First Class Teacher's User Manual

First Class

Teacher’s User Manual

First Class Email System

There are 2 types of clients that can be used.

a) The Full Client: The full client is already installed at school. This client is

much faster and more functional.

b) The Web Client This method doesn’t require the installation of any

software. In this method you are able to connect to the

First Class server using Microsoft Internet Explorer,

Firefox, Safari, or Netscape. It can much slower, is more

awkward to use and lacks some features of the Full Client

but has the advantage of allowing you the ability to access

your mailbox, etc ... from anywhere. The address that you

will type on your web browser is http://fc.ycs.wednet.edu

How the First Class System Operates Differently than Most Email

Systems

In most email systems such as Outlook Express or Corel Central/Netscape’s system

when you get email it is sent from the mail server to your computer and removed from

the central mail server. This is known as popping your email. First Class doesn’t POP

email by default. In First Class your messages/files stay on the server until deleted or

they expire.

Logging Into The First Class System

The description and pictures in this manual refer to the use of the full client only.

Direction for accessing the web client are at the end of the manual.

Steps:

1) There is an icon in the Teacher Applications folder

or on the dock. Double click on the First Class icon.

2) You will be presented with a login screen that looks something like: To get this

requires that the full First Class client software is installed. Once this screen is

presented to you please enter your user id and password and then click on the

usually the same as your ID for Skyward and for the secondary teachers also your

domain user name. Your password will always be yelm00 when you login for the

first time. If you do this correctly and there are no technical problems you should

see the First Class teacher desktop.

To Change your Password:

Click on the menu “Collaborate” and then choose the item called Change

Password. Your new password must contain both letters and

numbers and must be at least 6 characters long. It is case

sensitive. You will need to enter your old password and then enter your new

password twice. Please remember the new password. If you forget your

password, you will need to call the tech office (458-6232) and we will reset your

password back to yelm00.

The Instructional Staff Desktop

The following is the desktop a teacher will see initially when you first log into First Class

using the full client. As you use the system more your desktop will change as you add

folders and more conferences are added, particularly at the school level. Depending on

your school and your assignment you may have some added icons on your desktop

Parts of the Instructional Desktop:

Mail Box:

This is location which we

use to do personal email

Everybody’s Mailbox

This is where district news

is stored. There are

folders for business office

forms, facilities schedules,

health news, job postings,

food service, curriculum

and grants This is also

where the Tech 911 folder

is located. You can send

messages to 911, but you

will not be able to see in

the folder

Conferences within Everybody’s Mailbox

YCS

This conference folder

contain folders for each of

the schools. Some

principals have lock their

folders to all but their own

staff while others have

them open to all

Classified Ads

This is where district

employees may advertise

things that they would like

to sell. Please read the

disclaimer.

Directory

All users in our First Class private email system are located in the Directory and can be

found easily when doing any messaging tasks..

Directory Icon on Toolbar

A typical teacher listing in the directory looks like this:

User Name User ID Organization

John Smith johns McKenna Elementary

In searching for someone enter the first few letters of the last name in the name box of the

directory screen and it will produce a list of names starting with those letters. Then

choose from that smaller list the user you want For example if you are looking in the

directory for a teacher that has the word “smith” in their name (first or last) type in the

word “smith” and select the appropriate name from the list provided.

In this section we give all necessary instructions on how to send and receive messages.

The fundamentals of this section are used through out First Class. If you double click on

the Mail Box Icon. You should see something like the following except you may not have

a message there yet.

Some of the commonly used Icons on the mailbox tool bars are: (Most of these

functions can also be

achieved using right click or they can be found on the Message menu)

New Message

Click on this to start a new message

-you can also right click and choose New

Message

Reply to

Sender

Use this to reply instead of the regular reply

button

Reply to All

Use this to reply to all people on the

original message including those who are

cc’d

Forward

Use this to redirect a message to someone

else you can also use right click and choose

forward

Attachment

(paperclip)

Use this to include a file with your email

message You can also goto to File Menu

and choose Attachment

History

Use this Icon or right click to get the History

choice Use this to see what happened to your

message this technique will reply to all, as

well

Unsend

Click on this button if after you send a

message you realize that it was sent to the

wrong person or if you want to correct a

mistake. This cannot unsend to people who

already read the message or people outside

the district.

The Meaning of the Red Flag

Whenever there are new messages or files in your mailbox or conferences a red flag will

appear on your mailbox or the conference. This flag tell you that “You’ve Got Mail” The

mail box would look like:

It is a neat feature of First Class which makes easy to tell if anything has changed and if

you should look. Please note that the red flag only goes one level deep. New messages in

a sub-conference will cause a red flag to appear on the sub-conference, but not on the

main conference. You need to open the main conference to check for red flags further

down.

Unopened Mail No unopened Mail

Retrieving Messages

To see an actual message you double click on the message.

When you are finished reading the message you must close that message’s box by

clicking on the X in the top right corner.

Replying to Messages:

Right click on a message and choose “Reply to Sender” or click the

equivalent icon A box will pop up. Enter a message in the message box

and then click on the Send and Close icon.

Replying to All

The use of this choice will send your reply message to all people that were

listed on the original message. To do this right click on a message and

choose Reply to All or use the equivalent icon. Everything else is the same

as reply to sender

History Feature

This feature will tell you who received and read your message and anything

else they did with your message within our First Class system. It can’t tell

you what happens to a message outside of our system in the Internet. To use

this feature right click on the message you wish to check and choose History

or click on the equivalent icon

Unsend Feature

This choice allows you to retract a message provided it hasn’t been read

by anyone.

Method: Select a message you have just sent and then right click on

that message and choose Unsend or click on the equivalent

icon.

Adding Attachments to Messages

An attachment is a file that you wish to send to someone as part of the message.

Many times people prefer to type their message in a word processor or spread sheet and

then attach that file to the message instead of typing out the message in the message box.

You can also attach pictures, videos, report card files, etc ....It is a way of sending in

lesson plans to school if you are home sick. If you have a good activity you can send it to

another person or a conference using an attachment.

Example of how an attached file should look: Attachment is called Surplus.xls

Receiving Files With Attachments - Saving an Attached File

If you receive a file which has an attachment you will often want to save that attached file

to your personal space. At school your personal space is H: drive If a file has an

attachment you will see a flag in the mailbox in the second column from the left.

Steps: 1) Open the file which has the attachment. It will look like the

previous box

2) If you can’t see the attachment box you may need to open the

top part to be wider or simply use the scroll bar.

3 Right click on the attachment and choose either View to simply see the

file or choose Save Attachment to be able to save the file to your personal

space.. The default folder for saving attachments at school is \download.

You will need to find the correct folder by browsing and then click on

save.

Deleting Files

It is very important that you are constantly deleting files, especially those with

attachments that you don’t need from your Mailbox, folders and conferences to insure

you don’t run out of space and to help us keep the server space from getting too full.

The fact is that if everyone used their maximum available space on the server

there would not be enough room.

Methods to delete a file or files:

1) Click on the file and then hit the delete button You will be presented with a

box asking you to confirm the deletion. Hit delete if you are sure.

2) To be able to delete more than 1 file at the same time (ie 2 or more files):

Click on the first file as you normally would For subsequent files when you

click on them you should also be holding the CTRL key When doing this you

will see several files being highlighted. Once you have selected all the files

you wish to delete hit delete and then confirm if you are sure.

Forwarding Mail

When you forward a message you send an exact copy of the message with its

attachment to another user. That other user could be outside of our First Class system.

You can only forward messages.

Steps:

1) Open your mail box or a conference containing a message you wish to forward.

2) Right click on the message you wish to forward and choose

forward or click on the message and then click on the Forward

Icon.

3) The message will open up. Now enter a name of a person or an

outside email address in the To: or cc: boxes.

4) Once you enter the address you can also edit the message you are

forwarding, adding your own thoughts and if you wish you can add additional

attachments or remove existing attachments.

Retrieving Files that have been deleted:

There are times when you accidentally delete files. These can be retrieved provided

you try to recover them before 2:00 next morning. Somewhere between 2:00 and 7:00

everyday the system runs something called trash collection. At this time all deleted files

and expired messages will be permanently removed from the system to save space.

To recover deleted files:

1) Click on the View menu and then select Show deleted Items

2) This will cause all files you deleted that day to appear in your mail box.

3) Find the item you wish to undelete and then right click on that message and

then choose Undelete.

4) Do the same for any other messages you wish to undelete.

5) Now return to the View Menu and select Hide Deleted Items.

Sending Email to People Who are Outside of the First Class System - To

the Internet

There will be a number of people whom you wish to send email to whose email accounts

are not part of our First Class System. One example would be your own current email

address. Sending email from First Class to your own personal email address or vice

versa is a neat way to backup important email messages or files.

How: To send email to an outside address you must use

the full address: example: [email protected]

These outside addresses can be saved in your First Class address book which then causes

the addresses to come up in the directory as if they were a regular First Class User.

Sending Email From an Outside Address to Your First Class Mail Box.

If you are at home using your regular email and wish to send or forward a message to

your Board First Class Account you must enter your full Board First Class address.

If your userid is jsmith then your full mail address at our First Class Server is:

[email protected]

Tip: One of the first things you should do is send yourself an email to your regular

home email account, if you have one. Once you receive it you can then add it to

your home email address. Then reply to that message. When you get home you

can log into First Class and receive that reply and use it to add your home address

to your First Class Personal Address book.

Using The First Class Address Book

This tool is a place to save addresses of people who are outside of our system and it

is a place to make mail lists.

A mail list is group mail address. You don’t need to add addresses of users who are on

our system

You may make mail lists for groups you often send to such as your department, or your

grade level. You don’t need a mail list for your school staff because there is special

conference setup for each school to communicate with staff as a whole.

If you are often communicating with a group and exchanging information with a group

the preferred method is to setup a conference and add those people to that conference.

Adding an Entry to Your Address Book

Method 1 - manually

Steps:

1) Open the Address Book Folder

2) Click on the Icon called New Contact at the top

3) A window will open in which you can type the new email

address in the email box and then enter their first and last

name, etc .... Please try this ... The box should like:

4) When finished click OK

5) What is important to remember is that in the future when you enter a

pattern in the To: box when sending an email, all members of the address

box will also be included in your search.

Method 2 -Using the Computer to Add Addresses to the Address Book.

You have a message in your mail box from someone outside our system You want to add

their address to your Address Book.

Steps:

1) Open the message

2) Right Click on the persons name you wanted added to your address book and then

Choose the item Add to Address Book ... At that point you should also enter their

correct first name and last name since only their email address gets added.

3) When finished click on OK

Creating A Mail List in Your Address Book

As stated a mail list is a group mail address. When you send messages to a name which

represents a mail list it will be sent to all members which are added to that list..

Steps:

1) Open your address book

2) Click on the New Personal Mail List Icon or click on the File

Menu and then click on New and then choose New Personal

Mail List.

3) Once you click on the icon or menu choice the following type of box will appear:

Please enter a name for the mail list and then begin to select the members. When

selecting members from our first class system you can use the directory and

pattern matching. For outside members you will need to type the entire address

unless you have previously placed them in your Address Book, in which case a

pattern match will find them

When finished entering the members click on OK.

To use this mail list enter the name of the mail list in the To: box when sending a

message.

Please note that in general it is preferred to use a conference to send email to the same

group on a regular basis.

Copying Files from a Folder or Conference to Your Personal Space

(Downloading)

In this situation you have put files or messages in the folder or conference either at

home or at school or else where and now you want to retrieve or view these files for

use at another location.

Techniques – Please try them

1) If it is a message with an attachment open the message by double clicking

and save the attachment as described before.

2) If it is a file only there are several options:

a) Double click on the file to view it. Once the application is open (for

example if it s a Word file, Word will open) Save the file from within the

application using that application’s regular save features.

b) Right Click on the file and select the option Download. Download means

the same as save attachment Now find a place to save it in your personal

computer space and then click the save button

c) You can drag and drop it from First Class back to a folder in My

Computer. In this case you would do the reverse of before. Before you

start this make sure My Computers in Windows is open so you can see it

on the status bar from First Class.

Most people will find a) or b) easier than c) unless they are very experienced

computer user

Conferences

Conference are folders which are shared by more than one user.

They are the best way to communicate/collaborate with groups of people on a regular

basis.

A conference acts like a folder except whatever you put there, any message or

file, is seen by all members of that conference.

Because conferences are treated like users all conferences must have unique names.

In conferences teachers can add items to the conference, but can only delete their own

items. Conferences can be setup in such a way that anyone you want can be made a

member and you can custom tailor the permissions in such a way that members can only

be allowed the access you think is needed.

Logging On to FirstClass from Home

If you have a network connect at home, you can read and write email from home. Pull up

your internet browser. The address for the web page of our email is:

http://fc.ycs.wednet.edu/

To open the email, click on the desk

A dialog box like the one below should come up.

Type in your user ID: (usually your first name and the first initial of your last name)

Type in your password:

You should see the screen below.