UPDATE 8/30: It appears that the issue has been resolved. Edublogs emails should be deliverable to our school email addresses. Yippee!!

It appears that our email spam filter, which is through MOREnet, and which we have no control over, has started blocking messages from Edublogs.

• This means if you register for an Edublogs account with your school email address, you will not get the email you need to verify your account and complete the registration process.
• This means if you have an existing Edublogs account that you created with your school email address, you won’t receive any emails pertaining to comments awaiting moderation on your blog or informational messages for Edublogs.

Ugghhh!

The only solution I have at this point is to use a different email address. Many of us have additional email accounts through our home Internet providers, or through free services such as gmail, yahoo, or hotmail. If you don’t, watch this short screencast on how to register for a gmail account.

• New Users: Use an alternative email address when registering for Edublogs, not your school email address.
• Existing Users: Edit the email address for your Edublogs account. You need to change it in 2 places. 1) Click the Setting link in the top right corner and change your email address. When you click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the screen, your email address will revert back to school email. But after you receive the verification email in your non-school email account, and click the provided click, it will be changed. 2) Click Users in the top right corner and then choose Your Profile from the menu bar across the top. Change your email address here as well.

This means that all emails from Edublogs will be delivered to your nonschool email account. Which is not ideal but doable. Many email services provide the option to forward copies of incoming emails to another email account. You can view this screencast on forwarding Edublogs emails to your school account that are addressed to your gmail account.

Maybe the setting on the MoreNET email spam filter will be changed in the near future to allow messages from Edublogs. Until that time, we can use this work around.

UPDATE: Please read this post from James Farmer on his blog incorporated subversion.

Willard Staff: If you are not able to participate in one of the ePALS workshops this month, or would rather learn on your own timetable, you are in luck. The Fusion: ePALS webpage offers a handout and short video tutorials (screencasts) to lead you through using ePALS email with your students.

And, there’s more! If you want to earn 2 Salary Advancement Workshop hours while you work, you can enroll in the free, online professional development, Moodle course: ePALS. This course uses the handout and screencasts on the Fusion webpage to lead you through the steps. Work at your own pace, when it fits in your schedule, from any computer with Internet access. Just in time learning, at your convenience!

Don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions or suggestions. I’m happy to provide you with additional assistance.

Image Credit: afsilva
tag: edtech, K12, email, professional_development, ePALS, Moodle, tutorials

Our district now has available student and teacher ePALS accounts for grades 3+. This is a safe, monitored, web-based email solution for schools. As a teacher, you serve as the monitor for your students. There are different filtering levels we can set by class, or even by student, as needed. Level 1 requires the teacher to approve every sent/received email prior to delivery to the recipient, while Level 3 sends only flagged emails (those with profanity) to the teacher for moderation. In addition, this is a great place to find collaboration partners or email buddies.

If you want to learn more you have several options:

• Participate in the December ePALS District Workshop.
• At your convenience, working at your own pace, complete the free, online Moodle Course: ePALS to earn 2 hours/2 points of Salary Advancement Credit. This course uses the handout and screencasts from Fusion ePAL Webpage.
• Visit the Fusion ePALS Webpage to download the handout, view the screencasts (short videos), and access the other provided resources.

To request a teacher account and assign your students, contact me. You are responsible for checking the permissions on your students’ Tech Usage Agreement Form to ensure that they have permission to use email at school.

Don’t hesitate to contact me with your questions.

Image credit: yuan2003

Technorati Tags: ePALS email professional_development K12 collaboration

Have you tried the District’s new Willard Tiger Mail? Tiger Webmail is a web based mail application which allows you to read and process your email from a browser running on any station with access to the Internet. The District also supports Eudora software for pop mail. There are some differences between Eudora pop mail and Webmail.

1. Eudora is free email software that is installed. It does not run through a browser. When you get your new mail, it is downloaded to that station. It will not be accessible from another station.
2. With Webmail you have a disk quota. Since your email resides on the server, you will need to monitor your disk space. As you begin to use all of your disk space, you will need to clean out your folders to create room. Whenever you reach 80% of your disk quota, you will get a reminder from the server.

Handouts:

• Willard Tiger Webmail handout
• Eudora handout

NEW TEACHERS

Be sure to register for the staff mailing list (district), and your building mailing list. The mailing lists are meant to be an avenue for announcements and information for a particular building or group. They are not intended to be public information. Therefore you will be approved as a member of a list if you work in that building, or are responsible for some activities involving that building (such as coaching).

Add @willard.k12.mo.us after each of the mailing list addresses below.

• staffmail-join
• hsstaff-join
• msstaff-join
• wistaff-join
• wnstaff-join
• westaff-join
• wcstaff-join
• wsstaff-join
• ssstaff-join
• secstaff-join
• coaches-join

Here is a video tutorial to lead you through the process.