Teachers Portal

Focus on Information Technology (FIT)

Digital Literacy and ICT Skills for Youth

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Teachers Portal

Home Page for FIT Community - Teacher's Portal

• FIT Landing Page - PhotoShop image with four (4) Areas of Concentration - Photoshop image and some detail

Featured Teachers

• Featured Teacher (with tags)
• Each province (if possible), and various concentrations in the FIT program

Fit Program

(: Developing this section on the FIT program at this page - http://wikieducator.org/ICTC/FIT/Program ) - Randy Fisher 18:59, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

• Overview (details about the program, including Areas of Concentration - Photoshop image and some detail
• FIT in Your Province / Provincial Updates (i.e., twitter or RSS feed to update page, instead of manual updates)

• what schools in my province are FIT schools; what content came from my province?

Media (news)

• coming soon!

Communications Strategy

See: http://www.wikieducator.org/ICTC/FIT/Community/Communications

Teacher Professional Development

(: These suggested resources and topics, dovetail nicely with the FIT FAQs and Modules below. ) - Randy Fisher 17:04, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
1. How would we train teachers about the FIT program

• See page: http://wikieducator.org/ICTC/FIT/Program

2. Teaching resources: lesson plans, ideas to fill the gaps in the provincial curriculum, teaching resources etc.

• also includes lesson plans, competency resources, and interactive resource development (videos, peer sharing, FIT Community, etc.)
• Get an example of the competencies that are difficult to find resources for
• Definitions (abbreviated) of competencies

Areas of Concentration

1. Interactive Media
   1. Definitions and Resources
   2. Lesson Plans, links etc.
2. Software Design & Development
   1. Definitions and Resources
   2. Lesson Plans, links etc.
3. Business and Information Analysis
   1. Definitions and Resources
   2. Lesson Plans, links etc.
4. Network Systems & Operations
   1. Definitions and Resources
   2. Lesson Plans, links etc.

General Skills

1. General Technical Skills
   1. Definitions and Resources
   2. Lesson Plans, links etc.
2. General Business Skills
   1. Definitions and Resources
   2. Lesson Plans, links etc.

FIT FAQs (Modules - 6, or 12?

• See: Frequently-Asked Questions

News

• (front page News feed; point people to resources; # of people and schools signed up to FIT, etc.)
• TAB: Media on the front page

Newest Videos, etc.

• Videos, podcasts
• Info from Newsletter Content -

FIT Community - Secure Login

• Login - (: This is the FIT Community)
• Areas of Concentration (PhotoShop image)

1. Interactive Media
   1. Competency Profiles & Standards
2. Software Design & Development
   1. Competency Profiles & Standards
3. Business and Information Analysis
   1. Competency Profiles & Standards
4. Network Systems & Operations
   1. Competency Profiles & Standards

General Skills

1. General Technical Skills
   1. Competency Profiles & Standards
2. General Business Skills
   1. Competency Profiles & Standards

Other Resources & Materials in Secure Site

• Image of FIT diploma (low-res)
• Certificate / Poster - FIT materials (hanging in schools)
• Marketing / Promotion materials
• Reports (CITC, Labour Market, Other)
• Discussion area (maybe)

Requirements, Functionality & User Interface

• Developing a framework to set up a site that easily gives rights, permissions to someone in Manitoba to set up video.

Technical Requirements

• No. of users per month (unique visitors - 200 users per month)
• How much data this will serve up / bandwidth

• i.e., grabbing video across Canada 100x - how will site hold up; painfully slow (with 2 people); new hosting system (beefed up)

• Communication -
• Hosting

• Where is audio / video hosted? Our server; You Tube
• Pros / Cons
• Image gallery

What will teachers to be able to do?

(: Teachers will have the opportunity to share their requirements and test the site's functionality in mid-January 2013) - Randy Fisher 16:23, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Teachers have to sign up for an account and login, and update their profile...

• New Teachers: - ideas for getting started (see an example of a teacher community: Scratch @ MIT
• Experienced teachers: could contribute to this site through these activities) -
• upload lesson plan on photography, and tag the lesson plan with the area of concentration, competencies that it meets; and will appear inside the area of concentration (i.e., if tagged interactive media, it will be tagged accordingly) - (: we can always pull bits to the front page.)

• Uploading and sharing images
• Uploading and sharing videos

Communicate with other teachers (i.e., discussion area (could also be on the landing page

• Find / search for interesting content, for use in classes taught

• RSS feeds set up by area of concentration, and site-wide feed - then these can be redirected anywhere
• program updates, content by province

Carousel of rotating images (Featured Teacher)

• Search resources by competency

• Peer rating of resources; FIT-Certified, etc.
• collection, grade level
• by competency (display the tags you want) - (teacher can choose the competency it meets)
• views (select the view you want to show)

Website

Key Questions

Priorities

• What priority is the website? (high, medium and low priority, time-sensitivity)?

• HIGH

• FIT Portion of the website

• HIGH

• FIT Community

• HIGH

• what priority is it for the teachers to share content?

• MEDIUM - Right now we need content up there / content can be static for the launch and then keep going, then we have another 24 months of work ahead of us; I just need content as a place to go to , and then we can make it better and better.

• What is the priority for multiple users to update content (Emily, RF, JOT, teachers) i.e., collecting, sharing FIT and education tools and artifacts

• HIGH - but there are challenges in accessing the backend of the website; two people very overloaded right now (EJ, LJ) and JOT and RF access
• Tracy will be talking to Sandra about access to web development - talking to her on Tuesday, November 20

• Jamie and Randy have been given read / write access to the website.

Website Development

• What development work has been done so far on the DEV site?

• Tracy doesn't know; Garth set it up, but only Emily has permissions
• Current plan: JOT does development, hands off to Emily, and Emily updates website

• FIT portion of website

• Emily is doing all of content development and functionality here

• FIT-Community / Teachers Portal portion of website

• CURRENT - JOT does development, hands off to Emily and Emily updates website.
• FUTURE - JOT does development; collaborates with team, team gives & gets feedback on content and functionality; content moves from draft to live

• Where is the active URL (URL given is no longer active)
  

• ACTION: Every time URL is updated, moved or changed - key people must informed (Tracy and JOT)

• http://focusitstage.ictcweb.net/ (was suppose to redirect to new - Garth)

• Has a clone of the current DEV site been created? (ask Garth) (Saved daily)
  
• Who has access to DEV site (i.e., admin privileges) - Randy & Jamie;

• Emily, Garth (Tracy is asking Sandra to change permissions)

• What's been done so far (i.e., other portion of website? our portion of the website (does Dec. 17 include only text-based content OR is more expected (i.e., functionality)

• ASK EMILY.

• What is the Go-Ahead Plan for the content - does Jamie / RF provide the content, and then Emily puts it up? (looking into chaning workflows - Jamie provided with permissions)

Server Resources

What resources does the current website have? (i.e., national website) - 1,000 websites - Canada website

• processors, RAM, dedicated resources (how they are configured) -
• what is being dedicated to this site - i(i.e., RAM, processing power on the server - will it be able to handle the anticipated load

Who has server level access?

• GARTH

Functionality and Testing

• Searching for plugins based on requirements

• Emily

• Installing plugins and ensuring NO conflicts with other plugins, functionality (i.e., stability)

• Emily (Jamie was allowed, but then permission revoked)

• (: As of December 3, JOT has been given Admin permissions to the WP site)

• Randy will suggest keeping a running schedule of activities

• JOT testing on DEV site (i.e., requires account and permissions, access to the website and server

• TBD

• When does content / functionality go live (taking into account migration from DEV server to live site)

• This should be December 17, 2012. There is a period leading up to January 8th, 2013 - which is a Professional Development day in NB, where we will benefit from user testing / requirements gathering as a result of their input and feedback - Randy Fisher 21:47, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Decision Points

• Are we definitely using the current server (describe please)with WP;

• This is now Pier I in Canada

• Is there a separate install of WP?

• No - not until the official - go live launch date.

• Do we use the same WP instance as is being used for the website.

• Tracy: For now yes. After the official - go LIVE launch date that will change.

• Coordination & Communication - who is doing what, when?

• IN PROCESS -

Soft Launch - What Does It Include?

• DATE: December 17, 2012

• Clear understanding of what soft launch includes (because there's no place to put content right now)

• one person working on web content; working on many things; getting pulled off

• What exactly will the website look like on the day of soft-launch?

• TRACY

• Wireframe, buckets of content that's supposed to be there; what's supposed to be in the bucket;

Other Questions

TRACY

• NB / Jamie - share what we're doing; what would best serve NB and Canada as a whole;

• Brian was going to access to a server - showing something by Nov. 15

• CLARIFICATION: Jamie and Brian discussed the possibility of NB servers to build a mockup of what could potentially be done with the FIT site, instead of just the Photoshop mockup - but a decision was made not to pursue it. The reason being, that Randy and Jamie worked on putting the workplan / outline on the wiki (here) and it has been very useful in getting folks on the same page, and moving things forward.

Timeline / Critical Path

Overview

• continuing activities
• soft launch - December 17, 2012
• user recruitment and TORs (December 2012) - speaking with Brian Gray (November)
• User Testing: Brian Gray, NB Teacher ProD day - 50 FIT Teachers, January 8, 2013
• Integrating feedback (January 2013 - Weeks 3 & 4)

• providing "requirements" and user feedback - navigation, useability, functionality - 'user experience', for next generation of FIT Community
• Note: Jamie on vacation December 24 - Jan 7, 2013

• hard launch (February 2013)
• rolling updates (March 2013)

Work to Date (up to December 3)

Mockup created with Four (4) Concentrations
Content Development

• Resources being collected (at least 1 of each) - and wiki updated with content or links to content (JOT)

• Dennis Hitchmough to provide scoping report)

• FAQs / Modules being developed (text)

• ICTC-FIT FAQs - completed
• FIT-FIT FAQs - in development

Functionality & Requirements

• identify functionality and requirements
• estimate time and resources to achieve such functionality
• identify plugins

• Buddypress

Outstanding:

• Jamie's access (permissions) to DEV site (: These were granted, after a conversation with Garth and Tracy, December 3, 2013) - Randy Fisher 13:40, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Implementation Plan

(: Taking into account, cost, time for development and maintenance, marketing, scalability and sustainability - what does our implementation plan look like?)

Estimate time, planning resources

• creating plan
• cost / lifecycle cost - including server requirements, hosting, maintenance
• Specifying user requirements and functionality:
• Integrate user feedback from ProD day, continue implementation {January - weeks 3 & 4)
• Communicate everywhere - newsletters, other teachers, admin, partners, etc. (integration with Communications / Stakeholder Engagement Strategy)

Short Term

• Number of users: 200
• Data requirements -
• YouTube (embedding your own video or YouTube)

Medium Term

• Number of users: 500
• Data requirements -
• YouTube / Our Server

Long-Term

• Number of users: 1000+
• Data requirements
• Our Server

The Options

Option A: Pros & Cons

Option A: Pros

• currently in use
• permission-based content management system
• widely used for blogging, content development
• Open source
• large user and development community

Option A: Cons

• customized functionality time-consuming (and expensive)

Option B: Pros & Cons

Option B - Pros

• functioning website in 1 months - that does all of what is required.

• 4 weeks - user testing - on January - yes, if we got going in 2 weeks
• ready to be used in 2 months (uploading video content)

• hosted video, audio, image galleries; all formats play
• super-easy to use for end-user
• super-easy to use for reps
• super-easy to use for teachers - easy upload process into the system
• super powerful display of content
• completely separate - wouldn't affect the rest of the site
• get site, and paying the hosting (scalable)
• easy to roll into FIT into a box - all scalable
• very good tagging
• no hunting around for plugins
• no impact on other site
• scalability
• easy maintenance
• open source

Option B - Cons

• pay additional funds: $3K - covers website hosting, and maintenance (1 year); backups, module updates, and site optimization
• dual systems - WP and Other
• work to date on WP Teacher Portal site stops
• large user and development community

Challenges

• Since JOT is not an expert in WP, significant research and testing is required to come up with the functionality and plugins required for appropriate functionality
• Hosting on YouTube: difficulty with control over content even though we / teachers and users own the rights to their content.

Useful Links & Info

• http://www.oercommons.org/ (tagging - cool stuff with lots of content; (left side); searchable repository
• http://www.oercommons.org/oer

Important Information

• Vacation: Jamie, Christmas Break - Dec. 24 - Jan. 7 (2 weeks)

Newsletter

Visit: http://wikieducator.org/ICTC/FIT/Newsletter