Category: Blog

Sharing Digital Resources with Colleagues

If you are retiring from teaching, changing roles, or changing grades, you might be wondering how you can best share some of your teaching materials with colleagues from your department or team. This post will offer some suggestions. If you are retiring or leaving the district, a separate email will be sent to you regarding how to return district technology at the end of the school year. Please be on the look out for that email if it applies to you.

Share Google Content with Colleagues

You will want to make sure that a colleague you want to share files with is made the owner of a document or folder. You can change this if you are the current owner.

image showing where to update the owner — This option is best if you are leaving the district. Change this setting *after* you have used Google Transfer or Download.

If you are not leaving the district and want your files shared, but not altered, you might download a folder and then re-upload it to your Drive naming it “3rd Grade Originals.” This will allow you to maintain a copy of your versions of the documents.

Please be mindful about checking folders before you share them to ensure confidential, student information is not shared.

Share Canvas Course Content

You are able to export your Canvas course as an IMSCC ZIP file that can be uploaded into many Learning Management Systems (if you are leaving the district) or shared via a thumb drive.

image showing course copy option If you want to share your course with another teacher, you can make a copy of your course (found in Settings). When you make the copy you can select the specific content you are willing to share, give it a name (i.e. Bullock Shared US History) and then add your colleague(s) as a teacher in the course. Finally, to make your course more widely available to others at P-CCS you can export your course to Canvas Commons, when you export you can choose to make it viewable to the public or only to P-CCS teachers.

Share Video Content

While it is best practice for instructional videos to be made by the existing teacher, it might be helpful for others to reference your video lessons. If you would like to share your video lessons, we recommend this workflow:

Upload videos to Canvas Studio, if not there already
Organize videos into Collections (i.e. Algebra 1) Instructions to move Media into Collections
Share the Collection (with editing rights) with a colleague

Please submit a tech ticket if you have additional questions about sharing content.

Create more with Canva using these Template Shortcuts!

The EDU team at Canva wanted to save you some time and give you quick access to the most popular classroom templates. Categories include: Creating Positive Classroom Communities, Design Teaching Resources, and Design Student Activities. Each specific template is hyperlinked to blank templates. Click graphic below.

Digital Breakouts Teach Important Tech Skills Through Digital “ESCAPE” Rooms

Digital Breakouts are a great way to engage students in important tech skills through an action-packed digital scavenger hunt. Students are so engrossed in solving puzzles and competing with classmates, they actually don’t even realize they are being taught important content!

The REMC Association 21Things4Students has added four new digital breakouts to support technology proficiency and to keep students safe and secure online. Using clues to solve and open a lock, Digital Breakouts promote collaboration and teamwork while enhancing curriculum content. Interactive activities can include mazes, matching vocabulary, word searches, directional grids and more.

Check out the four new 21Things4Students Digital Breakouts:

21Things4Students has ready-made classroom activities and curriculum to help all educators integrate technology skills into their classroom learning. All materials are FREE and licensed under Creative Commons for use and duplication.

Easy Digital Business Cards with HiHello

We are excited to share the tool, HiHello. Spend about 5 minutes getting signed up and entering in your information and you get a professional looking email signature and Zoom background. The Zoom backgrounds (pictured below) are especially helpful because they can display your name, position, and pronouns which is helpful if you are in a lot of meetings with families and community members. You can also upload the P-CCS logo or your school logo. Get the mobile app and have access to a digital business cards that can easily be shared. Check it out!

Use Canva for Year-End Slideshow or Video

As the year comes to a close, you may be looking for a way to put together a slideshow of photo memories from the school year. You can use Canva to help create and share these. You can set up a slideshow with images on each slide and add background music. Canva also has the complete video editor so you can customize it to your liking. See the tutorials for each of those options below.

Canva

BrainPop’s Summer Learning Packets

Dive into summer learning at home with BrainPOP and BrainPOP Jr. through your school’s subscription. Download these summer learning packets with engaging ways to keep building skills to bridge gaps and stay on track.

REMC’s Personal Purchase Program is back

REMC’s Personal Purchase Program is now available through September 30th. Three REMC awarded vendors are offering discounted devices for staff, students, and families. These purchases are for individuals, not districts. Use the contact information on the flyer linked below for questions about specific devices, delivery times, etc.

You can find information about the program on the Personal Purchase Program flyer.

You may also want to check out the Dell Education Purchase Program (EPP) Online Store at: www.dell.com/pccsk12

Google LTI and Canvas Known Issue 4/12/22 – RESOLVED 5/9/22

UPDATE: Canvas and Google have worked together to RESOLVE the issue described in last month’s blog post shown below. Thank you for your patience.

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Some teachers are experiencing Canvas assignment submissions that are subsequently inaccessible to them. This has been occurring when a Canvas assignment is created and students load a file from Google Drive. When the teachers open Speedgrader, instead of seeing a preview of the document they see a link to an unknown file type that they are unable to download or view.

Error teachers experience with Google Drive submissions

Students will have a clue that submission didn’t come through correctly when they select and attach an item from Google Drive they will see this:

error on student side — Students will see this when their attachment is unsuccessful. They should follow the directions linked below to upload the file as a PDF.

This is a Google LTI issue and we are currently working on a resolution. There are several potential workarounds:

You can create a Google Assignment in Canvas that creates a copy for each student.
Students can download the file as a PDF and upload it to Canvas.
Students can paste the Shared Google link into the comments of an existing assignment.
Teachers can check the “Website URL” entry option under the submission type and students can submit the Shared Google link.

location of website URL option — Teachers can select this Website URL option where students can paste the Shared Google link to their file.

We will update this blog post when the issue has been resolved. Resolved as of 5/9/22

Canva for Education Webinars

Do you love Canva? Would you like to learn more about how to use it in your classroom? Canva Learning Consultants are providing “quick hit” webinars this Spring to help you envision how to use Canvas for student collaboration, use it in STEM courses, Arts courses, Humanities courses, and for parent communication. Register for the 30 minute webinar (Tuesdays from 6:00-6:30 pm) and attend live or catch the recording.

Click here to see the options and register.

Some recent Zoom updates

New and enhanced features include:

Zoom Whiteboard – In April, Zoom launched the all-new, designed-from-the-ground-up Zoom Whiteboard, a cross-platform visual collaboration solution accessible in Zoom Meetings, Zoom Rooms, the Zoom desktop client for Windows, macOS, Linux, and the Zoom web portal. With Zoom Whiteboard, you can brainstorm and collaborate on a persistent, infinite digital canvas. Manage, share, edit, and duplicate Whiteboards directly from the Zoom Web Portal to access Zoom Whiteboard anywhere.

View breakout room activities from main session – Once breakout rooms are open, hosts and co-hosts can view the level of activity in each breakout room, including which participants are in each room, along with icons that show whether their audio or video is on, if they’re sharing their screen, and if they have any active reactions or nonverbal feedback. This feature requires hosts and participants to have client version 5.10.3 or higher. Viewing breakout room activities from the main session is also available for Windows, macOS, and Linux desktop clients.

Central library of polls – Users can manage a central library of polls for meetings. They can create or edit polls and use them for Personal Meeting ID (PMI) and non-PMI meetings. Previously, polls for PMI and non-PMI meetings were managed separately. When a poll is marked as available to all meetings, it will appear in the list of polls that can be launched in a meeting. This new central repository will not replace the “Personal Meeting (PMI) polls”; polls created here will only appear in PMI meetings. This feature is also available for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS desktop clients.

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How to get started with Zoom Whiteboard

To get started with Zoom Whiteboard, you’ll need Zoom version 5.10.3 or later. Here’s how you can create, access, and share your digital whiteboards:

Sign into your Zoom account using the Zoom client on your device or web browser.
Select the Whiteboards tab, and choose New Whiteboard to start a whiteboard.
To view your whiteboards, select the ‘My Whiteboards’ tab. You can also select ‘Shared with Me’ to view whiteboards that have been shared with you.
To share a digital whiteboard you’ve created, open the whiteboard you wish to share, select the Share button, and type the contact or email you wish to share the board with.

*Pro tip: Be sure to visit our support page to learn more about Zoom Whiteboard and its features!