VIRTUAL COURSES, The REMC Virtual Courses offer an easy, convenient way for teachers to connect and collaborate during the summer from the convenience of their home. The Virtual Courses are free, offer free 10 SCECHs when completed, and are open to all Michigan school personnel. There are no registration or SCECH fees because REMC SAVE’s vendor partners provide support for all REMC professional learning opportunities.

Register by Friday July 2nd – Classes Begin July 5th

• Multimedia Tools to Engage Students
• Coding in the Classroom
• Digital Tools for Classroom Collaboration
• Tech Up Your K-5 Content with MiTECS
• Inquiry and Questioning: Igniting Student Curiosity w/Technology Level1
• Leading a Culture of Change in your School
• Using Virtual Reality in Education
• Learning to use Open Educational Resources on #GoOpen Michigan
• Game-based Learning to Build Student Understanding & Engagement
• OER: The What, Why, and How of Open Educational Resources

If you have questions or need further assistance with your course registration, please contact Erin Rommeck, REMC Event Coordinator.

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NEW WEB SERIES:

Each offering includes a robust toolkit of resources to support teacher planning and student learning. Participants may choose to attend one or more of the seven sessions. To earn SCECHs, participants must attend the live webinar and complete the assigned task following the webinar. Two (2) SCECHs per session.

Blended Learning Sessions:

Teaching Strategies for Virtual and Blended Learning Environments: Introduction

Session details and dates available:  https://bit.ly/3jDOBDO

 

Teaching Strategies for Virtual and Blended Learning: Help Students Demonstrate Mathematical Thinking K-2 

Session details and dates available: https://bit.ly/3zzgoh4

 

Teaching Strategies for Virtual and Blended Learning: Help Students Demonstrate Mathematical Thinking 3-6

Session details and dates available:  https://bit.ly/3pRD5bz

 

Teaching Strategies for Virtual and Blended Learning: Help Students Demonstrate Mathematical Thinking 7-12

Session details and dates available:  https://bit.ly/3vmZw9I

 

Teaching Strategies for Virtual and Blended Learning Language Arts: Growing Early Literacy Learners K-2

Session details and dates available: https://bit.ly/3xec3xy

 

Teaching Strategies for Virtual and Blended Learning Language Arts: Growing Literacy Learners 3-5

Session details and dates available:  https://bit.ly/3xx4suv

 

Teaching Strategies for Virtual and Blended Learning Language Arts: Growing Literacy Learners 6-12

Session details and dates available:  https://bit.ly/3gkyc7V

 

from this newsletter

Zoom announced on June 22nd Pronouns, a new feature in Zoom 5.7.0 to help users feel more included, able to express themselves, and be seen. To learn more, see https://blog.zoom.us/zoom-pronoun-sharing/

As a reminder, Canvas also allows for user selection of their pronouns. For more about that, see this blog post https://tech.pccsk12.com/personal-pronouns-now-enabled-in-canvas/ 

For those that have an iPhone and use the Gmail app — IOS users must upgrade to the latest version for Gmail iOS app versions 6.0.210221 and 6.0.210222 before July 7, 2021 to avoid interruption. Google discovered an issue with two Google Gmail iOS app versions that could result in a disruption of functionality to users’ service. This is a proactive upgrade required to avoid the application from hanging, crashing, and going into unusual application states that may cause an interruption.

What do I need to do?

On July 7, 2021, IOS users will receive a prompt requiring them to upgrade to the latest version if they have the GMAIL app. If they don’t accept the latest version, they’ll experience an interruption in service until the upgrade is performed.

• Download the latest version of the Gmail iOS app from the Apple App Store before July 7.

If you’re looking for a quick checklist reminder…

Google recently announced they are ending their Go Links service after 11 years.  See https://killedbygoogle.com/ for more on this and other shuttered services.  Shortened links created at links.pccsk12.com are not expected to resolve to their associated actual URLs after June 15th. Please know the district’s Technology Department is working to migrate most of the links created via this service to another service and will have another posting on our progress later this month.

This year’s Webby Awards were announced this week. Some notable websites to check out include:

Mathigon https://mathigon.org/ a cool website filled with neat and unexpected ways to explore math.

A to Z AI https://atozofai.withgoogle.com/intl/en-US/ A-Z guide offers a series of simple, bite-sized explainers to help anyone understand what AI is, how it works and how it’s changing the world around us.

Missing the Code https://missing-code.com/ highlights the contributions of women in some areas of computer coding (note it has a couple of poor word choices)

NASA Bring Space to Students Through Virtual Learning https://www.nasa.gov/stem-at-home-for-students-k-4.html Like the name suggests….

FABRICIUS https://artsexperiments.withgoogle.com/fabricius/en Explore Fabricius, a Google Arts & Culture Lab Experiment that uses machine learning to help translate ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Generator Z https://generator-z.org/ Generator Z is an ideas lab that launched in 2020 for teens and afterschool providers to reimagine the future of afterschool in Southeast Michigan and Western New York.

You might also want to check out the apps they cite for recognition.

 

For those teaching math, consider checking out PBS’s Learning Media May newsletter which has a focus on math. See some screenshots from the newsletter below to have your interest peaked.

I wanted to alert our community to a benefit program that I hope we can spread the word about to our eligible families. In the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 which was recently signed into law, Congress has specifically carved out $3.2 billion dollars to provide Emergency Broadband relief (a discount of up to $50 per month towards broadband service) to qualifying eligible households. Eligible households can also receive a one-time discount of up to $100 to purchase a laptop, desktop computer, or tablet from participating providers if they contribute more than $10 and less than $50 toward the purchase price.

As of May 12, 2021, eligible households will be able to enroll in this program to receive a monthly discount off the cost of broadband service from an approved internet service provider (American Broadband, Charter, Comcast, T-Mobile/Metro by T-Mobile, and Wow are among these ISPs). Eligible households can enroll through their approved internet service provider or by visiting https://getemergencybroadband.org.

A household is eligible if a member of the household meets one of the criteria below:

• Has an income that is at or below 135% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines or participates in certain assistance programs, such as SNAP, Medicaid, or Lifeline;
• Approved to receive benefits under the free and reduced-price school lunch program or the school breakfast program, including through the USDA Community Eligibility Provision in the 2019-2020 or 2020-2021 school year;
• Received a Federal Pell Grant during the current award year;
• Experienced a substantial loss of income due to job loss or furlough since February 29, 2020 and the household had a total income in 2020 at or below $99,000 for single filers and $198,000 for joint filers; or
• Meets the eligibility criteria for a participating provider’s existing low-income or COVID-19 program.

Check out the Broadband Benefit Consumer FAQ for more information about the benefit and please continue to check this page for program updates.

Please note, the benefit program described above is different from the permanent Lifeline program, which is another benefits program some of our families qualify for and likely could benefit from — thanks for sharing news of both for their consideration.

A new version of the Zoom app will be available next week for download at https://zoom.us/download. Zoom will also be performing a staggered release for iOS and Android on applicable app stores. This update will include the release of the Immersive Views feature (see description below) and minor bug fixes.

April 26, 2021 version

New and enhanced features

• Meeting/webinar features
  • Immersive Views 
    Recreate the feel of your class or conference room by placing video participants onto a single virtual background. Participants are automatically placed onto provided scenes, but the host can upload their own custom background and adjust the arrangements as needed. This requires client version 5.6.3 or higher and works best when using Virtual Background, but not required.

Resolved issues

• Minor bug fixes
• Resolved an issue for a subset of users regarding crashes when switching audio devices
• Resolved an issue for a subset of users regarding an inability to end a webinar

See these articles for more info:

Mac – https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201361963
Windows – https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201361953
Android – https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201361973
iOS – https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201361943
Linux – https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/205759689