Author: Mark Salzer

Google for Education’s June newsletter highlights

Past Google for Education newsletters have alerted educators to many resources and opportunities. Google’s latest issue #29 (June 2020) is no exception. Pasted below are some of its snippets for your review.

Discover the New Google Teacher Center
Discover free technology training and resources for educators of all levels in the new Teacher Center. We’ve updated the Teacher Center with guide pages for our core products, an updated hub of teacher resources, a communities page to connect you to experts and other educators, and more.

VIA20 Google Certified Innovator Academy
Want to solve a global challenge in education? Applications are now open for the 2020 Google Certified Innovator Academy, which will be delivered online to a Global Cohort. Apply before July 10.

Getting Started with Google for Education
New to Google tools and not sure where to start? Register for our 8-week “Getting Started with Google for Education” email series to receive 10-minute, video-based lessons on the Tuesday of each week. Content is available with subtitles in over 18 languages.

Make Remote Learning Work for Everyone
On May 21st Google celebrated Global Accessibility Day. Learn more about how to make remote learning work for everyone.

Google Play’s Change The Game Design Challenge
For all kids 13-18: Submit to the Design Challenge today! Participants will score an online game dev workshop with other game changers. Clock the entire course to earn a certificate of completion and a new Chromebook!

Remote Reading Support from Rivet
Access remote reading support with one click now that Rivet’s library is available on the web. Includes 3,500+ free, leveled books across 14 kid-friendly categories and word help on every page in addition to recently added books in Spanish.

“Learn Anywhere” with Google Arts & Culture
Created with home learning in mind, 11 Learn Anywhere lesson plans launched on TES. Flexible enough to use in the classroom or for students to work through on their own, they cover a range of subjects, from Dinosaurs to Bauhaus.

Make Remote Learning Fun with Applied Digital Skills
The new Digital Art & Games collection from Applied Digital Skills features 10 at-home lessons to help your students express their creativity and have fun, all while learning digital skills. Students can create a meme with Google Drawings, make a word game in Google Sheets, write an emoji story in Google Docs, and more!

A Guardian’s Guide to CS First
This how-to guide for parents and guardians helps you and your kids get started with CS First, an engaging video-based curriculum that teaches coding through hands-on activities. A great activity to use over summer!

Navigate the Digital World with this Guide
Parents and Guardians can use this Digital Wellbeing Guide to help them spark productive conversations, practice healthy habits, and identify engaging activities with their families.

Please Secure Equipment Before Leaving For Summer Break

Instructional staff, before leaving for your well-deserved summer vacation, please comply with the directions of your principal and main office to turn in or secure all classroom technology equipment such as document cameras, microphones, interactive pens, and remotes. Please leave any Ethernet and USB cables / whips in place, but off the classroom floor. On your last day in your school, would you please also power off all electronics including projectors, interactive flat panels, sound amps, and desktop computers. Please leave printers and copiers plugged in and powered on.

Please also secure or take home all District-assigned devices (laptop, Chromebook, iPad, etc.), as well as all personally-owned devices.

For those that have a classroom cart with student devices (iPads or Chromebooks), please lock your cart after ensuring that all of the devices in your classroom are inside and connected to charge. On a sheet of paper, please print your name, room number and the number of devices contained inside and tape the sheet to the top of your cart. Please make sure that the cart is plugged in to charge and leave it charging in the classroom (unlike past years, please don’t take it to the media center). Please hand the cart key to your building secretary (or in some cases, your principal) and make sure that they have recorded that you turned it in.

District-assigned devices should be brought back when you return to school in the fall OR upon separation of service from the District (retirement, resignation, lay-off, etc.) (please see this document if you are separating from service).

Thanks for your cooperation in helping safeguard district tech!

BrainPOP: High School Access AND an issue with Class Data

HIGH SCHOOL ACCESS: For the remainder of the school year, PCEP and Starkweather students and staff have full access to BrainPOP via our Clever portal. Creative resources such as Make-A-Map and Make-A-Movie as well as assignments, quizzes, and projects await. Staff planning to use BrainPOP can check out this 30 minutes BrainPOP101 course to get an overview of many of the resources and tools available.

Class data: Due to an unplanned change in sharing rules, teachers are no longer able to see prior student work easily in their teacher dashboards. Any new assignments they create will display as normal. Though they are unable to view the older assignments, the data has not been lost: it remains in the students’ accounts and is still visible in the student dashboard. If a teacher ever wants to see everything a student has done, they can click on “View Students” and click the student‘s name to view their timeline with all their quiz scores regardless of whether they were submitted to the teacher or not.

Registration closing soon for free virtual courses offered by REMC in May

For those interested, there’s still time to enroll in a free REMC Virtual Course and earn 10 free SCECHs. To see a description of the courses offered and to register, visit https://mailchi.mp/71fc6deb90f9/theres-still-time-to-sign-up-for-our-free-virtual-learning-courses-3686790?e=67db2526b4

May courses begin on Monday, May 4. The deadline for registration is Friday, May 1. Eleven courses are offered (see list below). Each course is open for three weeks and consists of two (2) one-hour “live” webinars that are recorded and available for viewing later, and eight (8) hours of resource review, assessment developments and written reflection.

Kaizena feedback-laden Google add-on tool is now installed

Kaizena, another tool (apart from Read&Write for Google) for staff to provide feedback to students within various Google apps, is now installed and available for staff and student use when logged into their Google accounts. Kaziena helps students, teachers, and administrators provide effective and relevant feedback for diverse learners. Its features include: text comments, voice comments, lessons (small micro-units of learning), and skills and rubrics.

Information and videos on getting started and using the add-on can be found at https://help.kaizena.com/en/collections/60518-kaizena-for-google-docs

Easy to associate micro lessons, another feature of the add-on, are described at https://www.kaizena.com/features/lessons

Below are a 2 minute overview video and one that showcases the feedback options:

Email Safety Tips slides

As the use of online communication has increased for so many of us, here are some email safety tips/reminders in visual form.

Both MACUL and MDE offer Guidelines for Helping Classroom Teachers Transition to Online Learning

The Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning (MACUL) has composed and shared useful guidelines around supportive considerations in a successful transition to online learning. Please browse to https://macul.org/online-learning-guidelines/ to check them out.

The Michigan Dept of Ed’s (MDE) Learning at a DISTANCE Guidance is billed as [a] largely teacher-written effort to help address the immediate needs of staff who must address the immediate needs of children – at a distance – during a pandemic.

District Windows laptops with blue alert box

If you have a district laptop, at some point before the school year ends, you may see a blue alert window declaring Your Windows license will expire soon; You need to activate Windows in settings. There is no need to panic.

To reset your license for another 180 days of use, when convenient within two weeks of first seeing that warning, head to any district building with your laptop. You don’t need to actually enter the building, you just need to be close enough to have the laptop connect to the district Wi-Fi. It’s even possible at some of our locations to remain in your car and still be close enough to get a signal. While remaining connected to the district Wi-Fi (either PCCSK12- Secure or PCCSK12-Staff), completely restart the laptop, then log into it and make sure it completes the log in process. Surf somewhere to confirm that you remained connected. Doing this should suffice to reset the license counter for months and you’re good to leave, mission accomplished.

If you still cannot get the alert to go away after doing the above, please submit a service ticket and our department can assist you with other steps to take.

A couple of upcoming GSuite features to note

Available soon, it will be possible to create and use multiple signatures in Gmail as well as fix images to a certain location on a page in Google Docs.

For more on creating and using multiple signatures, visit here (and check out what it looks like in the gif below).

For more on fixing images to a certain location on a page in Google Docs, visit here (and check out what it looks like below).

Fixed image in Google Doc — Fixed image in a Google doc

Registration now open for free virtual courses offered by REMC in April

Springtime is finally here! For those interested, it’s time to enroll in a free REMC Virtual Course and earn 10 free SCECHs. To see a description of the courses offered and to register, visit https://www.remc.org/Core/News/Article/1337.

April 2020 Course Information
April courses begin on Monday, April 6. The deadline for registration is Friday, April 3.