Design and Drawing for Production (DDP) is an introductory technology course taught at Perry Junior High that aims to develop students' problem solving skills in the 3-D modeling and solid rendering of objects. The course, which is part of the school district's Project Lead the Way pre-engineering curriculum, prepares students with twenty-first century skills in technical drawing and thinking. Recently, students of Mr. Jim DeRollo (pictured below working with a student) had been working on a new, challenging design problem. Perhaps the most exciting and interesting aspect is that their partners working on the problem with them attend North Penn High School, in Lansdale, Pennsylvania! Their task, to design a speaker mounting bracket, was discussed throughout the process using webcams set up in each classroom. With this equipment, the students at Perry could work closely with the North Penn High students as they worked together to find a design solution. The video conferencing setup allowed students to see and talk to their distant partners on a daily basis. These "face-to-face" sessions allowed them to really talk about their potential solutions everyday though they were many miles apart during the entire process. Students also used school district provided e-mail accounts (which were monitored) to continue the dialogue with their Pennsylvania partners. Early in the design process, students developed pencil sketch ideas that were scanned and sent using e-mail for review by their distant members of their team. As the design process progressed, the students created 3-D computer drawings that were exchanged using e-mail. This use of a virtual design team parallels the method that many businesses throughout the world use today to communicate design ideas. For this reason, the "virtual design team" concept had been added as a part of the new DDP curriculum taught this year. When asked about the project's outcomes, DeRollo stated that using video conferencing in the classroom was a very simple process that his students really enjoyed. For his lab, the requirements included a webcam for video conferencing, a Yahoo Messenger account, e-mail accounts for the students, and another teacher with whom to work. The teacher could be in the same building, any of the other schools within the district, out of state, or even out of the country. Although Mr. DeRollo completed this project using PCs because that is what they use in the PLTW curriculum, it should be noted that all new Macs include a built-in webcam called an iSight and Apple's video chat software, iChat, which allow video conferencing right out the box! Old eMacs can also make use of an external iSight camera or other webcam as well for video conferencing. Therefore, a project like this could easily be applied using the Macs in our classrooms right now. During this project, the students from Perry Junior High and North Penn High not only strengthened their design skills, they also learned how communication is changing the workplace here and abroad. When asked about this project, one of Mr. DeRollo's DDP students stated what a great experience it was to solve a design problem through communication with students from another state. If this project looks like something you or your students would be interested, stay tuned in the fall since there will several inservice opportunities to learn about video conferencing in the classroom. Keep an eye on My Learning Plan for future opportunties and hopefully you can see the potential of video conferencing in your classroom as well.

In the process of organizing your computer files, there are surely times that you need to rename files or folders. As with most tasks in Mac OS X, there are some simple steps you can follow to make the renaming of those files or folders quicker and easier than the techniques you may use now. Below are a few of the pointers you can use to make quick work of file renaming in Mac OS X the next time you have a need to do so.

• To rename a file quickly, first select it with your mouse by clicking on it once and then press Return. This will automatically put you into the file label area so you can start typing a new name.

• When the file name is selected, press Option-left arrow or Option-right arrow to jump over words you don't want to edit. If you hold down the Shift key in addition to the Option-arrow keys, you can highlight entire words you want to replace.
• When the file name is selected, pressing the Up and Down arrow keys will bring your selection to the beginning or end of line (when there is only one line).

These handy file renaming conventions are standard Mac OS X text editing shortcuts. They work in Finder, TextEdit, editing posts and URL address bar entries in Safari, and many other OS X applications as well!

SOME IMPORTANT & USEFUL FILE NAMING POINTERS

• It's okay to rename personal items in your home folder, but do not change the name of the home folder itself. You should also avoid changing the name of application folders or files as well as any items that came with your system (such as the Library folder).
• Special characters in filenames can cause problems on some computers. Use only uppercase letters (A-Z), lowercase letters (a-z), and/or numbers (0-9) only.
• Use underscore (_) instead of spaces in your file names. This may prevent the file from displaying when upload or downloaded whereas on the web where "%20" is the code to represent a space in a file name.
• Some computers rely on filename extensions (for example, the ".doc" in the filename "letter.doc" or ".jpg" in "picture.jpg") to decide which application should open a file. If you don't include extensions in your filenames, a person's computer may not how to open it.
• Some computers use short filenames. To make sure anyone or any computer system can use your files, use 8 or fewer characters to name them (12 characters total if you include an extension).

Although a relatively new site on the web since its launch in early March 2007, TeacherTube was created with the goal of filling a growing need for a more educationally focused, safe venue for teachers, schools, and home learners to share video content. In addition to a site designed to provide anytime, anywhere professional development with teachers teaching teachers, the site allows teachers to post videos designed for or by students to view in order to learn a concept or skill. TeacherTube was the idea of Jason Smith, a 14-year veteran educator. Jason has been a teacher, coach, campus administrator and district administrator in public schools. He asked the question, "Why can't teachers, students, and schools utilize the power of the read/write web for learning?" To overcome barriers, he decided to just create a site and get started trying to help. He turned to his brother, Adam, who is a younger, digital native with technical skills. Adam used his skills to develop the site and found a web host. Soon, Jason's wife, Jodie, joined the team to start populating the site with videos and help improve the communication. She too has 14 years of experience in education as a classroom teacher, campus technology integrator, and district curriculum coordinator.

At TeacherTube, anyone in education, teacher or student alike, can become a community member as long as they have an email address. Community members have a wealth of features for joining such as the abilty to upload, tag and share videos worldwide. Members can also upload support files to attach to their video such as assessments, lesson plans, notes, and other file formats to support your video. Members can use search tools to browse hundreds of videos uploaded by other community members as well as find, join & create video groups to connect with people who have similar interests. Finally, community members can customize their experience by subscribing to member videos, saving favorites, & creating playlists, as well as integrate TeacherTube videos into other websites using video embeds or APIs. Best of all, all videos on TeacherTube can be made public or private - users can elect to broadcast their videos publicly to the world or share them privately with those they choose to invite. TeacherTube community members are a major part of the evolution of the site. Members are encouraged to not only upload educationally relevant videos, but also to make constructive comments and use the rating system to show appreciation for videos of value to one as an educator or learner. Users also have the ability to preserve the integrity of the site by flagging inappropriate videos. TeacherTube staff review flagged sites and will remove any inappropriate posts. With more collegial commentary and discussion through messaging and responses, the quality of this resource will only increase. The service is free for everyone and TeacherTube always encourage our users to contact them with thoughts, suggestions, or other feedback. They have a vision for TeacherTube to truly be a better alternative to other video storage sites. With the community's help, it can become more interactive and engaging for all teachers and learners. Check out the site today and see how this excellent video resource can make its way into your classroom! The QuickLinks found above can connect you to some key areas of this outstanding teaching resource!

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Eager to learn about new ways to use Mac OS X even better? Come to our monthly OS X "Talk, Tips & Tricks" session. Find out more.

Although the school year is over, there has been some exciting technology training being planned for the summer! Below are a list of select summer tech workshops and the dates they will be offered. To learn more, log onto My Learning Plan then click the links below for more details about each class and/or to sign up right now online!

Monday, July 2
Using Pages to Create Classroom Documents That Pop

Monday & Tuesday, July 9 & 10
Introduction to Graphics Processing

Friday, July 13
Become a Word Wizard

Wednesday & Thursday,
July 18 & 19
Introduction to Excel for Math & Science

Monday, July 30
Web Publishing Basics with SchoolCenter

Tuesday, July 31
Intermediate Web Publishing with SchoolCenter

Thursday, August 2
Podcasting for Beginners

Monday, August 6
Introduction to iWeb

Monday, August 20
Presentation System Basics

iCal Users
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