Happy Thanksgiving and a Housekeeping Request

Happy Thanksgiving

We hope you enjoy your Thanksgiving break! Before you leave Tuesday afternoon…

WOULD YOU PLEASE SECURE ALL VALUABLES in the classrooms and office spaces you inhabit. This includes laptops, document cameras, Apple TVs, remotes, and interactive pens.

Further, if it is equipment you handle, would you please make sure all iPads and Chromebooks are in their carts and those CARTS ARE LOCKED and plugged in before leaving.

Finally, would you please also POWER OFF any of the following equipment, if it is equipment you handle:

  • projectors
  • sound amps
  • SmartBoards
  • desktop computers
  • monitors
  • printers

THANK YOU for your cooperation.

Tech break checklist

Introducing a New Resource: AI in the Classroom: A Practical Guide

This blog post introduces a practical guide designed to help educators begin to effectively and responsibly integrate AI into their classrooms. While the guide was initially created by secondary librarians and technology integration specialists, its principles and tools are adaptable for elementary classrooms as well.

Key Features of the AI Guide

This guide provides educators with practical advice and resources to effectively implement AI while addressing ethical considerations:

  • Student-Centric AI Usage Scales: These scales offer clear guidelines for students to understand when and how to appropriately use AI tools. The scales differentiate between “AI Free,” “AI Assisted,” and “AI Enhanced” activities, providing a framework for ethical AI integration in assignments. Printable posters of the scales can be displayed in classrooms as a visual reminder for students.
  • AI Citation & Disclosure Handout: This resource clarifies when to cite AI-generated content and when to disclose its usage. The handout emphasizes transparency in academic work, outlining the importance of citing new content generated by AI and disclosing AI usage for tasks like organizing thoughts or editing.
  • AI Prompting and Evaluation Techniques: The guide introduces two acronyms, PREP and HUMAN, to provide a structured approach to using AI. Ideally, these acronyms could be consistently used across the district.
    • PREP guides prompt creation, emphasizing the importance of a clear role for the AI, a precise prompt, specific parameters for the response, and explicit instructions.
    • HUMAN serves as a checklist to ensure ethical and effective AI use. It encourages users to pause and consider the appropriateness of using AI, examine potential biases, personalize the output, verify information, and determine next steps, including disclosure and citation requirements.
  • Teacher-Friendly Implementation Tips: The guide offers practical suggestions for incorporating AI into the classroom. It clearly outlines the district-approved apps for teacher use and suggests tools that may be appropriate for student use. It emphasizes a progression of I do, we do, you do for classroom integration.
  • Best Practices for Responsible AI Use: The guide highlights essential guidelines for ethical AI usage and data privacy considerations, drawing on recommendations from Common Sense Media. These practices include avoiding personal information input, emphasizing AI’s role as a thought partner rather than a source of facts, understanding the trade-offs of AI usage, verifying information, and using reputable sources in prompts.

The AI guide offers a wealth of resources, including printable posters, customizable rubrics, and suggested AI tools for both teachers and students.

Fall Canvas Updates

This fall, Canvas has rolled out several updates. Here are some highlights:

Smart Search: You may have noticed “Smart Search” in the course navigation. This allows teachers and students to search the whole course and Canvas will present the most fitting results for that term. More info.

New Quizzes: Add Time to Existing Quiz Sessions: While a New Quiz attempt is ongoing, instructors can moderate a quiz and extend the time allotted for the quiz. Additionally, the student course-level accommodation modal link is moved to the Student column. Previously, this was linked in the Accommodations column.

Location to add time to an active quiz

New Quizzes: View Log now shows when and for how long a student navigated away from the quiz.

View of quiz moderation

Coming Soon (11/16):

Multiple Due Dates (Checkpoints) in Discussion: When creating a graded discussion, instructors can set multiple due dates or checkpoints to accommodate different stages of the discussion process, such as the initial post and follow-up replies.—DELAYED as of 11/14

Options for discussion checkpoints

Speedgrader Experience: Faster load times and enhanced stability in Speedgrader. Additionally, there will be some interface updates:

  • A streamlined interface for the Section drop-down menu
  • A clearer and more prominent No Submission alert
  • The Submission Status is updated to a drop-down menu
  • Rubrics are automatically displayed in the traditional view
  • Media attachments and submission comments are moved and the delete icon is changed.

Rubric Improvements: 

  • You can import and export Canvas rubrics in a CSV or XML format.
  • On the Rubrics page, instructors can copy rubrics from the current course to another course.

 

 

Canva Teams Explained

canva teams explained

Canva is an incredible tool that can be used to create stunning visuals for a variety of purposes. From presentations to social media graphics, Canva has everything you need to bring your ideas to life.

Team Up for Success

location of team switcher in Canva

When using Canva, it’s important to be mindful of which team you’re creating under. This will determine who can access and collaborate on your designs. Here are some tips to keep in mind:

  • School Team: If you’re creating designs to share with students or collaborate with colleagues within your school, make sure you’re creating under your school’s team.
  • District Team: For district-wide projects or collaborations, switch to the Plymouth-Canton Community Schools team. Students should NOT create under this team, we are hopeful that we will be removing students access to this team soon.
  • Public Links: If you forget to switch teams you may need to create a public link, please note that students don’t have this option.

Canva Resources to Get You Started

To help you get started with Canva, check out these helpful resources:

Action Required to Utilize Newsela with Canvas

title image

We have encountered some teachers having issue when trying to set up their Canvas/Newsela integration this school year. We have identified the problem and an easy solution to move forward. It is essential to archive any Clever-created Newsela classes before setting up the Canvas/Newsela integration. These Clever-created courses were launched automatically at the beginning of the school year. If you would rather link you classes with Canvas you can login to Newsela:

  1. Click your initials in the upper right corner. Select Settings.
  2. Click the Class Directory and find the class in your list of classes.
  3. Change the status to Archived

    Location to archive/activate courses in Newsela
    Location to archive/activate courses in Newsela

Please note, this will remove record of previous assignments. You can always follow these steps again to re-activate the class if you lose unintended data.

This step is crucial because attempting to sync while active Clever classes exist may lead to syncing conflicts.

Once you have archived the Clever classes, you can proceed with setting up the Canvas/Newsela integration by following the instructions in the Canvas/Newsela Teacher Setup Guide. This will allow for seamless syncing of your Canvas courses with Newsela.

Tech-Focused November PD Courses

Per Kevin Karr’s communication, teachers have several options of courses for the November PD Window. We wanted to highlight several, new offerings you might consider taking.

Elementary focused:

If you are new to the district:

If you are interested in learning more about some of our paid digital subscriptions, search for courses on: Canvas, IXL, Edpuzzle, and Newsela.

 

Google Docs: A New Tab on Efficiency!

Google Docs has just rolled out an awesome new feature that will revolutionize the way you organize your documents. Similar to the tabs you use in Google Sheets, you can now add multiple sections to a single Doc. This means less clutter, fewer files to manage, and a more streamlined workflow. See the image below to locate the feature.

location of doc tabs on menu

Whether you’re a teacher, administrator, or simply looking to boost your productivity, tabbed documents offer a world of possibilities. Imagine organizing lesson plans, student portfolios, or group projects into a single, well-structured document. You can even create separate tabs for different drafts of a research paper or compile past newsletters into a single resource.

If you want to take a look at how it looks, make a copy of this tabbed document demo made by John Sowash, creator of the Chromebook Classroom blog. You can read his post about this feature, here. While you are there, check out his blog, I just learned you can now add a star rating in Google Forms.

New Feature: Classwize Focus Library

focus mode options

Focus Plans are a new feature in Classwize that allow teachers to curate and save lists of online resources for students to use during class. This exciting addition to Classwize can help teachers create more focused and engaging learning experiences by:

  • Minimizing Distractions: Teachers can use Focus Plans to restrict student internet access to a specific set of websites, applications, or online tools relevant to the lesson or activity. This helps eliminate distractions from non-educational websites and apps, keeping students on track and engaged in the learning process.
  • Promoting Responsible Technology Use: By providing students with a pre-selected list of trustworthy and educational resources, Focus Plans encourage responsible online behavior and digital citizenship. Teachers can curate resources that align with their curriculum goals and ensure students are accessing high-quality, age-appropriate content.
  • Saving Time and Effort: Once created, Focus Plans can be easily reused across multiple classes and lessons, saving teachers valuable time and effort. This allows teachers to focus on delivering engaging instruction and interacting with students, rather than constantly managing internet access.

How to Create a Focus Plan:

Creating a Focus Plan in Classwize is simple and intuitive:

  1. Go to Classwize > Focus Library.
  2. Select Create Focus.
  3. Enter a Name for your plan.
  4. In the Resources field, start typing the website, application, or URL you want to include.
    • Classwize provides a dropdown menu with suggestions, making it easy to find and select the desired resource.
  5. Add as many resources as needed to your Focus Plan.
  6. Choose whether to have Classwize Open tabs for each resource or simply close all other tabs that are not included in the plan.
  7. Select Save Focus to save your plan or Save & Create New to create another plan.

With its ease of use and powerful functionality, the new Focus Plans feature in Classwize is a valuable tool for teachers looking to enhance their classroom management strategies and promote a more focused and productive digital learning environment.

Find more information about Focus Mode in our Classwize Tech Guide.

Consult Classwize’s guide to creating a Focus Plan and adding to your Focus Library.

P-CCS Tech Status MISTAR-Q issues today believed resolved

This morning the county worked to address two MISTAR issues reported today – some staff being unable to log in and some sluggishness when navigating within it. They believe they have corrected the issue. At this point, if you are logged in and having issues, please log out and back in. It should be working as expected when you do so. Alternatively, if you were previously unable to log in, please try to log back into MISTAR and you should be able to get back in again.

Thanks for your patience while these issues were being resolved.

Should you still have problems with MISTAR, please submit a help desk ticket for further assistance. Thanks.

NotebookLM: The AI Assistant Revolutionizing K-12 Education

Decorative blog

NotebookLM is an innovative tool that can greatly enhance teaching and learning in K-12 classrooms. This powerful AI-driven platform allows teachers to upload a variety of source materials, including Google Docs, Slides, PDFs, text files, and web pages. Once uploaded, NotebookLM generates a comprehensive guide with summaries, key topics, and thought-provoking questions to help students engage with the material.  By leveraging NotebookLM’s ability to synthesize information and provide insightful guidance, K-12 teachers can create a more engaging and effective learning environment for their students.

Not only that, but it can generate a deep dive conversation (sounds like a podcast conversation) to share with students. Take a look at the screenshot below that shows some of items Notebook LM can create.

Notebook LM capabilities

Be aware, due to terms of service students cannot interact with these notebooks. However, you can take the resources it creates and copy them to a Google doc. Audio overviews can be downloaded and shared with students.

Want to learn more?

Submit a tech ticket to get in touch with a Technology Integration Specialist if you have additional questions.