BrainPop recently made significant updates to their Primary Source feature, making it even more useful for remote and in-person learning needs. Now students can answer free-response questions directly on their site and submit answers immediately for a teacher’s review.
With Primary Source, students can deepen their understanding of a topic by closely examining real historical artifacts and answering free-response questions designed to prompt critical thinking and deeper exploration.
This post is for teachers who do not “see” some of their students in Canvas because those students’ enrollments have ‘concluded’. Enrollments are concluded, for example, as students move from one school track to another (e.g. between Virtual and Safe Start schools). If you are unable to “see” some students, there are three areas in Canvas (via Grade or People in the Course Navigation Menu or via User Details) to do so. We recommend using the Grades option described below.
For concluded student enrollments, all content in the Gradebook is read only and cannot be changed. You will need to input any grades into MISTAR manually that weren’t already moved via grade passback when the student was still active.
To see the grades of students who have concluded their enrollment in your Canvas course, do the following:
HINT: Be sure to drag the right side dividing line of the Student Name column so that you can see both the entire student name AND the label “concluded”.
The above guidance is from: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-view-grades-for-inactive-or-concluded-student/ta-p/753
As with the Gradebook, individual grades can also be viewed through this approach.
As with active students, you can review grades and other details of your concluded users. Please see https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-view-user-details-for-an-enrollment-in-a-course/ta-p/1216 for elaboration.
Below are a few suggestions to address sound issues you might be experiencing in a video meeting.
*** In a pinch, JOIN BY PHONE instead of COMPUTER — While continuing your video stream, if you joined computer audio automatically, you can leave the computer audio and join by phone. For visual guidance on how to either join initially by phone or transition during a meeting, see this article https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362663-Joining-a-meeting-by-phone
*** FOR WINDOWS 10 devices – Microsoft released a recent update that might resolve this issue. We recommend running the update when you don’t need your laptop for an hour or so since it takes nearly all of that time for the update to run. Make sure the laptop is plugged in. Close any open tabs/programs as well before clicking on the link below to run the update.
Please go to this link https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
Click on update now, it will download a small executable program, then run the program when it finishes downloading (should be quick) then follow the prompts to update the Windows 10 operating system.
Or you can go through the Start menu, up to PC Settings, select Update & Security, and run the 20H2 update.
*** OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
By default, Zoom enables a suite of sound enhancements to suppress background noise. In some environments, though, these settings can make your audio choppy. If this is the case, you can disable them.
If you’re on a PC or Mac, start the Zoom app and click the Settings icon, then click “Audio.” Click “Advanced,” and use the drop-down menus to disable the audio processing options.
Shelly Sanchez Terrell’s blog, TeacherRebootCamp.com offers a number of musings and resources. Her December 19th posting within her December 2020 STEM Resources Digital Calendar, comments on student search engine and research site usage and reminds us of sites geared more towards education than the default Google and YouTube students might otherwise lean towards. Sites such as The Kids Should See This, DK Findout, Ducksters, Science News for Students, are just some of the ones she calls out. Certainly you might already be familiar with some, but perhaps you will encounter one that is new to you that you find worthwhile enough to bring to the attention of some of your students. Happy researching.
Sworkit Kids is a great place to find fun activities to use as physical brain breaks during in-person and online classes, according to Richard Byrne. The video embedded below is his overview of the site.
BrainPop’s January newsletter for K-12 instructional staff can be found HERE.
As a reminder, all district students, K-12 can access our paid subscription to BrainPop/BrainPop Jr via Clever at https://clever.com/in/pccs
Pics below show some of what’s in their latest newsletter.
The Webby Awards annually note websites with interesting design and elements to explore. Here are some sites you might want to check out, in no particular order:
Future of Tech hosts a free & growing library of resources to get you up to speed on what’s new & next.
Poly is an online library where people can browse, share, and remix thousands of 3D models or scenes.
People Not Property: Stories of Slavery in the Colonial North
Canvas is a Chrome/Google supported drawing app.
Applied Digital Skills reviews digital skills needed for the jobs of today and tomorrow with Google’s free video lessons.
Ted-Ed lessons
AFT’s Share My Lesson
See REMC’s latest newsletter HERE
John Sowash offers five Jamboard templates work for all ages and subject areas! Check them out HERE.
Three of these Jamboard activities work well as whole-class assignments. Two more work best as individual or small-group activities.
These Jamboard lessons work with Chromebooks, tablets, phones, and laptops.
Every so often we share news of EdTech websites to check out. Today we’re alerting you to three, each of which is chockablock with tips and musings to explore within the interface of pedagogy and tech.
In case you want to check out others’ recommendations for EdTech blogs, see BrainScape’s, Explain Everything’s or Kathy Schrock’s lists.