netTrekker Blog

New netTrekker Enhancements – Coming for Back to School

These new netTrekker enhancements will be effective August 1, 2009. Feedback from our netTrekker subscribers continues to be very valuable in guiding our product development team as they work to make netTrekker even better for our students and teachers.

The process to register a NEW netTrekker username and password will change.
•    Users will be required to enter a Registration Key during the registration process to make it simpler to connect the user to his or her specific school. No more searching for the correct school from a long drop down list – the Registration Key will automatically associate the user with the proper school.
•    Current usernames and passwords will continue to work, and this change will not affect users who access netTrekker via IP authentication (unless they want to register for an individual account) or portal authentication.

netTrekker Administrators will need to login to your netTrekker Admin Account and generate a Registration Key for each subscribing school, and communicate to your new users.
•    The Registration Key for each school will be valid for 1 year and can be reactivated, or a new Registration Key can be generated.
•    The Registration Key for each school will need to be shared with your staff so that new teachers and new students can register and being using netTrekker. The template is included when the Registration Key is generated.

Look for additional information about these and other netTrekker enhancements and links to video tutorials about the new Registration Key from the See What’s New icon (coming 8/1) on the netTrekker login page and netTrekker.com.

As always, if you have any questions about any of these changes, please contact your Customer Relationship Specialist at 877-517-1125.

Tags: Admin Tools, enhancements, netTrekker, registration, registration key, updates

Admin Tools Update

netTrekker Administrators, this is for you! In addition to providing new resources, the latest nT release offers Admins the ability to assign and revoke the Teacher role directly from the User Management page in Admin Tools.

You can still set up a Teacher Code in the Admin Tools, and have users login and change their user role from Student to Teacher for added functionality. However, now you can assign and revoke the Teacher role simple click of your mouse within the User Management interface, as well as take care of other important Administrator tasks that you are already familiar with:

• Review usernames and roles;
• Change passwords;
• Review and alter a username’s status and ability to log in;
• Review most recent login by username;
• Assign administrative rights;
• Delete a username.

Need more clarification on the User Management tool, or a refresher of other administrative functionalities? Log in to your nT account, click on the  Admin Tools link, and view our helpful Admin Videos. If you want, you can click here to go directly to the Admin Video on User Management.

Tags: Admin Tools, Teacher Code, Teacher Role

Yes, or no, to Wikipedia

During our implementation calls, the Customer Relationship Specialists cover the Admin Tools, including the netTrekker d.i. settings. Here the administrator can block the 1200 plus Wikipedia resources from showing up in the search results. On one of my calls yesterday, the district administrator asked me why netTrekker d.i. included Wikipedia in the first place.

That’s a great 21st Century question! Recently I attended a session on Literacy and Learning in the 21st Century presented by David Warlick. He addressed the use of Wikipedia in schools. He pointed out how Capital Hill aides were busy mutilating opponent articles in the days leading up to the 2006 election and how articles now have warnings of potential inaccuracy. He then said he’ll just go back to the good old days of “accurate textbooks”, but then pointed out that not all textbooks are accurate or unbiased and can quickly become out of date. Using Wikipedia is more than teaching fact and opinion. This resource serves as a working skill of evaluating a source and validating the information found on those pages. (This is my summarized understanding from what I learned attending this session.) You can find a copy of David Warlick’s presentation in podcast form from GAETC here. http://podcast.ksuettc.org/

This morning on Twitter I found another great blog entry on the use of Wikipedia at Dangerously Irrelevant. Check it out if you have time. The blog is written by Dr. Scott McLeod of Iowa State University.  

So while Wikipedia is a great 21st Century resource, we also understand that many schools are reluctant to allow students to have access, and netTrekker d.i. respects that decision. That’s why we give our subscribers two ways to filter out the search results. The first one is through the Advanced Search Options and the second one is by having the ADMIN setting this filter for the school level. To learn more about Wikipedia in netTrekker d.i., check out our HELP section.

And if you do choose to use a Wikipedia article in a project, consider adding the Digital Literacy Template that is wonderful for getting students to learn how to evaluate a source before using it. It’s perfect not only for Wikipedia entries, but all websites.

How many of you use Wikipedia in your classrooms? If you don’t mind, leave a comment below on how you use it.

Tags: 21st Century Learning, Admin Tools, Wikipedia