Guide to OkinawaJET.com

Purpose of this site

The okinawajet.com site has been put together on a voluntary basis by JETs and former JETs assigned to the Okinawa Prefecture of Japan. Its primary purpose is to assist Okinawa JETs by providing useful information and facilitating communication. We hope that it helps make your time as a JET on Okinawa more rewarding and less baffling.

Something the webmasters wish to stress is the concept of "user generated content". That is to say that as a JET (or former JET) of Okinawa Prefecture, please use this site as a way of sharing your learning and experiences with other JETs. Our time on JET is short, and the learning curve is steep, so please help out where you can!

Although membership is restricted to Okinawa JETs (past and present), we have attempted to make this site also useful and accessible for non-JETs. In particular, ESL teachers around Japan and other English-speaking residents of Okinawa may find information relevant to their stay here.

It should be noted that this is not an official JET website. It is not supported or in any way related to MEXT, Clair, the Okinawan Prefectural Government or any of the local Boards of Education. It is entirely a voluntary product pursued by Okinawa JETs.

If you have any questions or suggestions, your first port of call should be the forums. If you think the forums are an inappropriate place, you can contact the webmasters directly via the "Contact Us" tab at the top-right.

Purpose of this guide

This guide attempts to explain:

What is on this site; and
How to use this site

As the site constantly changes and evolves, this guide will try to reflect those changes. We would be grateful for your constructive criticism in helping to keep this guide complete and up-to-date.

Overview of okinawajet.com

The website is navigated via two rows of tabs to the right of the Okinawajet.com logo near the top of the page. It can also be navigated via the pulldown menu below the logo; this menu duplicates the tab structure. The upper row covers the main categories; the lower row breaks the main categories into subcategories where necessary.

Most of the site is visible to all users, including unregistered guests. A smaller amount is only available to registered users who have logged in. A very small amount is for "special" users, i.e. website admin, which we use for administrative and debugging purposes.

At the very top of the screen are the search bar at the left, the font size selector ("ABC") in the centre and some links at the right, including the site's Terms of Use.

Home

Click on the "Home" tab and you will be taken to the front page. This will present the latest news in the center of the page. If you are logged in, a shoutbox will appear on the right, showing you who is logged in and recent comments. Please feel free to use this however you want - but please, no sexist, racist, homophobic or abusive language. Unless its really funny.

On the second row of tabs under the home tab are a collection of pages of everyday relevance, such as weather in Okinawa and recent news.

Info

Click on info for a list of topics of articles concerning various aspects of living as a JET on Okinawa. In particular, the regional guides offer all sorts of tidbits for your next road trip or bit of island-hopping.

Again, there is a second row of tabs. Some of these subsections (eg. Yak and Lesson Plans) provide an index to documents in the Downloads section.

Downloads

This is where downloadable documents live. They can be in formats such as Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint or Excel, Jpeg images, or basically anything else. This is a really good place to share your lesson plans.

Forum

This is more-or-less self-explanatory. Some sections are only visible to registered users, others are public.

People

A list of Okinawa Jets, present and past. Please please please keep your contact details up-to-date, so often we find ourselves trying to get in touch with a Jet but their phone number is not listed. This information is not public (outside of the Jet community)

Calendar

Your guide to upcoming events of relevance to the Jet community. I don't need to tell you that you can add events yourself? Good, I didn't think so.

Market

Buying, selling, or just giving it away for free. This is where you do it.

User Options

Stuff by you or about you. If I might repeat myself: please keep your contact details up-to-date. We know who you are. But sadly (and somewhat ironically), we do not know where you live.

How to....

Add a download

To add an item for others to download, such as a handbook or lesson plan, follow these directions:

1)      In the main menu bar, click on "Downloads"

2)      Click on "Submit a New Document"

3)      Choose your uploading method (we ask that if you don't really know what you're doing, to just upload files from your own computer. If it's on another website, just save it, upload it to the OkiJet server, then you can delete it from your own computer.)

4)      "Upload a file from your computer" - this will allow you to select a file that's on your own computer.

5)      Click "next"

6)      Select a file from a folder on your computer, then click "upload".

7)      In "Title", write what your item is called.

8)      In "Category", select what type of item it is.

9)      In "Description", write a short description of what it is.

10) Below, under the "Document" heading, you can choose to insert a link to your homepage.

11) Once done, click the floppy disk icon to save your download.

And you're done!

Upload an article

Articles live under the Info tab. Click on it, and near the top is a small blue "New..." link to click.

There is a rather comprehensive online editor that now appears. Type in your title, select your category, and start typing in the boxes below.

But wait... there are two boxes, "Intro Text" and "Main Text". What to do? Basic rule is to put a brief introduction/explanation of your article into the Intro box, and continue the rest of your article in the Main box. That way the site can do cool "click for more" things without showing your whole 15-page article.

Next to the title there are three big icons: a disk, a tick and a cross.

The disk means "save and close". Done. Owari. Goodbye.

The tick means "save and continue". If you are writing a long article, it would be a good idea to hit this from time to time.

The cross means "run away like a cowardly bastard". Do that if you hit the "new..." link by mistake or you suddenly realize your entire article completely sucks.

Formatting an article

There are an awful lot of buttons at the top of the editor frame. Most of them you don't really need to know, but can be helpful. Some of them look just like Word; others are more site-related.

You can get a brief summary of them by clicking on the blue question mark that launches a popup. Then press the "help" tab and it may or may not help.

Add a picture to an article

This is a very common, very useful, but slightly confusing task.

Adding a picture is a 2-stage process. First you must upload it (to the server), then you link to the picture (in your article).

By the way, resize large pictures before uploading them. About 300 pixels across is usually a good size I think. If you don't have any imaging editing software, there is a guide to free photo editing software here: http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/pixelbasedwin/tp/freephotoedw.htm

Once your picture is ready, from within the text editor click on the "Insert/Edit Image" button (looks like a polaroid of a tree, to the left of the anchor icon). This brings up "Image Manager 1.1.1." This lets you paste pictures into your article: but wait - your picture is still on your computer, and you need it on the server.

Hidden over at the right is a grey box with a green arrow pointing up. This lets you upload pics from your computer. Click it. A small "upload" box appears. Click "Browse" then select the picture you want to upload. Give it a name, choose "Create unique file", and click OK. Strangely, the upload box continues to hang around, which is useful if you want to upload more pictures; once you are done uploading click Cancel to return to the Image Manager.

Your picture(s) should now be listed in the middle box towards the bottom. Click it TWICE (first time just presents a preview, the second time it enters the neccesary information into the fields at the top), then you can insert it into your article by clicking "Insert".