Month: September 2020

The Chrome Apps Launcher, or “Waffle”  as it is more commonly called, appears in G Suite in various places like Drive, Gmail, etc. At times, it is unstable, and therefore drops the connection it has to district apps like Canvas, Savvas Easybridge, Zoom and others. Google admits their apps launcher is sometimes flaky and won’t always present 3rd party apps such as the aforementioned. Knowing that the waffle sometimes might not offer access to some of the apps we frequently use, we recommend bookmarking the Google apps dashboard so that you can always have access to what you need from another convenient place if the waffle is not working: https://gsuite.google.com/dashboard

Consider encouraging your students to also bookmark the apps dashboard so that have an alternate way to access certain apps.

How to bookmark websites in Chrome: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/188842?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en

You may also want to bookmark the direct log in url for these specific apps:

CANVAS — https://pccsk12.instructure.com

 FRONTLINE —  https://login.frontlineeducation.com/sso/plymouthcanton 

   ZOOM — https://pccsk12.zoom.us/signin   OR   https://zoom.us/signin and click Sign in with Google

While not in the apps launcher, another login url for an app some staff have asked about is:

RUBICON ATLAS — https://pccsk12.rubiconatlas.org/Atlas/Authentication/View/Login?idp=5 

If you’re in the mood to bookmark, consider browsing to the DIGITAL TEACHING HUB and bookmarking that site for future reference too.

Monarch – MISTAR Teacher Tools Training available September 2020 through January 2021.

You are invited to transform your use of MISTAR-Q by participating in Monarch, an online learning experience focused on the teacher tools and applications in MISTAR-Q.

As a participant, you will complete activities designed to increase your skill and knowledge of teacher apps such as Class Attendance, Grade Book, Seating Chart, generating reports, and more.

Working online from any device at your own time and pace, you will have until the end of January 2021 to complete the learning activities. As you finish missions and levels, you will earn digital badges in recognition of your learning. You may even want to create a friendly competition in your building/department!

Monarch is especially beneficial for teachers new to MISTAR-Q, and seasoned teachers will also benefit from participating. Technology integrators, technology coaches, paraprofessionals, intern teachers, secretaries, and building administrators may also participate to better understand and support the applications used by teachers.

Registration is open and on-going. This course is free. Register and start learning here.

Please see the following documentation and video to understand how MISTAR and Canvas work together:

Click HERE for a step by step click doc. [Thanks to Erica Powell for these materials!]

Access over 5000+ Math, Social Studies and Science concepts (and free digital textbooks) that have been enriched by multiple modalities (text, video, assessment, and more) and add ’em to an existing Canvas course.

CK-12 is another tool that’s just been linked in Canvas to help staff find and assign high quality, free, teacher-created, and vetted STEM content without ever leaving Canvas.

To explore and/or sign up for a free teacher account visit https://www.ck12.org/teacher/ 

Here are two help desk articles for those interested:

How to CREATE CK-12 assignments in Canvas

How to COMPLETE CK-12 assignments in Canvas

For those unfamiliar with CK-12, consider checking out Common Sense Education’s review of the service.

Teachers planning to use Illuminate for testing should consider using QUICK CODE rostering for ONLINE TESTING. The Test in Portal process sometimes misses students due to schedule changes etc in the nightly refresh.

QUICK CODE Roster is the best way to give an online test in DnA. Quick Code gives the test administrator a seven digit code and a link that can be shared to students to take the test online virtually without accessing their DnA student portal.  The student will need to enter their student ID, the seven digit quick code, confirm their name and ID, take the assessment online, finish, and their results will automatically save in their portal.  This can be used for item bank, manual/hybrid, and flexible assessments.

Please check out the Illuminate University online video resource for DnA online testing administration using QUICK CODE Roster for a nice overview:

U351 – Online Testing Start to Finish Quick Code Roster

https://vimeo.com/253338760

During the online testing administration, the teacher has the ability to live proctor the exam (unless it’s a new item bank exam; live proctoring is coming in the near future for new item bank assessments. ) For details, check out this training video:

U351- Live Proctoring & Monitoring Student Progress

Also, here’s a resource line for online testing using quick code roster:

https://support.illuminateed.com/hc/en-us/articles/223955208-online-testing-setup-using-a-quick-code

For other online testing resources, please check out Get Started with Online Testing as there are other topics you may want to check out.

Did you know that you can create a PDF Assignment that Students Can Annotate using the PDF Reader in Canvas?

Did you know that Grading PDF-Google Assignments with PDF Reader Student Annotations in Canvas is a snap?

Did you know that students can use the Read&Write for Google PDF Toolbar for Annotations in Canvas?

All that and more by visiting this page.

Google’s collaboration tool, Chat, has been enabled for staff.

To learn more about using it via chat.google.com please see this support document.  

To learn more about using Google Chat in Gmail, please see this support document. 

For an overview of its features, please see this support document. 

For future reference, note these web pages report the current operational status and in service interruptions/outages, restoration details for…

• Canvas
• Clever
• District services
• DRC (MSTEP, WIDA)
• Google Apps
• Illuminate DnA
• MISTAR
• NWEA
• Seesaw
• Zoom

Some of the above listed services have free email alert notifications that you can subscribe to — ours is one of them http://links.pccsk12.com/techstatusnotify