Advancements in generative artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) have been evolving quickly over the past year, which is both exciting and concerning. While generative AI and NLP have tremendous educational potential, there are also concerns about the quality of these tools, as well as their data privacy policies and practices. In response, P-CCS has put together a working group to better understand, evaluate, and determine how students and staff might use generative AI and NLP in the future.
Our district leadership, in collaboration with other districts and industry, is already working on a plan for generative AI and NLP tools. We have begun to explore how we might leverage the power of generative AI and NLP to enhance teaching and learning practices, promote innovation, and prepare students for an AI-informed and driven future; at the same time district leadership also acknowledges the educational arena shouldn’t simply allow full access to all manner of AI and NLP tools and services. Within our exploration and plan development, we believe consideration ought to be given to the ethical considerations of using generative AI, including equity implications, bias, and privacy concerns, and how to address them responsibly. Service terms of use (including age restrictions and data usage) also need to be reviewed and factored in.
While it might frustrate those who want to adopt and embrace all that is AI right away – and the allure to do so is understandably compelling since AI tools are so powerful – this school year should be considered as a year of learning, so that a thoughtful implementation is more likely to follow. Please understand that as part of this journey, access to some tools is expected to shift in the coming months, with some tools and services presently accessible later being blocked and other tools and services presently blocked later made accessible.
We will continue to provide updates from the District’s AI working group throughout the year.
National Disability Awareness Month
October is National Disability Awareness Month. AI has been built into Chromebooks and Google Workspace for Education from the beginning, like Live Caption, reading mode, translation, and more. Find helpful features and tips for using them in the classroom on our website.
The Next Phase of Digital Whiteboarding in Workspace
We’re winding down Google Jambaord and teaming up with FigJam, Lucid, and Miro to offer whiteboarding in Workspace. To learn more about each offering, see which is best for your educational institution, and get guidance and resources for using these tools, please visit the Help Center.
New ways for people to engage with culture through play
Play four surprising new experimental games to approach and consider art in unique and thought-provoking ways – from getting your fortune read with an art themed tarot deck to a staring contest with famous artworks.
Exploring Latino cultures on Google Arts & Culture
Google Arts & Culture’s Latino Cultures hub features a variety of new meaningful topics, including the vibrant and rhythmic world of Caribbean salsa music, the impact of Latinos with disabilities and the long history of Indigenous Mexico.
Día de los Muertos Fun with Applied Digital Skills
Celebrate Dia de los Muertos in style with our Create Papel Picado in Google Slides lesson! Unveil the vibrant world of this Mexican holiday tradition as your students craft their own digital papel picado art.
In today’s world, teaching kids about digital citizenship is essential. When we equip them with the skills to think critically and navigate online spaces on their own, that’s how they really grow. Digital Citizenship Week began October 16th, and while the week is almost over, consider still bringing these themes into your curriculum over the weeks ahead. Supplement your instruction with BrainPOP’s timely content, tools, and resources.
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
As online and digital learning has expanded in schools, many educational applications have been adopted that collect student data – sometimes more than necessary for their core educational purpose. Protecting student privacy is crucial, which in part explains why Google is implementing new security measures on October 23rd that will affect Google Workspace for Education users.
Google Workspace for Education, which includes tools like Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and Slides, has provided schools with collaborative learning solutions. However, Google is putting additional safeguards in place to limit third-party access to sensitive student information. If you have chosen to “sign in with Google” or connected an app to a Google Doc or Sheet, you have been asked to allow another app permissions to data associated with your Google account. Google is now adding more safeguards to help restrict these permissions, especially for students.
For Google Workspace for Education users, new data protections will be enabled by default. Data sharing with third party sites and services will be limited. Certain advertising targeting practices will also be prohibited.
Over the last month, the technology department has done its best to review a lengthy list of more than 2000 third-party applications that one or more district users have enabled to work with their Google accounts. Some third party app integrations with District Google accounts have been or will be blocked on and after October 23 as part of this process. In many cases, if being able to use Google Sign in is not possible, a user could instead sign in with their username and password (a password reset may be required if the user does not already know their password). Other integration permissions that are revoked might yield some other inconveniences.
Please note, if you have a third party app whose Google integration stops working, the integration is required, and there is a legitimate educational purpose for continued app access, pleasesubmit a tech support ticket for review.
While Google’s increased security may affect some workflows, protecting student information is paramount. Thanks for being flexible so that learning can continue to thrive in more secure digital environments.
See everything IXL has added since school started back up! Read on to find out what’s new on IXL this fall including new units of the Takeoff curriculum, assessment data on the teacher dashboard, filtering for courses and more!
Summary of some key releases in the screenshot below:
Takeoff by IXL Math™ provides everything 2nd-5th grade teachers need for their daily math instruction, personalized to meet the needs of each student, including:
Detailed day-by-day lesson plans
Differentiated support and enrichment resources
Print and online learning activities
Built-in unit assessments with personalized next steps
Teachers can now find all of their assessment-related information in one place from the Teacher Dashboard! Under the new “Assessment” tab in the middle of the dashboard, teachers have three new sections covering:
Diagnostic levels: displays students’ overall math and ELA Real-Time-Diagnostic levels, and links to the Diagnostic Overview report.
Screener levels: displays the results of a class’ most recent Screener, and links to the Screener Levels report.
Upcoming assessment windows: displays upcoming universal screener and Diagnostic Snapshot windows scheduled by an administrator.
Filter courses in Teacher Analytics
Teachers can now filter their reports to view all students within a course! Courses are groups of students in IXL who are rostered in different classes, but are working on the same material. For middle and high school teachers who teach multiple classes of the same course, this will allow them to filter across class periods.
Teachers can click the “Students” filter at the top-left of each report to filter by their classes or courses. Once they select a course, they will only see data in the report for students who are in roster classes that are associated with that course.
Suggestion stars on the Student Usage report
The Student Usage report now displays the gold suggestion star next to a skill if the student practiced it while it was suggested! This update makes it easier for teachers to ensure that their most prioritized skills are being practiced.
Skill plan updates and new skills
New math skills
We’ve released a handful of new math skills, including new calculus skills:
We’ve expanded our popular Learn to Read skill plans to now include Pre-Kindergarten! Tailored for our youngest learners, the Pre-K Learn to Read plan focuses on nurturing essential skills such as letter knowledge, phonological awareness, and beginning phonics, providing a strong foundation for Kindergarten readiness.
New textbook skill plans
This release we added the following textbook skill plans:
We now have over 2,700 math and ELA videos on IXL.com! We’ve added 24 new phonics videos, 40 new reading foundations videos, and 4 new middle school ELA videos. With this release, we now have videos covering about 50% of the “reading foundations” skills in grades 2-3. These videos cover topics such as:
We’ve also added 335 new math videos across grade 2 through Algebra 2. This release covers more than half of the skills for both grade 2 and Algebra 2. Video topics include:
We’ve expanded our Spanish-language support to include a handful of new skills covering grade 2 through Algebra 1. These newly supported skills include:
We have added the ELA skill “Identify the purpose of a text” to our international editions (CA, AU, NZ, UK, IE, IN, ZA); this skill was previously only available in the US. This skill allows students in grades 2-3 to practice reading for the author’s purpose (to persuade, inform, or entertain) by interacting with engaging graphic elements. These include book pages, newspaper articles, web pages, and more.
We know that as educators, you constantly strive to make learning more accessible and engaging for your students. That’s why we’re thrilled to introduce some exciting updates to the Read&Write toolbar that will empower you to do just that! The two latest features, Rewordify and Simplify AI, are designed to transform the way your students interact with digital content, making it easier to understand and more inclusive for all. Let’s dive into the details of these fantastic enhancements.
1. Rewordify
Rewordify is a game-changer for teachers and students alike. This versatile tool is now available on the Read&Write web toolbar, making it accessible on websites, Learning Management Systems, emails, and more. Its primary mission is to simplify text, ensuring that students encounter fewer barriers when reading and comprehending content.
How does it work? Rewordify identifies complex or difficult words within a webpage and replaces them with simpler, more easily understood alternatives. This feature promotes reading comprehension and helps students tackle challenging texts with greater confidence. Rewordify is a valuable resource for students of all ages and abilities, as it fosters inclusivity in the classroom and supports diverse learning needs.
2. Simplify AI
Introducing Simplify AI, an innovative beta feature within Read&Write for Google Chrome. This cutting-edge tool takes web content and transforms it into a more digestible format, enhancing accessibility and understanding. Developed by OpenAI, Simplify AI relies on advanced AI algorithms to perform its magic.
Simplify AI is your secret weapon when it comes to breaking down complex web content. It distills lengthy, convoluted passages into concise, clear, and easy-to-grasp summaries. This feature is a boon for teachers and students tackling challenging articles, research papers, or any online content that could benefit from simplification.
However, it’s important to note that Simplify AI has a few limitations:
Word Count Limits: Simplify AI can be applied to content ranging from approximately 75 to 2300 words. This range is carefully chosen to accommodate various types of content while maintaining readability.
Usage Limit: Each user can utilize Simplify AI a maximum of ten times per day. This restriction is in place to ensure fair access to this powerful tool among all users.
Incorporating these updates into your teaching arsenal can revolutionize the way your students engage with digital content. Whether you’re using Rewordify to make text more accessible or Simplify AI to provide concise summaries, these features empower your students to comprehend complex information with greater ease.
By leveraging these tools, you’re not just enhancing reading comprehension; you’re fostering an inclusive learning environment where every student has the opportunity to succeed.
Canvas recently hosted two webinars on Canvas New Quizzes.
One webinar covers the basics for new users. You can review the outline here and the actual recording here.
A second webinar, customized for existing users, skipped the basics and highlighted updates and outstanding questions. You can review the outline here and the actual recording here.
Are you a teacher who’s been frustrated by the Error 150 message when trying to play embedded YouTube videos in your Google Slides presentations? You’re not alone! Recently, YouTube made changes to its policies, resulting in this inconvenience for educators.
Understanding Error 150
YouTube videos embedded into Google Slides may display an Error 150 message due to changes in YouTube’s privacy and embedding settings. Error 150 typically indicates that the video’s owner has restricted its playback on external websites or platforms like Google Slides. Here are a few reasons why this error occurs:
Privacy Settings: The video’s owner has set the video’s privacy settings to “unlisted” or “private,” which prevents it from being embedded in external websites. Only videos set to “public” can be embedded into Google Slides without encountering Error 150.
Embedding Restrictions: Some content creators choose to disable the option for others to embed their videos on external websites. This setting also leads to Error 150 when attempting to embed such videos.
Policy Changes: YouTube occasionally updates its policies and settings. If a video was previously embeddable and later becomes restricted by its owner or YouTube’s policies, it can result in Error 150.
Copyright and Licensing: If YouTube detects that a video may infringe on copyright or licensing agreements when embedded in external websites, it may restrict its playback and display Error 150.
To resolve this issue, educators can either request video owners to change the privacy settings to “public” or consider using alternative methods, such as downloading the video and inserting it as a file into Google Slides. Another alternative is to play the video directly from youtube instead of embedding. If you still want to have an ad-free experience this can be achieved by placing a “-” in between the t and the u of the youtube video’s url. A final alternative if the goal is to have a youtube video as a part of a slide style presentation is LUMIO. Elementary teachers already have accounts and that can be accessed through the waffle. Middle and high school teachers can request an account by submitting a tech ticket at helpdesk.pccsk12.com. If you’re interested in learning more about LUMIO you can access information is this previous blog post.
We want to inform you about a recent change to our district’s Canvas support process. In the past, you had the ability to reach out directly to Canvas support through phone or chat, but we’ve now transitioned to a different approach. If you encounter any issues or need assistance, please submit a support ticket from the Canvas Help Menu.
We understand that this is a shift from the previous service level, and we appreciate your understanding. Additionally, we encourage you to explore the Canvas guides (instructor, student, and observer). There are also guides available for the mobile applications. You can utilize the new Panda Bot as valuable resources to help navigate Canvas effectively during this transition. Your satisfaction with the support we provide remains our priority.
Registration is open for the next session of Monarch running now through December 18, 2023
Monarch will be offered twice this academic year:
Session One: Now through Dec 18, 2023
Session Two: Jan 22 through May 13, 2024
Teachers are invited to transform their use of MISTAR-Q by participating in Monarch, an asynchronous online learning experience. Monarch is especially beneficial for teachers new to MISTAR.
Complete activities designed to increase your skill and knowledge of MISTAR teacher apps including Class Attendance, Grade Book, Seating Chart, generating reports, and more.
Working online at your pace, you will progress through four levels of activities. SCECHs are available: complete levels 1-2 to earn 7 hours, levels 1-3 to earn 11 hours, or levels 1-4 to earn 13 hours.
This course is free. Please register only if you fully intend to participate as there is high demand for this course.
Register here — After registering, watch for emails with details on how to get started.
