password ed to you at any time by going to the Faculty login page and clicking on the Receive a GO Password Reminder link. 4. Once you have your GO password, return to the Faculty login page at: and login with your employee id and your password. 5. Once you are logged in, you will be looking at the Faculty Center. There will be a few options on the left depending if you are teaching at elementary or secondary, including a link to Standards-Based Lesson Design. On the right side, you'll see four sections, GO Reminders, Your Home Page, Your Class Pages, and Your Custom Pages (see Figure 1 below). 1

2 How to Create a Web Page: The Your Home Page section is where you ll want to start. Note the URL, this is the web address of your classroom website and is the address you will give to others to be able to access your finished web site. Click on the Add button just below your address to begin making your first web page. 1. Fill out the agreement form and then you ll be taken to the web page editor. It's a basic text editor with quite a bit of functionality similar to MS Word. The toolbar contains different tools like undo, bold, leftjustify, ordered and unordered lists, text color and so on. See Figure 2 below. 2. Enter a title for your web page in the Title dialog box. The title is what appears on the top of your web page and serves as the link text from your Home Page to your custom pages. This is required. Note your website s address. You can give this to parents, coworkers, and friendly school webmaster so your website can be added to your school s website. 3. Add the text of your page and format it the way you want with the tools described in Figure 2 below. Most of the tools function similarly to Microsoft Word. 4. Click the Submit Changes button to post your web page. You can now go to your URL and view your new web page. Adding/Editing Images 1. Click on the Insert/Edit button ( ) on the toolbar. This will open the Insert/Edit image window (see Figure 3 below). 2. Click on the Browse button ( ) to open the Image Manager window. If this is the first time you ve accessed this window, or if you haven t uploaded any images, then it will look similar to Figure 4 below. The Image Manager is a library of all the images you ve uploaded to your website. Let s add an image. 3. Click on the Upload button ( ). This will open the Upload window. Note that you re limited to.gif,.jpg, and.png extensions and a total upload size of 10 megabytes. Remember to first verify the FERPA status for all student directory information (including images) that you upload to your web site. 4. Click on the Choose files button. This opens up a Windows file selection dialog box. Browse to where your image is stored and select it. 5. Once you ve selected your image to upload, you ll have a new button, Upload to Server. You can click it to upload your image to the server, or select additional images to upload. 6. You ll see a thumbnail of your image in the Image Manager. Click on the thumbnail to select it so it ll be added to your web page. Before it s added, you ll be returned to the Insert/Edit window. Here you can add an image description (great for folks who use screen readers or other assistive technologies). You can define the alignment of the photo (left, right, centered, etc ). You can also add a border to the image and you can define how much of a vertical and/or horizontal buffer the image should have (so that text on the page doesn t run into the image). 2

3 7. Click on the Insert Button after you ve made any adjustments to the settings (see figure 6 below). You ll then return to the Add/Update Class Page screen where you can continue to modify your page. Adding Links to Other Webpages or Websites 1. Assuming you re editing an existing page, highlight the text that you d like to turn into a link. Once the text is highlighted, click the Insert/Edit Link tool in the toolbar (see figure 7 below.) 2. The Insert/Edit Link window will appear with three fields. o o o Link URL: Enter the web address you want to link to, for example, Target: You can choose the link to open in the current window, or open in a new one. Title: Enter the text you d like to appear when your visitor hovers their mouse over the link. 3. When you re done, click the Insert button. Adding Additional Web Pages to Your Website If you are a teacher with scheduled classes in the Student Management System (SMS), StudentPlus, then you will have a main web page as well as additional web pages created for you automatically for each class that you are scheduled to teach. However, you can also create any additional webpages to your website that you wish. Remember to include a title on any custom pages you create. The title is used as the link to the custom pages that you make. 1. Login to GO and access the Faculty Center page (see figure 1 below) as you normally would. Notice in the bottom right hand corner of the Faculty Center, there s a section called Your Custom Pages. Below that is a box in which you can type the name additional webpages (file names should only contain characters and numbers, spaces and special characters will be removed). 2. Once you enter a name and click the Add button, you ll be taken to the Add/Update Class Page (see figure 2 below). From here you can edit the web page as you did above, remember to click the Submit Changes button to save your work. For every additional webpage you create, the system will automatically create a link to that page for you in the Other Information sidebar (see figure 9 below). 3. To manage your additional web pages that you ve created, go to the Faculty Center (see figure 1 below) and go to the Your Custom Pages section. You will notice that there is now an entry for each of the custom webpages you ve created. You can edit these pages or delete them (see figure 10 below). 3

4 Adding Attachments GO supports adding attachments to your GO teacher web pages. Anyone can access your website and the files you attach to it, so be mindful of what you re making available to the general public. 1. To add downloadable files to your webpage, edit one of your web pages. Towards the bottom of the Add/Update Class Page, there is a section called Class Downloads for, and in that section is a button labeled Upload New File (see figure 2 below). Be aware that all attachments you add are publicly accessible by everyone 2. Clicking on that button opens a new page which asks you to browse to the file you want to upload to the server. Once the file is uploaded, it will appear in the Class Downloads for section. From this, you can delete the file, too. 3. The system will automatically create a link to the files you upload. The links will appear in the right hand sidebar in the Downloads section (see figure 9 below). Themes and the Sidebar Boxes Sidebar Boxes When visiting your web page, you ll notice that it has a layout and scheme already included. The color scheme should match your schools official colors and bear your school name. There are some informational boxes (sidebars) on the right side of the web page that are automatically created for you. Typically you will see three or four boxes: Contact Information: Contains your address and phone number/extension Other Information (optional): If you ve created additional web pages, links to them would be listed here. Downloads: If you ve attached any documents to your page, they would be listed here. FWPS Headlines: Current and automatically updated headlines from the FWPS website. Themes You can select from a number of themes to change the look and feel of your GOCW. New themes are being added to GO all the time. Check out the Themes page to see what s new. Changing the theme of your GOCW will change it for the whole site, not for individual pages. 1. From the Faculty Center Page (see figure 1 below), click on the Change button down in the bottom-right of the page. 2. You ll be taken to a new page which shows thumbnails of the various available themes. Select which theme you d like and click the Submit Changes button at the bottom of the page. 3. You can now go to your GOCW and view the new theme. 4

5 Figure 1: Faculty Center Figure 2: Web Page Editor 5

6 Figure 3: Insert/Edit Image window Figure 4 : Image Manager Figur Figure 5: Image Upload Manager 6

7 Figure 7: Link Tool on the Toolbar Figure 6: Image/Edit Image Window Figure 8: Insert/Edit Link Figure 10: Custom Page Management Figure 9: Sidebar Example 7