Information Services
Massachusetts Online Network for Education (MassONE)

Newsletter - May 2009

Summer's coming!

Although you and your students may be going on vacation, MassONE will continue to operate through the summer. Wherever you go, you can access MassONE if you have an Internet connection. You can use it to store files and then access them from any location. You might also want to experiment with some of MassONE's tools so that you can use them in the fall. Give it a try, and have fun!

Use of MassONE discussion forums

Increasingly educators and students are discovering the value of MassONE's discussion forums. The number of posts, or messages, has more than tripled over the past three years, with an estimated 31,000 posts for 2008-2009. This does not include the posts in the 28 courses that the Department offered this year through MassONE's Moodle environment. The forums for students have included topics such as summer reading, history, Spanish, AP psychology, literature, and web design. For educators, some districts use the forums for general discussion; others use the forums to present online professional development courses or to augment face-to-face professional development offerings.

Summer Professional Development Opportunities

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education will offer summer professional development institutes in a variety of subjects. Some of the institutes will be taught online using the MassONE Moodle environment. Details of the institutes will be posted on the Department's web site. Check the "region" column to find out if an institute will be taught online.

Providing access for homebound students

For students who are unable to come to school for an extended period of time, MassONE offers a way for them to keep up with their studies. Students can participate in online discussions with their classmates, retrieve assignments and related documents from the Virtual Hard Drive, and turn in their work to the teacher's private online.

The Springfield Public Schools have gone a step further and designed online course modules for homebound students. Beginning in 2004 with support from a Technology Enhancement Competitive Grant, the district has trained 25 teachers to design and deliver online modules for students in grades 8 and/or 9. During the 2008-2009 school year, more than 1,000 students have taken the online modules. Interestingly, many students are completing the modules as part of their regular classroom instruction.

File Storage Increased for MassONE Accounts

Every MassONE user has an online "My Folder" where you can store personal files and access them on any Internet-connected computer. MassONE is pleased to announce that the storage limits will soon be increased. The file storage capacity will be 300 MB for educators and 100 MB for students. This upgrade is scheduled to take effect by May 29.

If your personal folder is over the maximum storage limit, a MassONE message will alert you, and you will no longer be able to upload files. You can make more space available by moving some of your files to another type of storage tool. Once you are below the storage limit, you will once again be able to upload files.

End-of-year maintenance for discussion forums

Teachers who use MassONE's discussion forums should consider closing down their discussions when the school year ends. This will prevent students from posting messages when the teacher is not available to monitor the forum. MassONE has several options that teachers can use.

If you want to save the discussion but prevent students from replying, you can lock each thread, or topic. To do this, click the first message in the thread; then click the padlock icon at the top. You will need to do this for each topic that you want to lock. You can use a similar process to delete a thread, clicking the X icon instead of the padlock. Clicking the X will delete all of the replies in that thread. If have questions about how this works, you can contact your district's MassONE Administrator (http://massone.mass.edu/Admins/list.html)

If you no longer need to have access to the discussion forum, you may want to delete it entirely. To do this, you need to make a request to the MassONE helpdesk (massonehelp@doe.mass.edu).

Transferring students' files

Students who will be going to a different school in the fall need to clean out any files they have stored in their personal MassONE My Folder. Students should copy their files to another storage medium, such as a flash drive, and then reload them into MassONE when they enter their new school in the fall. In case students need their files for summer work, MassONE will retain the files in each student's My Folder until the end of the summer.

Reminder for high school seniors

Teachers need to remind seniors that they will no longer have access to MassONE once they have graduated. If seniors have stored any files in their personal MassONE My Folder, they will lose access to these files. If students want to retain these files, they should copy them to another storage medium. MassONE will maintain seniors' accounts until the end of the summer in case they are needed for summer course work. Also, any senior who does not graduate will need to be given a new MassONE account.

Keep your MassONE profile up to date

It's important to keep your MassONE profile up to date. Your profile includes your email address. If your profile does not have your current email address, you will not be able to receive email from MassONE, which means that you will not be able to use the password reset tool.

To update your profile, log into MassONE and click the "profile" icon at the top of the screen. To change your email address, click "personal data," enter the new email address, and click "update profile." You can also use the profile tool to change your password.

MassONE Administrators' training

This school year, MassONE Administrators were invited to participate in a MassONE tutorial demonstrating practical uses of the MassONE tools and modeling effective policy implementations. The tutorial was presented through the Moodle course management system. Thirty-one District Administrators completed the tutorial to increase their effectiveness in supporting MassONE.

The participants completed a post survey on the effectiveness of the training. Many comments outlined benefits that the training offers for new MassONE Administrators. The statement from Eithne Smith (Blackstone Valley Vocational RSD) pinpoints how advantageous the training can be: "The tutorial is an excellent resource for first time MassONE Administrators. Many of the common mistakes I made myself when first using MassONE were addressed."

The second edition of the training will be released shortly. It will outline upper level management of the tools and accounts. For more information, contact Chris Hieber at chieber@doe.mass.edu.

Back issues of newsletters

If you missed any previous issues of the MassONE newsletter, you can now find them on the MassONE web site. To access them, click MassONE News Archives on the MassONE home page.