14 Complete Your Department Template

Here’s an important truth:  Whenever you show or explain what you are doing to someone else, it has side-effects that both affirm what you are doing and boost its quality.  For example—

1. You realize which parts of your work deserve more effort.
2. You think of things you could be doing, but aren’t.
3. You think of alternative ways to accomplish your results.
4. The person or people you show may make suggestions or voice criticisms that you find motivating or inspiring.

Photos of student activities in your classes celebrate students’ work and showcase your best teaching ideas.  Furthermore, your Page accounts what you do to the public, bringing you honestly-earned credit for your efforts (like the Team Player Technology Pin itself).

Your Department has a head start on its Page, thanks to your Tech Team emissary, who has created a Template for you ready to fill in, and personal practice pages for you to practice on.  

Here are the broad steps for completing the Template:

• Go to the Hamilton website.
• Navigate to your Department page.
• Get the Department together to take a Department Selfie pic.  Post it where it says "Our Teachers". 
• Enter the names and subjects of the staff members to the right of the picture.
• Ask the various teacher(s) responsible for each course to draft a BRIEF (1-2 sentences) description, listing several major student projects/activities in the course, and adding helpful information such as a link to the online course outline.
• Work together as a Department to write captions and post photos of the typical student activities identified.

Notes on doing the above:

1) Go to the Hamilton website. It's at lbhamilton.schoolloop.com.

2)  Navigate to your Department page.  To do this, hover over the word “Staff” in the top menu of our website, and click “Departments”.  Then click the name of your Department in the left-hand margin.  You will see your Department’s Page in Edit mode, and your personal Practice Page as well.

3)  Post your Department pic where it says "Our Teachers". 

• Cellphone cameras work just fine for this.  The steps differ somewhat depending on whether you have an iPhone or an Android, but in both cases you need access to a USB cable that fits your phone.
• Once your photo is uploaded to, and visible on, your Desktop, you need to open your Department Page open in Edit mode.  That means you must log into SchoolLoop and then go there.
• You're ready to add the photo the Template.  Click on the small pencil in the second section of the template (the one beneath "Our Teachers").  The Rich Text control opens in Edit mode. 
• Click on the blue-and-white photo placeholder to select it, then press the Delete key on your keyboard.  The placeholder will disappear, but a blinking cursor will remain in the empty box left over. 
• Click the icon for "images" in the edit control area.   A dialog box saying "Drag and drop image file here" will appear.  Drag the photo from your desktop onto that area, and wait a few moments as it is uploaded. 
• When the picture appears, click the orange "Select" button to add it to the Template.  Click "Save and Exit" to finish the edit.
• To see how your photo looks to the general public, click the orange "Publish" button near the top of the screen, then click the "Live View" button to the far right.

About Background Colors for Your Sketches

Tech Team recommends using pastel background colors for the course sketches on your Department Page.  The background color is listed in the first line of code when you're in Source Mode, and you can just change it and save a new hexadecimal value to see the results.  The six background colors we used in the Template are:

Ivory #ffff0;	Pastel green #dbeadc;	Pastel blue #d9e7f7;
Pastel pink #fceeee;	Pastel violet #f0e1f9;	Putty #f7f1e9;