BrainPop’s May Teacher Lounge newsletter

BrainPop May Teacher's Lounge

BrainPop’s May 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 what’s in their May newsletter.

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May 2022

Dear Educators,

May is Mental Health Awareness Month—a time to prioritize social and emotional well-being. Late spring can be particularly challenging as you juggle assessments and finish up the school year strong. No wonder Teacher Appreciation Week falls in May! We hope you take time for yourself this month (and always).

To support mental health awareness with your students, this month’s newsletter features movies highlighting topics such as self-esteem, conflict resolution, and mindfulness.

Warmly,
Jackie Glassman,
Director of Educator Content

Highlights from the April Google for Education newsletter

Google for Ed newsletter
Here are some highlights from the latest newsletter for your consideration.

 

Some digital resources to consider checking out….

Misc Digital resources

Online Safety

Online Safety Basics
Learn how to protect yourself, your family and devices with these tips and resources from the National CyberSecurity Alliance.

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Critical Media Project

Critical Media Project (CMP) describes itself as a free media literacy web resource for educators and students (ages 8-21) that enhances young people’s critical thinking and empathy, and builds on their capacities to advocate for change around questions of identity.

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MathTV

The MathTV library contains over 10,000 videos, from basic math through calculus. Many video sets have one conducted in Spanish, by a native speaker. To search for a specific video or example, click the magnifying glass icon in the toolbar. Instruction by a peer tutor can help students gain confidence in doing math. Each video is done by a different instructor so that students can see slightly different approaches and strategies to solving each problem.

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Kanopy

Kanopy makes thousands of videos available for free through public and university libraries. To check out a movie or video, you’ll just need a library card, and that library must subscribe to Kanopy (both Plymouth and Canton Public libraries subscribe – both libraries have shared with the tech dept that any teacher in the district can approach them and be issued a card even if they are not residents). Categories include movies, documentaries, foreign films, classic cinema, independent films, and educational videos. Kanopy Kids is a subset of this collection. Check out even more resources available at our local public libraries (Plymouth and Canton for elementary and secondary).

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Hoopla

Hoopla. Borrow movies, TV shows, music, audiobooks, ebooks, and more for free from public libraries that subscribe to Hoopla (both Plymouth’s and Canton’s Public libraries subscribe – both libraries have shared with the tech dept that any teacher in the district can approach them and be issued a card even if they are not residents). All you’ll need is a library card. You can use the categories or search filters to find a solid selection of content for your classroom. The KidZone is a section with children’s movies.

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Cosmo Learning

CosmoLearning (CL) is a non-profit educational website committed to improving the quality of homeschooling, teaching and student excellence and offers streaming and downloadable content for schools.

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TED-Ed

TED-Ed continues to add video content and lessons plans around subject matter.

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Go Noodle

Go Noodle curates fun collections of music videos, games, and activities offer opportunities for short bursts of physical exercise in the classroom — aimed at helping kids focus and build brainpower.

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Bigread

Big Library Read, facilitated by OverDrive, is a reading program through libraries that connects readers around the world with the same free ebook at the same time without any wait lists or holds. Currently you can checkout the free ebook and audiobook of Music is History by Questlove.

eyechart

And now, for something just for fun. You can use for classroom posters, something inspirational. So easy, no login. eyechartmaker.com

Microsoft Office 365 Now Available for Instructional Staff on New Dell Laptops

MS Office 365

We are very excited to announce that, starting today, all P-CCS instructional staff with a new Dell laptop are now able to access Microsoft Office 365. Prior to today, only a limited number of staff had access to Microsoft Office. Now, all instructional staff with a new Dell laptop can access the web version of Office 365 and/or install it on their new district laptop.

To install Microsoft Office 365, simply open the Company Portal, select Microsoft Office 365, and click install. For more detailed directions, please follow these step-by-step instructions.

As a reminder, please be patient while software is installed through the Company Portal. If you are logging into your laptop for the first time, the initial setup of your laptop (including the install of the Company Portal) can take up to 2 hours.

Additionally, students do not have access to Microsoft Office 365 through P-CCS, so please be sure to provide documents in a format that is compatible with Google Drive.

Please note that while we are able to offer free access to Microsoft Office 365 due to our current agreement with Microsoft. Microsoft is able to change these terms at any time. While not expected, if this occurs, we would no longer be able to offer staff continued access to Microsoft Office 365 and would do our best to notify affected staff as soon as possible should we need to rescind access.

Spring Book Study Opportunity

details for book study, can be found in post

The P-CCS Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Department (DEI) is pleased to invite you to participate in a spring book study with the Assistive & Instructional Technology (A&IT) and Technology Departments.

We will be reading and reflecting on the book, Antiracism and Universal Design for Learning: Building Expressways to Success authored by Andratesha Fritzgerald. This book will build on the concepts of Culturally Responsive Instruction and provide practical next steps for building more equitable and inclusive classrooms.

To participate, please be prepared to commit to the following schedule:
– attend two Zoom meetings to discuss the book (April 14 & April 28, 7-8 p.m.)
– complete asynchronous discussions & activities via Canvas LMS.

Course activities will conclude by May 12th. SCECHs will be available and the book will be provided. Space is limited. Reserve your spot by completing this form.

Create externally friendly booking pages with appointment scheduling in Google Calendar, available starting in April

In addition to appointment slots in Google Calendar, in mid-April Google will be introducing appointment scheduling for users to share their availability via a booking page, which can be used by those with OR without a district (or any) Google account. For those using calendly, youcanbook.me, and similar services, this upcoming feature addition might suggest you can switch at some point instead to using your Google calendar with its native integrations.

Why you’d use it

The existing appointment slot feature in Google Calendar is helpful for internal use cases, specifically if you don’t know who needs to meet with you, but you want to make yourself available for others with district Google accounts. For example, counselors can invite their students to office hours each week.
The new appointment scheduling feature is suited for external use cases, allowing external users, including those without a Google account, to schedule meetings. Additionally, with automatic conflict detection with existing Calendar events, this feature helps reduce time spent finding and rescheduling appointments.
appointment scheduling
Visit the Help Center to learn more about using appointment slots and appointment scheduling.

REMC’s April Virtual Courses, earn 10 Free SCECHs

REMC April courses

Spring is here – sharpen your skills with a REMC Course 
Finish the school year strong by applying new tips and tricks to your classroom. REMC offers instructor-led courses that provide 10 free SCECHs, and are open to all Michigan school personnel.

Registration deadline is Friday, April 1st. Through the support of REMC SAVE’s vendor partners, all courses are FREE and there are no SCECH fees. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to learn, connect, collaborate and grow from the convenience of your home.

Check out April 2022 courses here:

Register by Friday, April 1st. You will receive a welcome email with the course login and other information prior to the start date. If you have questions or need further assistance with your registration, please contact Erin Rommeck, REMC Event Coordinator.

Some recent Zoom updates

Zoom Updates

New versions of the Zoom Mac, Windows, and Linux clients are now available for download as of Tuesday, March 22, 2022 at https://zoom.us/download.

 

New and enhanced features include:

Meeting/webinar features

  • Avatars

    When enabled during a meeting, Zoom’s technology uses your device’s camera to detect where a face is on the screen and apply the selected avatar effect. This feature requires 5.10.0 or higher.

  • Rename participants in Waiting Room

    Hosts and co-hosts can rename meeting participants in the waiting room before they enter the meeting. After locating a participant’s name in the waiting room section of the participant list, an option appears in the … menu to rename that participant. The participant is notified of this change.

  • Save Breakout Room assignments for future use

    When breakout rooms are created, the host can save that current configuration and participant assignments, which can be used in future sessions. This is only available for recurring meetings and limited to 10 saved configurations per user.

  • Share audio with content to all breakout rooms

    Hosts are able to share computer audio, along with shared content, to all breakout rooms. This can be enabled when beginning the share, or while sharing is in progress. This also supports the Share Video option as well for Breakout Rooms.

  • Optional include co-host when automatically assigning breakout rooms

    When creating breakout rooms and choosing to assign participants automatically, any co-hosts will now not automatically be included in the assignments, but the host can choose to include them.

Instructional staff new laptops’ FAQs and general guidance

As a reminder, our new FAQ page is available to address questions surrounding the new instructional staff Windows 10 Dell laptops. Questions found in service tickets are helping inform what is shared on this site.

Staff being issued these laptops are also encouraged to review:

  • Our blog post on backing up files on your current Windows laptop to Google Drive.

  • A bit more visual guidance on using Google Drive for Windows to assist with backing up your Windows laptop’s files/folders to your Google Drive.

  • Remember you can also copy any files/folders from your laptop into your network G drive.

  • Here is a humorous video reminder on what not to do with your new laptops. While a bit tongue in cheek, we certainly want to encourage as much stewardship as possible – they are really nice computers and we hope to have them in circulation and used for a long time. Thanks for doing your part.