How-To Guides
The Teachers-Network site both provides a lot of information for the education community in static content, but is also designed to allow for individual blogging and content sharing as well as group collaboration. We have put together a handful of How-To guides to introduce various features and hopefully make the site more interesting and useful. If we’ve left out any major areas or if you spot any mistakes below please do let us know!
Accounts
| New User Registration | A step by step guide for how to register for a new account on the Teachers Network site. |
| Profile and Content Guidelines | Suggestions for best practices for account name creation, and what kind of information that can or should be published through the user profile. Acceptable content for profile photos is also covered. |
| Account Settings | Every member account consists of an area where their personal information is stored. Some of this data is private and not visible or shared with other members or outside the site. Some is only used internally, while other information is visible to the world. This guide goes through each setting describing it’s use, visibility, and what can be controlled or adjusted by the member. Suitability of certain content is also provided. |
Communication
| Member Messaging | This guide describes how to send, receive, and reply to messages with other Teachers Network members. Private (direct) messaging and Public (indirect) methods and an introduction to how to use the tools is provided. |
| System Notification Messages | When activity related to the member or areas they involved in is detected, the site generates notification messages to let them know. This guide describes these messages, where they are sent, and how their generation can be configured. |
Collaboration Tools
Collaboration is the process where two or more people or groups work together to achieve a common goal. Teachers Network provides a collaborative environment with supporting tools to facilitate individuals or groups to work together effectively and efficiently.
Groups provide separate work spaces with configurable levels of isolation where specific work or activities can take place. Several optional services can be used within groups to provide communication and discussion areas (Forums), joint document authoring with automatic versioning (Document System) and isolated cloud file storage (BuddyDrive). Groups that work collaboratively can often share greater resources, communicate better (focused) and produce joint content faster and more efficiently.
| Groups | Groups are special areas set aside in the system where specific topics can be discussed and/or worked on together with others with similar interests. Groups are the basis for more collaborative work between members on the site. This guide discusses how these groups are organized, the establishment and administration of a new group, and facilities available to group members. |
| Forums | These are threaded discussions (topics sorted by discussion names) where people can discuss issues that they feel are important. Forums can be private (associated with a given user), group (attached to a group), or public (visible to all). Guidelines are presented covering which type of forum to use for a particular purpose, and how to keep discussions focused on the individual topic (and reasons for doing this). Coming Soon |
| Document System | This is a structured (hierarchical) system resembling most computer file systems where rich text documents can be created, shared, updated, and worked on together. These document hierarchies can be associated with individual users or groups and permissions for who can read, write, and edit can be set. This is where most collaborative authoring is done. Coming Soon |
| File Storage System | This is a simple cloud based file storage area. Each individual user has an area set aside for file storage as does each group (limits for each apply). Access controls are set by the respective owners. This guide describes the basic system, and when it would be appropriate to use, and when other systems might be more appropriate. Coming Soon |
Content Creation
| Using The Site Editor | The system site editor is a rich text editor very similar in appearance and overall capabilities to many of the popular desktop publishing applications (Word, Libre Office and others). This editor, unlike the desktop cousins, is tailored for web content creation and maintenance. This guide gives an overview of the editor and many common techniques used to create good looking content that will render well across a wide range of device sizes. |
| Blogging | Blogs are areas or pages in the system where users can create whatever rich content they wish (pursuant to the terms of service of course). This content is then automatically made available through the user’s blog area. Content can be linked together as desired by the author. |
| Member Home Page | Members can setup their own home page content which can be viewed at teachers-network.com/members/<user>/ where <user> is the member name. This guide describes how to create a blog post to act as the home page, and then how to properly identify and enter this information into the user account settings. |
| Galleries | Galleries are used to store and display multimedia content such as images, music or video. Every member has a gallery area associated with their account and most groups also have their own gallery areas. This guide describes how to use and control access to gallery content. |
| Contributing Content | Would you like to help create and maintain any of the public content for the Teachers Network site? Just let us know what you have in mind and we can figure out a way to work together. This guide goes over how we work with content providers and what we’re looking for. |
Web Page Development Series
| Creating Links | One of the most powerful abilities of the web is the linking to other content. This guide provides a simple introduction to HTML, how to create links to external content, and how to include content from other sources inside your own pages. |
| Working With Images | This guide describes best practices for uploading and including image content in posts, pages and user profile areas. Provides an introduction to the IMG tag and CSS. Also covers visual editor image and CSS procedures. |
| Teachers Network CSS Style Reference | Do you need to display content in ways that are not built into the existing editing tools? Are you comfortable with HTML/CSS? Several Teachers Network CSS classes might be useful and are described in this guide. |
