Microsoft Office 365 Now Available for Instructional Staff on New Dell Laptops

MS Office 365

We are very excited to announce that, starting today, all P-CCS instructional staff with a new Dell laptop are now able to access Microsoft Office 365. Prior to today, only a limited number of staff had access to Microsoft Office. Now, all instructional staff with a new Dell laptop can access the web version of Office 365 and/or install it on their new district laptop.

To install Microsoft Office 365, simply open the Company Portal, select Microsoft Office 365, and click install. For more detailed directions, please follow these step-by-step instructions.

As a reminder, please be patient while software is installed through the Company Portal. If you are logging into your laptop for the first time, the initial setup of your laptop (including the install of the Company Portal) can take up to 2 hours.

Additionally, students do not have access to Microsoft Office 365 through P-CCS, so please be sure to provide documents in a format that is compatible with Google Drive.

Please note that while we are able to offer free access to Microsoft Office 365 due to our current agreement with Microsoft. Microsoft is able to change these terms at any time. While not expected, if this occurs, we would no longer be able to offer staff continued access to Microsoft Office 365 and would do our best to notify affected staff as soon as possible should we need to rescind access.

Spring Book Study Opportunity

details for book study, can be found in post

The P-CCS Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Department (DEI) is pleased to invite you to participate in a spring book study with the Assistive & Instructional Technology (A&IT) and Technology Departments.

We will be reading and reflecting on the book, Antiracism and Universal Design for Learning: Building Expressways to Success authored by Andratesha Fritzgerald. This book will build on the concepts of Culturally Responsive Instruction and provide practical next steps for building more equitable and inclusive classrooms.

To participate, please be prepared to commit to the following schedule:
– attend two Zoom meetings to discuss the book (April 14 & April 28, 7-8 p.m.)
– complete asynchronous discussions & activities via Canvas LMS.

Course activities will conclude by May 12th. SCECHs will be available and the book will be provided. Space is limited. Reserve your spot by completing this form.

Create externally friendly booking pages with appointment scheduling in Google Calendar, available starting in April

In addition to appointment slots in Google Calendar, in mid-April Google will be introducing appointment scheduling for users to share their availability via a booking page, which can be used by those with OR without a district (or any) Google account. For those using calendly, youcanbook.me, and similar services, this upcoming feature addition might suggest you can switch at some point instead to using your Google calendar with its native integrations.

Why you’d use it

The existing appointment slot feature in Google Calendar is helpful for internal use cases, specifically if you don’t know who needs to meet with you, but you want to make yourself available for others with district Google accounts. For example, counselors can invite their students to office hours each week.
The new appointment scheduling feature is suited for external use cases, allowing external users, including those without a Google account, to schedule meetings. Additionally, with automatic conflict detection with existing Calendar events, this feature helps reduce time spent finding and rescheduling appointments.
appointment scheduling
Visit the Help Center to learn more about using appointment slots and appointment scheduling.

REMC’s April Virtual Courses, earn 10 Free SCECHs

REMC April courses

Spring is here – sharpen your skills with a REMC Course 
Finish the school year strong by applying new tips and tricks to your classroom. REMC offers instructor-led courses that provide 10 free SCECHs, and are open to all Michigan school personnel.

Registration deadline is Friday, April 1st. Through the support of REMC SAVE’s vendor partners, all courses are FREE and there are no SCECH fees. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to learn, connect, collaborate and grow from the convenience of your home.

Check out April 2022 courses here:

Register by Friday, April 1st. You will receive a welcome email with the course login and other information prior to the start date. If you have questions or need further assistance with your registration, please contact Erin Rommeck, REMC Event Coordinator.

Some recent Zoom updates

Zoom Updates

New versions of the Zoom Mac, Windows, and Linux clients are now available for download as of Tuesday, March 22, 2022 at https://zoom.us/download.

 

New and enhanced features include:

Meeting/webinar features

  • Avatars

    When enabled during a meeting, Zoom’s technology uses your device’s camera to detect where a face is on the screen and apply the selected avatar effect. This feature requires 5.10.0 or higher.

  • Rename participants in Waiting Room

    Hosts and co-hosts can rename meeting participants in the waiting room before they enter the meeting. After locating a participant’s name in the waiting room section of the participant list, an option appears in the … menu to rename that participant. The participant is notified of this change.

  • Save Breakout Room assignments for future use

    When breakout rooms are created, the host can save that current configuration and participant assignments, which can be used in future sessions. This is only available for recurring meetings and limited to 10 saved configurations per user.

  • Share audio with content to all breakout rooms

    Hosts are able to share computer audio, along with shared content, to all breakout rooms. This can be enabled when beginning the share, or while sharing is in progress. This also supports the Share Video option as well for Breakout Rooms.

  • Optional include co-host when automatically assigning breakout rooms

    When creating breakout rooms and choosing to assign participants automatically, any co-hosts will now not automatically be included in the assignments, but the host can choose to include them.

Instructional staff new laptops’ FAQs and general guidance

As a reminder, our new FAQ page is available to address questions surrounding the new instructional staff Windows 10 Dell laptops. Questions found in service tickets are helping inform what is shared on this site.

Staff being issued these laptops are also encouraged to review:

  • Our blog post on backing up files on your current Windows laptop to Google Drive.

  • A bit more visual guidance on using Google Drive for Windows to assist with backing up your Windows laptop’s files/folders to your Google Drive.

  • Remember you can also copy any files/folders from your laptop into your network G drive.

  • Here is a humorous video reminder on what not to do with your new laptops. While a bit tongue in cheek, we certainly want to encourage as much stewardship as possible – they are really nice computers and we hope to have them in circulation and used for a long time. Thanks for doing your part.

New Laptops: Sign into Chrome for a Pleasant Experience

image showing Google icon in two places

Instructional staff, when you get your new laptop and open up Google Chrome, you might sign in to Google/Gmail and think that you are all set to go. But perhaps you notice that none of your bookmarks or saved passwords are coming up. You (probably) didn’t do anything wrong, you just need to make sure you are ALSO SIGNED INTO the browser GOOGLE CHROME itself. Check out those steps here. They are also linked on the laptop handbook that is accessible on the Desktop of your new laptop.

How do you know if you are logged into Chrome? You want to see your icon in both places as pictured at the top of this page.

 

 

Free, High-Quality Digital Learning Resources

The Michigan Learning Channel (MLC) is a statewide public television partnership offering free instructional content to support the education of students and to provide alternative resources for families and teachers. Designed to enrich school learning, the instructional content is aligned with Michigan’s educational standards and follows widely accepted sequences for mastering skills throughout the school year. Some of the programs include Read, Write, Roar, Curious Crew (science), and InPACT (physical education).

This programming is being broadcast on special on-air channels established by each of the participating public television stations in Michigan. It is also available as a livestream and stored for on-demand viewing on a variety of digital platforms, ensuring accessibility to all students, teachers and families in the state.

You can find their programming at: https://www.michiganlearning.org/

PBS LearningMedia is a great destination for direct access to thousands of classroom-ready, curriculum-targeted digital resources aligned to Common Core and national and state standards.

Spur your students’ achievement and engagement through the use of audio recordings, documents, interactives, lesson plans, videos, and more! Browse by standards, grade level, subject area, and special collections then favorite and share resources with your class and colleagues. Best of all, PBS LearningMedia is free for PreK-12 educators and students.

You can find all of this at: https://pbslearningmedia.org/

PBS LearningMedia can be easily integrate in Canvas to find out more click here: https://pbslearningmedia.org/help/canvas/

Please submit a tech ticket if you have questions or would like a guide when exploring these resources.

Three March Google Workspace Updates

Workspace

Here are three of the most noteworthy March Google Workspace updates – all will be active by the end of this month.

Embed linked Google Forms charts into Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Drawings

Quick summary

You can now embed linked response charts from Google Forms into a Google Doc, Google Slides presentation, or a Google Drawing. When new form responses are received, anyone with the proper permissions can refresh an embedded chart by simply clicking the “Update” button. This eliminates the need to re-copy the chart from the form.

This feature is useful for sharing real-time responses to polls or surveys and for incorporating Forms responses data into presentations or reports.

Embed form in docs

 

New email draft template in Google Docs

Quick summary

We’re making it easy to collaborate on an email draft in Docs with the new email draft template. You can mention people in the recipient fields using the @ menu without having to remember their email addresses, and collaborate on the message body using comments and suggestions. When ready to send, simply click the button that is shown alongside an email draft. A Gmail compose window will pop up, with email fields (subject, to, cc, bcc, and body) automatically populated based on the email draft in the document.

There is no end user setting for this feature. To insert an email template, go to Insert > Building Blocks > Email draft

Draft email in Docs

 

View additional Calendar statuses in Google Chat

What’s changing

In addition to seeing when someone is out of office, you can now see additional Google Calendar statuses like “In a meeting” or “In focus time” in Google Chat.

Calendar details via chat

Why you’d use it

We hope by surfacing these additional statuses, this will make it easier for your colleagues to identify appropriate times to message you.