A large part of the problems we've been having this year are related to one of our Domain Name servers. Today I set up an additional server to take the load off the old DNS server & that should give us a more consistent experience on campus.  
 
The instructions to use this server are slightly different depending on what version of the operating system you are running on your computer. Most of you are running 10.4.x (Tiger), some of you are still running 10.3.x (Panther), and a very few of you are running 10.5.x (Leopard). To find out what version you are using click on the Apple Menu (upper left corner of your screen) and select About this Mac. The screen that comes up displays some basic information about your computer, including the version of OS X you are running. 
 
Rather than replacing the DNS server information we are going to add the newer server before the old server. The network settings allow you to specify several DNS servers & will use them in the order entered, so the old server is going to be a fall back if the new server is down. 
 
If you feel comfortable doing this kind of thing & don't really want to read a whole lot of instructions the IP address for the new server is 192.168.3.3. Put that number above the old IP address in your network settings & you'll be good to go. Just make sure and do it in any FCS locations you use, both Ethernet & Airport. For N.E. teachers just change the FCS Airport location, you don't have to make any changes to your N.E. settings. 
 
If you would like help with making these changes please let George Freeman or me know & we'll get you set up.  
 
If you're running Tiger or Panther follow the steps below - 

 

1. Open System Preferences from the Apple Menu
 

2. In System Preferences click on Network
 

3. Look at the lock icon in the bottom left hand corner. If it displays as unlocked skip to step 4. If it displays as locked click on the lock icon. This will bring up a dialogue to enter your username and password. Enter your password and hit return.
 

4. Click the configure button
 

5. If necessary select the TCP/IP tab
 

6. Put your cursor in the DNS Servers field before the old ip address. Hit the return key to put in a line return. Move your cursor back up to the new line you just created. Type in the new IP address (192.168.3.3). Verify your window looks similar to the image at the left.
 

7. Click the Apply button.
 

8. If you have other locations to change switch the Location pop up and repeat steps 4-7 for each location.
 

 
 
If you're running Leopard follow the steps below - 

 

1. Open System Preferences from the Apple Menu
 

2. In System Preferences click on Network
 

3. Look at the lock icon in the bottom left hand corner. If it displays as unlocked skip to step 4. If it displays as locked click on the lock icon. This will bring up a dialogue to enter your username and password. Enter your password and hit return.
 

4. Select the Location you want to edit from the Location pop up menu. Note: if you have multiple FCS locations (i.e. airport & ethernet) you will need to repeat the steps below for each location.
 

5. Click the Advanced button at the bottom right of the window.
 

6. Click the DNS tab in the Advanced configuration area.
 

7. Select the old DNS ip address and click the minus sign
 

8. Click the plus button and enter 192.168.3.3. Click the plus button again and enter 192.168.3.2. Click OK. 
   
9. Click the Apply button.
 

10. If you have other locations to change switch the Location pop up and repeat steps 4-9 for each location.
 

 

Posted by: David Martens

@ October 22, 2008 4:18:45 PM PDT ( )

While I'm on the subject of back-ups, I've recently installed a network attached hard drive at our North East campus. This drive should be big enough for all of the North East teachers to backup their documents to. Kerry has been using it for several weeks and I think she has found it quite simple to manage. Here are instructions for those who like the step by step approach to computing. 

 

1. Connect to the drive - to copy your files to a network shared drive you must first establish a connection to that drive. There are several ways to accomplish this - the easiest is to use the Network item in the side bar of a Finder window. 
   
    
   
   1. Open a window in the Finder (if you select the Finder icon in the dock a window should open). 
      
   2. Select the Network item in the side bar. 
      
   3. Double click "NEBackup AFP" in the listed network items.  
      
   4. A connect to server dialog will appear. You will need to change the listed Name to your first initial and your last name (as you see I have done in the picture to the left). The password is your regular password. 
      
   5. Click OK and another window will appear which displays the shared folders you have access to. Select the one with your name. and click OK. 
      
   6. You are now connected to the backup drive. The shared folder you selected will appear in the upper part of the side bar of each Finder window. Click on that name to select it, or click the little eject icon to the right of the name to disconnect from it. 
      
    
   
2. Copy files to the drive - to actually perform the backup you simply drag files to be backed up to the network shared folder we just connected to. I suggest you backup your entire home directory. This is the folder on your hard drive that lives in the Users folder with your name on it. The image to the right shows Kerry's home directory and my folder on the backup drive. At this point I can simply drag the home directory over the the dmartens item in the side bar and the copy process will begin.  
   

 

 
If you have iTunes music files, or iPhoto pictures on your computer the copying process will take quite a while. You may want to back up your music and pictures in another way and not copy them over the network. If this is the case you can select the Desktop, Documents, and Library folders inside your home directory and move only those folders over to the backup drive.
 

 
The Library folder is an important folder to backup - it contains things like email, addressbook, bookmarks, etc.
 

 
The first time you copy files over they will simply start copying with out any dialogue after you drop them on your shared folder. From that point on a window will pop up indicating a folder already exists with that name. You will want to replace the existing file, so click the correct answer to that warning message. I suggest you do this backup process once a week.
 

 
There are several ways to backup your pictures and music. You can burn them onto CD's, but if you have alot of files this may be cumbersome, as it may take quite a few CD's to hold all your information. You can also, for very little cost get an external hard drive. These USB or firewire drives can be quite inexpensive, and will hold quite a bit of data.
 

 
As always feel free to email me with any questions. 

Posted by: David Martens

@ November 2, 2007 2:43:34 PM PDT ( )

Well, I hate to admit it, but I don't always follow my own good advice. My last post "Backup, Backup, Backup" was, shall I say, timely. I encouraged you to follow Fresno Christian's backup strategy, but failed to follow my own. It's not that I had no backup, just an older backup from August 5, 2007. So... three weeks ago my hard drive died. It didn't give me any warning. I just suddenly got the dread spinning beach ball, and then all my stuff was gone. 
 
My most recent backup was from before school started - so what did I lose? Nothing life threatening, just 2 months worth of email, purchased music, updated files, finances, grades... But I've learned my lesson - perhaps you can learn from mine. 

Posted by: David Martens

@ November 2, 2007 1:38:46 PM PDT ( )

Having a good backup strategy is critical to having a positive computing experience. I hate to say it but things happen to computers, they freeze, documents get deleted accidentally, and components stop functioning but there is nothing more catastrophic than a hard drive failure. Logic board, video, and network failures are a pain, but can easily be repaired. A hard drive failure means that all the documents you have so carefully saved over the years are suddenly gone. Without a good backup they are gone forever. 
The strategy we have at FCS for teacher computer backups is simple. Teachers are to put copies of their files on the server. The servers are backed up each night. By placing your files on the server you are assuring that the files you have worked so hard to create are safe for you to use in the future. This backup process is simple: 

 

1. Connect to the appropriate server over the network. 
   
2. Copy your files to the correct place. 
   

 
The only complicated thing is keeping track of which files you have changed since the last time you copied your files. There is an easy solution - keep all your files in one folder, say your Documents folder in your home directory. When it is time to back up your documents simply move your entire documents folder to the server and replace the old folder there. FYI - unfortunately our servers have limited storage space, therefore videos, music, and pictures should be backed up in other ways (i.e. DVD’s, external hard drives, etc.). 

Connecting to the Server -

 
Your personal folder is located on the staff server. To connect to the staff server you can browse the network: 

 

1. Open a window in the Finder (the easiest way to do this is to click on the Finder icon in your doc). 
   
2. Click on the Network icon. 
   
3. Click on My Network. 
   
4. Double Click the Staff Server (your window may look slightly different from the image displayed here, just click around on folders in the Network pane until you find the Staff Server). 
   
5. Enter your name and password. 
   
6. Select your name from the list of shares (if an item is grey that means you are already connected to that item). 
   

 

Your Folder on the Server -

 
Your folder on the staff server has several folders inside it. In fact, you will recognize the folder names as the same as those on your computer. Don’t just drop your documents into your personal folder, put them inside one of these other folders. Everyone (including students) has access to items placed directly in the first level of your folder. Items placed inside the existing folders (i.e. Desktop, Documents, Photos, and Movies) are secure from prying eyes. The easiest thing to do is drag the Documents folder on your computer into your Documents folder on the server. Follow these directions to do this: 

 

1. Open two finder windows, if you already have the server window open, simply press Apple-N to open another window. 
   
2. In one window navigate your way to your server Documents folder. 
   
3. In the other window make your way to your local home directory. Don’t confuse these two windows! If you do you will over write all of your local documents! 
   
4. Drag your documents folder from the local window to the server window. 
   
5. Wait patiently while your files fly magically across the network.
    
   

 
One note - in the image displayed here you can easily tell the difference between the server volume window and the local volume window. The local volume is selected using the little house icon, the server volume is selected with the network icon. 
FYI - to back up stored email and your personal settings be sure and copy the Library folder from your home directory as well as your documents. 

Your Sites Folder -

 
One special folder on your server volume is the Sites folder. This folder is live on the internet and allows you to easily put a personal website on the internet. Any file in this folder named index.html becomes your home page. You access these web pages by pointing your browser to: 
http://www.fresnochristian.com/~yourshortname. 
Your short name is the same as the name of your personal server folder. Mine is dmartens, so I can get to my website by directing my browser to: 
http://www.fresnochristian.com/~dmartens. 
Your short name may be a different format, but it will be some combination of your first and last name. 

Posted by: David Martens

@ August 24, 2007 2:03:05 PM PDT ( )

Hey everybody, here are the things you will need to do to finish up with grades this term. 
 
1. Enter all grades in PowerGrade. 
 
2. Enter Character Development scores: 
    a. Log in to PowerSchool Teacher 
    b. Click the backpack icon for Bible 
    c. Click any student's name 
    d. Use the Select screens popup menu to select Final Grade Entry (Standards) 
    e. Enter values in the Q4 column & click submit 
    f. Click another student's first name to continue (clicking the first name will maintain the Final Grade Entry screen) 
    g. Complete this for each student 
 
3. Verify that all grades are correct – see Grade Verification Procedure outlined below 
 
 
If you have any problems logging in to PowerSchool Teacher to complete the steps listed above please contact me. 

Posted by: David Martens

@ May 11, 2007 11:25:14 AM PDT ( )

One of the issues your administrators have had for a very long time is being able to tell when you have completed entering grades in PowerGrade and knowing for sure that the grades we see on the server are those you see on your computer. This PowerSchool customization is designed to help us automate this process. The idea is once you have completed entering grades in PowerGrade you log on to PowerSchool Teacher and compare the grades you see there with those on your computer. The new screens in PowerSchool teacher show you the grades on the server, the last time you updated the server from PowerGrade, and give you a checkbox to check that you have verified everything. 
 
Here is the procedure you will follow: 
 
1. Finish entering grades and any comments in PowerGrade. (Elementary teachers remember all comments that you want to appear in the Cumm folder go in the Bible subject area and you must also enter the information in Character Development) 
 
2. Log on to PowerSchool Teacher. 
 
3. For each period/subject click on the Verify Grades image.    
 
4. Compare the grades you see listed with those you have in PowerGrade. You can click on a students final grade to display assignment detail. 
 
   5. If all grades are correct place a check in the box labeled "I verify that these grades and comments are correct". The current date is automatically placed in the text box. 
 
6. If there are issues do not place a check in the box until the problems have been resolved. You can attempt to solve the problem yourself by following the suggestions below. You will need to refresh the verification window to display any changes (it can take several minutes for changes in PowerGrade to be fully populated on the server). If you cannot solve the problem yourself do not check the verification box and place a brief comment in the text box instead of the date. 
 
7. As you submit your verification pages the icons will change on the initial teacher screen to indicate your verified courses. The icons are: and  
 
8. Once your grades are verified using this procedure do not make changes in PowerGrade until given the "all clear" by your administrator. 
 
 
Several things to try if you find problems: 
 
1. Compare the last update date with the last time you worked in PowerGrade. If these are different you may have been working off line the last time you entered grades. Make sure PowerGrade is online, open each class and click save. PowerGrade should then update the server. 
 
2. Try forcing PowerGrade to update the server. PowerGrade uses several cues to tell if it needs to send information to the server. One of the major things it looks for as a cue is a change in the final grade. Any time one student's final grade changes PowerGrade will update all student grades to the server. Change one assignment for one student in such a way as to dramatically alter the final grade (i.e. from A to A- or B). (At the end of term it can be tricky to find one assignment that will affect the final grade in this way. I generally find a major test and change the grade to a 0.) Save in PowerGrade and the server will also be updated. Now you can change the assignment back to the correct grade and save again. 

Posted by: David Martens

@ May 10, 2007 2:47:45 PM PDT ( )

I've been working on a couple of custom screens for PowerSchool Teacher. I can't take credit for them since they were downloaded from the PowerSchool Users Group (thanks Roger, David, Jason, and Bob!). They really offer some pretty cool new functions in PowerSchool Teacher. 
 
The first customization is called the Magic Dot. It allows you to verify easily that the attendance you took for your class really did get posted to the server. This has been an issue in past years – Submitting attendance in PowerGrade, but it just disappearing in never-never land and never getting posted to the server. 
 
With this new customization, you can simply log into PowerSchool Teacher and you will see a little dot by the attendance icon. The dot will be green if attendance is successfully posted to the server and white if it has yet to be posted. No more waiting to hear from the secretary about missing attendance! Remember, you can take attendance right from PowerSchool Teacher as well. 

Posted by: David Martens

@ May 10, 2007 11:26:57 AM PDT ( )

The Address Book application is often taken for granted or overlooked. This little application is really quite powerful & is used by many applications other than Mail.app to provide information about you and your contacts. Using the Address Book you can keep track of business contacts, your individual friends, and groups of friends. If you are running Tiger on your machine you can create smart groups of people that look at a specific field and group people together automagically if the contents of that field match your criteria. 
 
Address Book not only tracks names and email addresses, it can track multiple phone numbers, addresses, AIM/Jabber usernames, and even has a place for Notes. This little application is used by Mail, iChat, Safari, and many other applications. It is the central storage place in Mac OS X for all contact information. It is also used by iSync to sync your contacts with cell phones and PDA's. 
 
Groups of contacts can be used to send email to a large (or small) group of people. There are several ways to create a group of contacts. Under the File Menu you will see three items: New Group, New Group From Selection, and New Smart Group. The easiest way to create a group is 1) Create a new group using the new group menu item, 2) Name the group something unique, and 3) drag contact names to the new group. Another way to create groups is to cherry pick (using the Command key) the people you want in a group, and then select New Group From Selection in the file menu. You can address email to your groups by typing the group name in the To field in Mail.app. 
 
Smart Groups are a very powerful feature of the Address Book application. This feature was introduced in version 10.4 (Tiger) of OS X. This allows you to create a group that will automagically include any of your contacts that have a fresnochristian.com email address. To do this 1) select New Smart Group from the File menu, 2) give your group a unique name, 3) Select "Email" "contains" and enter "@fresnochristian.com", 4) Click OK. You have now created a FCS group that you don't have to manage! The fact that someone's email address contains the text "@fresnochristian.com" means a person is a part of that group. 
 
To remove someone from a standard group (not a smart group) you select the group, select the person, and click delete. You will be asked if you want to remove the person from the group or delete the person entirely. 

Posted by: David Martens

@ April 11, 2007 1:22:05 PM PDT ( )

With most of us now switched over to using Apple's Mail application I thought it would be good to go over a few things you might want to know about its use and some tricks I've learned over the past few years. 
 
Mail has some very powerful message handling functions which you may want to check out. One of those is the Junk mail filter. I've already set your Junk filter to move Junk mail to a special folder and delete messages from their after 30 days. If you happen to get a piece of spam in your in box, simply select the message and click the Junk button in the tool bar. Some non-spam (or ham as it's known) may find it's way to your Junk mail filter. If you know that someone sent you a message, but it is not in your in box, check your Junk mail box. You can train Mail to better differentiate between spam and ham by selecting the message in your Junk mail box and clicking the "Not Junk" button. 
 
Like many of you I receive quite a bit of email. Mail.app has several tools that help me manage my email a bit more effectively. 
 
1. One of the easiest tools to use is mailboxes. I have set up a folder structure in Mail that helps me store and find messages. Look in the mailbox menu & you will see the New Mail box item. You create mailboxes inside of other mailboxes by first selecting a mailbox in Mail and then selecting New Mailbox from the Mailbox menu. To put messages in these new mailboxes, simply drag messages from their old location to the new location. FYI – it's not a really good idea to keep thousands of messages in your inbox. This will slow things down significantly and make Mail work much harder to just show your new email. 
 
2. One other powerful tool is the ability to set up rules. Rules allow you to specify actions to run on messages. I have several rules setup in my system. I like all email coming from Fresno Christian addresses to go to a specific folder. To do this start by creating a new mailbox, I've named mine "FCS Inbox". In Mail Preferences click on Rules and then click Add to add a new rule. Name your new rule "FCS Mail" and specify From contains "@fresnochristian.com" and tell it to "Move Message" to your FCS Inbox mailbox. 
 
These are just two of the many things you can do in Mail. Next time I'll tell you a bit about using the Address Book application. 

Posted by: David Martens

@ March 8, 2007 1:33:24 PM PST ( )

If you haven't checked out Phil Vischer's book Me, Myself, & Bob, find it and read it. It really is thought provoking. Here are some of the highlights: 
 
   • Junior Asparagus has a really cute voice. 
   • God will change our direction if necessary. 
   • Waiting for God is not part of our nature – but life is much better when we learn that discipline. 
   • God doesn't want great, change the world kind of things from us, he just wants us! 
   • When we wait on God & give ourselves to Him sometimes great, change the world kinds of things happen. 
   • Sometimes they don't, and that's ok. 

Posted by: David Martens

@ February 23, 2007 1:59:09 PM PST ( )