Great, Easy, and Cheap Websites for Educators

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Great, Easy, and Cheap Websites for Educators

• Clint Stephens
• Southwest Educational Development Center
• http//training.sedc.k12.ut.us

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First, the bad news...
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They Dont Exist.
Cheap
Easy
Great
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However...
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...we will look at

• a free easy site
• my.uen
• and a free pretty great site that, with some
  work, can be pretty easy
• UTIPS

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My.UEN

• Go to
• http//my.uen.org
• Login using the same username and password that
  you would if you were trying to get your CACTUS
  info.
• Let me know if you have forgotten your username
  or password and I will look it up for you!

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My.UEN

• you should see something like this

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My.UEN

• my.uen is a very easy and very free way to get
  information out to your students and their
  parents.
• The limitation with my.uen is that the
  communication is one way...
• if a parent/student has a question, they have to
  send you an email, call, or wait until tomorrow
  to ask.
• Lets take a minute and customize your my.uen
  pages.

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My.UEN Resources

• UEN has developed some pretty good online
  resources to help you with using my.uen
• http//www.uen.org/tutorial/downloads/myuen_handou
  t.pdf
• http//www.uensd.org/myuen_flash/

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What can My.UEN do?

• What my.uen can do
• Give your contact information
• include welcome, assignment, and announcement
  messages
• upload limited number of files for students to
  use (10 mb) convert documents to .pdf format
• show your professional, teaching, and curriculum
  info.
• give you a place for UEN related and personal web
  links.

• What my.uen cant do
• give you a way to interact with your parents and
  students asynchronously.
• calendaring functions for describing what your
  class did on what day.
• let you store as much media as you would like to
  (but please dont break our servers!).
• provide a great formative assessment tool that
  will grade your tests and quizzes for you!

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uTIPS

• uTIPS has a few more features for developing a
  useful and useable home page for teachers, but it
  is a little harder to use.
• uTIPS can do pretty much anything that My.UEN can
  do, except for convert files to .pdf (but you can
  still use it for that!)
• uTIPS adds the potential for some interactivity
  with parents and students.
• Please log into uTIPS...

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uTIPS

• Go to
• http//www.utips.sedck12.org
• or http//username.utips.sedck12.org
• Login using the username and password that you
  set up originally when you set up your uTIPS
  account
• Let me know if you have forgotten your username
  or password and I will look it up for you!

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uTIPS

• you should see something like this

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uTIPS

• Interactivity in uTIPS
• Have you ever heard of a blog? It stands for web
  log, and is basically an online journal.
• The great thing about a blog is that people can
  read what you have entered, respond to questions
  that you post, and ask questions of their own.
• You can answer the questions, or other people
  participating can also answer.

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uTIPS

• Calendaring in uTIPS
• You can enter current information about what will
  happen this week, upcoming weeks, or prior weeks.
• You can have as many calendars as you want - one
  for each class!
• Historical information will stay there and can be
  accessed - GREAT for makeup work!
• Parents can be notified when calendar is updated
  via email.

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uTIPS

• Online File Cabinet in uTIPS
• You can store handouts, assignments, PowerPoint
  presentations, pictures, sound files... Just
  about anything in your Media section
• Students can view/download/print files from here
  so that you dont have to be their Kinkos!

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uTIPS

• Customizing your uTIPS page
• Lets take a few minutes and play around with
  making your uTIPS page your own.
• This is done in the Profile tab
• Edit and play around with the Configure, Edit,
  and My Page sections.

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uTIPS Resources

• The developers do not have a vast database of
  help info, but there are some well written
  tutorials and how-tos online
• http//www.davis.k12.ut.us/district/etc/paul/utips
  .html
• I will update my training site with any good
  uTIPS resources
• http//training.sedc.k12.ut.us

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What can uTIPS do?

• What uTIPS can do
• 99 of what My.UEN can do.
• Online blogging tool that wont be blocked by the
  Internet filters
• Online calendaring
• Online media storage
• Formative test tool
• Share tests and collaborate with Buddies

• What uTIPS cant do
• Cant insert media files directly into blog or
  calendar (links must be hand done).
• Cant see detailed information on calendar
  without an extra click (for now).

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Feedback

• http//training.sedc.k12.ut.us/feedback.php