FYI, BrainPop has updated their Primary Source feature

BrainPop

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.

Primary Source

View Grades and Submissions for ‘Concluded’ Students in Canvas

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.

Option 1: Grades (in the Course Navigation Menu)

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:

Open Grades

options

concluded

view concluded

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

Option 2: People (in the Navigation Menu)

As with the Gradebook, individual grades can also be viewed through this approach.

People

prior enrollments

prior enrollments more

 

Option 3: User Details

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.

Sound issues in Zoom?

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

  • Make sure that the Zoom app you are running is that latest version.  Zoom does not normally update on it’s own, so this has to be done manually. See this article for guidance https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362233-Upgrade-update-to-the-latest-version
  • Adjust/Disable sound processing to see if that helps.

    Adjusting sound

    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.

    See this page for more on the steps on the disabling and a couple more tips.

Safe Search Engines and Research Websites for Students

Research sites

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.

BrainPop’s January Teachers Lounge

BrainPop Teachers Lounge

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.

 

Websites to check out

Webby Awards

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

 

 

REMC January newsletter, course details

REMC newsletter

See REMC’s latest newsletter HERE

Featuring free virtual courses with 10 free SCECHs each. The courses below start on January 4 and the registration deadline is January 1.

Five Jamboard templates for all subject areas

Jamboard

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.

 

Check out these Education Tech Blogs

Ed Tech

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.

  • Matt Miller’s Ditch That Textbook website has lots of resources and ideas to ponder.
  • Jake Miller is known for his animated gifs and the embedded lessons he puts in them. Check out one strand of his efforts to educate on Google Sheets HERE or all of his animated GIFS in a folder HERE
  • Laura Cahill’s EngagEDucate website offers lots of resources

In case you want to check out others’ recommendations for EdTech blogs, see BrainScape’s, Explain Everything’s or Kathy Schrock’s lists.