Archived Classes At the end of each school year, the past year s academic classes are archived, meaning they re still kept in finalsite, but are put in an inactive state and are not accessible by students. Teachers can still access their archived classes, however. Additionally, resources (uploaded files), calendar items, media and quizzes that you used in your archived classes can be recycled and used again in your current classes. This document will show you how you can access your archived classes in order to repurpose material in your new classes. Accessing Archived Classes Click on "My Groups" on the Faculty portal page after logging in. (Your My Groups list may look slightly different from the example shown. If you don t see a My Groups link, talk to your site admin about placing this element on the Faculty portal page.) In the Group Manager window, click the radio button to switch from searching "Active groups" to searching "Archived groups" in order to see your old classes. The list of your archived groups will appear underneath the search filters. You can click on the name of any archived class to open it up in the right- hand pane. To go to the web page for that class (what we call the Group Space ), find the checkbox labeled Enable a Group Space and click on the view link immediately to the right of that control.
The class page for the archived class will open in your main browser window. Accessing archived classes this way is the first step in sharing resources, calendar items and other archived content with a current class. Sharing Resources from an Archived Class Once you have accessed your archived class, you can then choose to share any of its Resources with your new, active classes. Open the archived group that has a resource you want to share, as described above. In the archived class, go to the Resources tab. Find the folder that contains resource you want to share with an active group, hover over it, and click the "Edit" link. In the Resource Options window that pops open, select the first checkbox, "Share this folder with several of my groups." A sub- list will appear with your other classes; check off those classes that you want to be able to see this resource.
Another way to share archived resources is by clicking "Enable other groups to share this resource". Instead of choosing a specific class, this will let all teachers access this resource from any current class. This is helpful if you think you might want to access an archived resource from another class some time in the future, but that future class has not yet been created or added to the schedule. If you share the archived resource with other groups, you will always be able to find it from any class you might teach in the future. Note: enabling this will generate a pop- up window with a warning about permissions - when you share a resource with other teachers, any teacher who uses it will automatically receive permission to edit the contents of that resource folder, including the ability to delete files. Be sure to click the red "Update Folder" button to save any changes. At this point, the resource from the archived class has been made available to current classes, but there's another step needed to make it actually appear on the "Resources" tab of your current classes. The next step is to add the archived resource to one of your current classes. Go to your current class and create a resource as usual by clicking the green "New Folder" button on the "Resources" tab. When the "Resource Folder" window pops open, select the option to "Find a shared folder from another group" (as opposed to the default selection, Create a new folder ). Click on the dropdown menu to change the selection from "Active groups" to "Archived groups," and click the red "Filter" button.
The list below will populate with resources that have been shared from archived classes using the steps outlined above. Find the archived resource that you shared earlier, and click on it to add it to the "Resources" tab. It will now be accessible from the current, active class.
Sharing Calendar Events from an Archived Class You can use the Export function of a class calendar to copy the calendar events from an archived class. Open up the archived class and navigate to the Calendar tab. One of the available icons at the top of the event list is the Export to File option. Click that link to open up the Export Calendar Events window. You can select a date range for the calendar items you want to export. Make sure the correct class is selected in the Classroom Calendars section, then click the button corresponding to the calendar file format you want to use in this case, select the Export MS Excel (Raw) option. Your browser will save the file to your computer. Open up the calendar file in Excel, and use the Replace command (found in the Edit menu) to update the year for all of the calendar events (by replacing, for example, every instance of 2011 with 2012 ). Use the Save As command to re- save the calendar file in tab delimited text format. Once it s finished, navigate to your current class and open the Calendar tab there. Click on the blue pencil icon to open up Calendar Manager on the active class. With Calendar Manager open, select the Import tab. The radio buttons at the top will be set to File by default, so the next thing to do is to click the Choose File button and select the calendar file that you exported from your archived class. Set the Format radio button to Tab Delimited, and select your current class from the dropdown menu. If the Publish on import checkbox is selected, all of the
calendar items from the archived class will automatically appear on the calendar of your active class. If unselected, you will have to manually go through each of the imported events and publish them individually. You may need to re- associate the columns in the edited spreadsheet with the various pieces of information that Calendar Manager uses to display events. If so, simply use the dropdown menus to match the appropriate columns in the spreadsheet. Sharing Media from an Archived Class Sharing Media folders from an archived class is as simple as dragging and dropping them within Multimedia Manager. Open up Media Manager from any class page (either an archived or a current class) by navigating to the Media tab and clicking Manage Media. The Media Manager will open a new window; on the left, all of your classes will be displayed as individual channels, regardless of whether or not the classes themselves have been archived. Find the archived class containing the media you want to share and click on it to open that channel. When you ve found the folder that contains the media items you want to share, click on the icon of that folder and drag it over to the media channel representing your active class (note: make sure you click on the folder icon itself, not the blue handle along the left hand side!) When you re hovering over the active class channel it will turn green, as shown in the illustration above. Let go of the mouse button to drop the folder into the active class channel. The media items will automatically transfer over to the Media tab of the active class.
Sharing Quizzes from an Archived Class Any quizzes that you created for your archived classes will still be available in Quiz Manager. Open up Quiz Manager in your active class by navigating to the Quizzes tab and clicking Manage Quizzes. At the top of the quizzes list, use the dropdown menu to select your archived class. The quizzes list will be filtered to only display quizzes from that class. Open up any quiz you want to use on your active class. Click on the green Schedule Quiz button on the left. The Create a quiz date window will pop open. You ll be able to schedule the quiz for any of your currently active classes using the checkboxes on the left site of the Create a quiz date window. Other Page Elements Content in other elements on the class page (such as the Overview, Content elements, RSS elements, etc.) cannot be shared from an archived class, but you can copy and paste them from the old class to the current one.