Getting Your Teacher Folder

Teachers in our school are encouraged to use the school website to communicate with their students. In particular, each teacher should request (from the webmaster) a “teacher folder” which may be used to publish any class-related material, such as curricula, class notes, handout drafts, and schedule material.  Weekly assignments should be posted in this manner.

Here are some considerations to keep in mind when using the website:

  1. Information placed in the public part of your folder is instantly visible to the whole world.
  2. Be aware of copyright law when you post information to the public part of your folder.
  3. Non-public parts of your folder are difficult, but not impossible, to access publicly.
  4. Do not store sensitive or confidential personal data anywhere on the Academy’s website.

The first time you attach to your teacher folder, you will need to do some setup on your computer, typing in the URL of the folder, your account name, and your secret password. (The webmaster will give you all of these.)

When you attach your computer to this folder, you will be able to treat it as part of your computer’s disk, even though it is stored on our website. You may keep material relevant to your class in this folder, and students will not be able to browse it.

Initially, your protected folder should have the following items in it:
  1. an empty file called “index.html”
  2. a sub-folder called “public_html” — everything in this folder is public
  3. a file in the sub-folder called “vita.html” containing your teacher biography
  4. sub-folders (of “public_html”) for each of your classes, such as “Math”
  5. a separate file, in each class folder, for the current assignment, with a name like “Current.htm”
With appropriate caution, your are invited to edit any of these items. But please do not remove or rename them.  (Feel free to create or rename class folders at the beginning of the term.)  Using an editor like Microsoft Word, you should be able to edit “Current.htm” to contain each weekly assignment.

The contents of the “public_html” sub-folder will be public and visible to the whole world as part of the Live Oak Academy website. Your teacher biography “vita.html” will be under your control, to edit as you please.  (Since it is public, please do not include phone numbers, addresses, or other sensitive information.)

Your public folder will be visible this way from the faculty page:
http://liveoakacademy.org/faculty/~jdoe

Whenever you put another file “abc.html” in your “public_html” folder, it will be instantly visible to the world (and to your students) under the name “.../faculty/~jdoe/abc.html”.

Here is more detailed information about making it happen. Please read the instructions carefully, especially the part about risks.

Information You Will Get From the Webmaster

The webmaster will give you a name (like “jdoe”), a password (like “5greencheeses”), and a URL to locate your folder on the internet. The URL will look like this:
http://liveoakacademy.org/protected/jdoe

This URL will also work directly with browsers, but it will appear to be a blank page. (Please consult with the webmaster before changing the blank “index.html” file.) Knowledgeable computer users may be able to read your files, if they can guess the file names, but they will not be able to browse your folder or change anything without your password. Therefore, keep your password secret. You might also choose difficult-to-guess names for files that contain class records.

How to Connect your PC Computer to Your Teacher Folder
(Note:  This is known to work for many versions of Windows XP.  If you have Home Edition, you may need to upgrade to the Professional Edition. If you have Windows Vista, see also Teacher Folders with Vista.)
  1. From the Start menu, go to the “Network Places” folder of the computer. (In XP Home Edition, this item might not appear until the computer is connected to a network. On other versions of Windows, this is sometimes called “Network Neighborhood&rdquo.)
  2. Make a new Network place, to connect to a new internet website:
    Click on "Add a network place", and the wizard window should appear.
    Click "Next".
    Click "choose another network location".
    Click "Next".
  3. Enter your protected folder’s URL, as http://jdoe@liveoakacademy.org/protected/jdoe
    (Note that the “jdoe@” part in this URL is usually required on Windows.)
  4. When prompted for a password, enter your name (like jdoe) and secret password.
  5. Select the check-box that says to remember the password.
    (Keep on giving the password a few more times, whenever requested.)
  6. Name the Network Place something useful, like "jdoe @ LOA".
  7. Press "Finish" and maybe give the password; you will get a folder window.
  8. When the window opens up, you will see your public_html sub-folder.
  9. Check inside the public folder, and verify that your vita.html file is visible.
  10. In the future, you can double-click your new Network Place to reconnect to your folder.

See also this link: http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php?search=webdav

How to Connect your Mac Computer to Your Teacher Folder

(Note: This works for OS-X only, and may require a newer version, such as 1.3.)
  1. From the Finder, select “Go —> Connect to Server” (Command-K).
  2. Enter your protected folder’s URL, as http://liveoakacademy.org/protected/jdoe
    (Note that there must be no “jdoe@” part in this URL.)
  3. When prompted for a password, type your name (like jdoe) and secret password.
  4. Select the check-box that says to remember the password.
  5. Keep on giving the password, whenever requested.
  6. When the window opens up, you will see your public_html sub-folder.
  7. Check inside the public folder, and verify that your vita.html file is visible.
  8. On your desktop, you will find a new network icon named “jdoe”.
  9. Select it and select “File —> Make Alias” (Command-L).
  10. Name the resulting alias something memorable, liike “jdoe @ LOA”.
  11. In the future, you can use your alias to reconnect to your folder.

See also this link: http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php?search=webdav+mac

Using Your Teacher Folder

A collection of resources for teachers is here: http://liveoakacademy.org/protected/faculty/resources.html
Following are some hints for using your teacher folder.

The goal is to set things up so that when you put your weekly assignment file “Week01-905.htm” into your public folder, it will be instantly visible to the world (and to your students) under the name “http://liveoakacademy.org/faculty/~jdoe/Math/Week01-905.htm”. Your students can bookmark your folder and they can check back there each week for more information.

We prefer that you publish files of type “.htm” (or the equivalent “.html”), especially for weekly assignments.  The MS Word “Save as Web Page” command does this.  Other documents, such as a carefully formatted handout or a syllabus, can use the types “.pdf”, or “.rtf”. In a pinch, simple “.txt” files work fine. Other types of file, like “.doc” and “.cwk”, do not display well in all web browsers, so keep those the protected part of your folder. Feel free to organize either the public or protected parts of your folder into additional sub-folders.  It is important to organize each class in a separate sub-folder.

You can post your syllabus, in HTML or in a beautiful PDF format, in the public folder, for all to see. You can keep the original document (perhaps a MS Word “.doc” file) in your protected folder, and do a “Save As” operation to the public folder whenever you are ready to publish an update.

Since students need to read their weekly assignments on Tuesday morning, all teachers are asked to post their weekly assignments by midnight Monday night, to the file “Current.htm” in each class folder.  Please post a copy of this assignment in a weekly file, with a name like “Week01-905.htm”.  You can find examples of this in teacher folders from previous years, such as http://liveoakacademy.org/backup/2005/jrose/EarthScience.

(You can use any naming convention you like for the saved copies of assignments.  In the suggested naming convention, the “01” part keeps the files in order when they display, while the “905” makes it easy to tell which week goes with which date.  Using a short word like “Week” ensures that the whole file name will be visible, since very long names are sometimes displayed with their ends cut off.   Feel free to organize clutter into sub-folders.)

You can keep works-in-progress in the protected part of your folder, and then just move them down into the “public_html” subfolder when it’s time for students to see them. If you have MS Word, you can edit HTML files directly. (If you get microscopic text, try selecting View/Normal from the menu bar.)  If you have Appleworks, you can store your documents in HTML form, as explained in another document.

If you want more control over your web pages, the “Nvu” (enn-view) HTML processor is easy to learn and gives much better control over your web page layouts. Nvu runs on Windows and Mac OS X. You can find it at http://nvu.com/download.html.  If you already use the Mozilla browser, you can find this same HTML processor as the Mozilla “Composer”.  Here are the full details.

You may wish to create a file “public_html/index.html”. This will give you full control over the appearance of your teacher folder. More simply, if you create a filed named “public_html/README.html” the contents of this file will appear in your teacher folder, alongside of a listing of your other files in your “public_html” subfolder.

Here’s the warning again about risks, with more detail: Do not store sensitive or confidential personal data anywhere on this website. While we make reasonable efforts to follow good security practices, there is no guarantee of safety against an attack from a determined hacker. In particular, if a curious person guesses the name of one of your files, he may be able to inspect its contents with a browser. Bad things to store on this website would include your SSN, family dates of birth, credit card numbers, private addresses, passwords, and so on. In addition, the data on this site is not systematically backed up, so individual users are encouraged to back up their own data. A good time to make backups would be at the end of every semester, or more often if there is much in your folder.

Please contact webmaster@liveoakacademy.org if you have any questions.