Month: September 2019

The Technology Department appreciates elementary instructional staff’s patience as we work to prepare to release into their care classroom iPad and Chromebook carts.

Our department will start to unlock carts and sign out keys starting on Thursday, September 12th and plan to complete the task by Friday, September 20th.

A Special Note: In certain instances, there will be some carts that will not have enough devices for every student in your class. The department is aware of this, and we are working hard to balance the devices in the carts and ensure that each student will have a device as soon as they are available. IF your classroom does not have enough devices for each of your students, please DO NOT submit a service ticket. We are working hard to compare counts to MISTAR rosters and will be in communication with teachers on when to expect any missing devices.

by Rick Coughlin

Look, I know this teaching gig is hard. You know that on a daily basis, you make more decisions that an air traffic controller, and that’s a documented fact. Many of the decisions you make are HARD. I know that TOO. After all, you are working with the most precious cargo anyone could ever work with…someone else’s children. I don’t have to get into the nitty gritty of why that’s so important, because you’re a great teacher and the gravity of that is not lost on you. You GET IT.

That said, I’m hoping you’ll consider making decisions around how you use technology in the classroom this year a bit differently. This way of making decisions around technology can have a big impact on your students and will free you from the mindset of thinking that you have to use technology, because sometimes the answer really is…wait for it…. No technology. Or instead of every student having a device in front of them, maybe the BEST answer is that students are in small groups and only ONE student has a device to use with the group, or that there are students in pairs where only ONE student has a device.

I highly recommend you spend a touch of time, as you get to know your students in the coming weeks, also getting to know the Triple E Framework. I promise, it’s not complicated or time consuming, it is simply a way of THINKING as you prepare your lessons, projects, and plans for the year. The Triple E Framework, is “for educators to measure how well technology tools integrated into lessons are helping students engage in, enhance and extend learning goals.”

Ultimately, the Framework asks a series of questions around the technology that you are considering using, and presents you with a score on how well the technology really performs in the context of the learning goals. Read all about it here, as well as access the handy online rubric that automatically generates the score: https://www.tripleeframework.com/about.html

Once you integrate these questions into your way of thinking about technology use in your classroom, you might not even need the rubric every time! Trust me, you’ll feel better and more confident in your use of technology, and better be able to justify it’s use when having conversations with families, students, and your evaluating administrator. 😉

Welcome back team! I know it’s going to be a great year at P-CCS!

The Find-Me printing choice continues to be our best and most popular option for timely releasing and roaming print jobs. Please review the following diagram to understand how to set up “Find Me Printing” after which, when you select it, you may then walk up to one of our new multi-function printers and upon logging in, be presented with the choice of which jobs to print. This guidance and other helpful tips for staff laptops can be found at https://tech.pccsk12.com/devices-hardware/hp-probook-g5-handbook/

Here’s a reminder that this school year ALL P-CCS students will have access to a powerful Universal Design for Learning (UDL) tool that can improve their educational outcomes. Read & Write for Google offers a range of powerful support tools to help students with reading, writing, studying and research.

Some of those tools include:

• CHECK IT tool, an innovative spelling & grammar check
• Translation tool (single word; over 150 languages!)
• Text-to-speech to hear words, passages, or whole documents read aloud with easy-to-follow dual color highlighting
• Dictionary definitions and pictures to identify the meaning of words
• With speech-to-text, dictate words to assist with writing, proofreading & studying
• Word prediction offers suggestions for the current or next word as you type
• Collect highlights from text in documents, from a web page or PDF for summarizing and research
• Create and listen to voice notes directly inside of Google Docs
• Simplify text on web pages to remove ads and other items that can be distracting
• “Talk to the Text” digital annotation (in PDF files)
• Tools to make digital text accessible (in EPIC!, MeL, MI Open Books, etc…)
• Seamless integration with many of the district’s online curriculum resources

For more information, go to the R4WG@PCCS website: bit.ly/RW4GinPCCS