Guidance for March - May 1999 LInC Assignments

General Information

Continue working on refining your proposal until it is approved by your facilitator. Your facilitator will e-mail you about this or let you know in the chat.

After this, your can start working on the project components. Please read the resource links given here when you are working on each component. These resource links provide a description, examples, guiding questions, and a rubric for each component.

You can choose the order you would like to work on the components. If you are not sure what order you prefer, then we suggest using the order listed here. It is typical to need to do more than one draft of each component.

If you are working as a team, the web pages you create need to clearly show info/content for each of the classrooms of the members of your team. Example: If you have a math and a science teacher on your team - your project needs to have web pages for use by both the math and science students and needs to describe what will be going on in both classrooms. Your facilitator can help with further questions on this and guidance on whether to do some separate pages for different classrooms or combine the information on combined pages.

Project Components

• Presentation Page
  This is an "executive summary" for your project. Copy and paste in sections you have already written from your proposal.
  • Read the Writing the Presentation Page description.
  • Read the Presentation Page Rubric.
  • Use the Presentation Page Template to write it.
  • Use these Resource Links for Standards as needed as a starting point to find relevant standards to link to for your project.

• Scenario (for teachers)
  Your scenario for teachers should provide a good enough "picture" so that a teacher who is not in your building could use or adapt the project.
  • Read the Writing the Scenario Page description.
  • Read the Scenario Page Rubric.
  • Use the Scenario Page Template to write it.

• Web Pages for Students
  Your web pages for students should provide enough information so that a student who is not in your classroom could do the project by using these web pages.
  • Read the Writing the Student Pages description.
  • Read the Project Rubric.
  • Use the Student Page Template to write it.
  • Use the Tutorial on Finding Information on the Internet as needed for strategies and links to find relevant project resources for your students more quickly.

• Rubric for Assessing your Students
  • Read the Writing the Assessment Rubric description.
  • Use the Assessment Rubric Template to write it.

• Unit Description Before LInC
  If you have not done this unit before, describe what you did before to accomplish the same learner outcomes as your project.
  • Read the Writing the Unit Description Before LInC.
  • Delete the existing example text and use that same file as a template.

File Transfer - Turning In Your Work

Please turn in a draft of one component each week. Turn it in by transferring your text files or web page (HTML) files to the web server. To do this:

1. Download file transfer (FTP) software if you do not already have it. Download FTP software
   • FETCH (for Mac users) - StuffitExpander is needed.
   • WS_FTP (for PC users).
2. Download ShockWave so you can view the animated tutorials for FTP. Use the
   • instructions for downloading ShockWave on the FTP Tutorial Animations Page
3. Decide what you want your project folder to be named and create a folder of that name using
   • File and Folder Naming Guidelines
   • We suggest naming your project folder with a short name having to do with your project such as tapwater, earlyman, revwar, nuclearpower, ...
   • Remember to use No spaces and all small letters in your folder name.
4. Watch the FTP animations for the FTP software you will be using.
5. If you are writing text files, create project component files in your project folder named present.txt, scenario.txt, student.txt, rubric.txt, and pre.txt for the corresponding components. If you are writing web pages, your project component files in your project folder should be named present.html, scenario.html, student.html, rubric.html, and pre.html. Please use these names so your facilitators can find your work!
6. Use your FTP software to upload your project folder with these files (as you work on them each week) to the web server.

Creating Web Pages for Your Project

You can start out writing project components as plain text files or as web pages. Some people prefer to concentrate on getting the content drafted before learning how to write web pages. Other people prefer to start right in by creating web pages. So this choice is up to you. If you start writing in plain text, please do not use any formatting on your pages - this will just make it harder to transfer to web pages later. You can copy and paste from your text files into the web (HTML) template files when you are ready to start writing web pages.

When you are ready to start writing your components in web pages:

1. Read Getting Started Writing Web Pages.
2. Download the LInC templates folder.
3. Rename the templates folder to be your project folder. We suggest naming your project folder with a short name having to do with your project such as tapwater, earlyman, revwar, nuclearpower, ... Remember to use No spaces and all small letters in your folder name.
4. Configure your PageMill.
5. Continue by opening these templates in PageMill and adding your project content to them. Copy and paste any previous work you have done into these files.
6. Watch the PageMill Animations for each feature as you need to use that feature.
7. Upload your project folder or file drafts to the web server each week.
8. Periodically spell check, load check, preview, and link check your work.

The "Getting Started" document will walk you through downloading the templates folder from the web server and configuring PageMill so you don't have future link and image problems. It also links to animations and web page tutorials that will help you with each phase of the web creation process. Read it straight through the first time without following links. Then you will have an overview of the process and can use the links for each phase as you need them.