BrainPop’s Winter Tips

BrainPop’s Winter newsletter for K-12 instructional staff is found below.

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

Theme: Wellness and Resilience

Right now is an ideal time for educators and students to focus on skills that support mental health, teamwork, and perseverance. BrainPOP supports this need with our collection of SEL resources that offer detailed lesson plans for educators and encourage students to connect their stories to the stories of others.
BP SEL

Strategy: BrainPOP Movie Engagement

Before pressing play for the BrainPOP Movie, click ‘closed captioning’. Closed captioning encourages the class to read together, shows correct spelling, punctuation & sentence structure, and helps strengthen students’ vocabulary skills. Enjoy our playlist of BrainPOP ernels offering teaching tips and tricks in 90 seconds or less.
BP Modicifaction
BP Kernels

Explore: BrainPOP Modifications Chart

Meet various instructional needs in synchronous and asynchronous learning using the BrainPOP Modifications Chart. In Make-a-Movie students can explore on their own and create movies independently around concepts addressed after whole group instruction.
BP mods

Canvas Semester Transition SY21-22

Canvas Semester Transition SY21-22

Semester 1 will be ending on January 28, 2022.

First Semester Courses

  • Teachers will have access to make edits, give feedback, and grade assignments in Canvas until 11:59 pm on February 2, 2022. After that date, the course will have read-only access. You will be able to copy the content from your Semester 1 course to your Semester 2 course (and beyond) even after the course has concluded.
  • Students will have access to participate in Term 1 courses until 11:59 pm on January 28, 2022.  After that date, students will have read-only access to the course (with the exception of quiz questions to which they will not have access). 

Please remember to publish your Semester 2 courses!

Year-Long Courses

  • Teachers will have access to make edits, give feedback, and grade assignments in Canvas for first semester until 11:59 pm on February 2, 2022. After that date, the grades will not be editable.
  • Students will continue to have access to submit assignments with due dates in the first semester UNLESS YOU HAVE AN AVAILABLE UNTIL DATE OF JAN. 28 OR EARLIER.  You can edit those dates in bulk by following the steps here.

Semester 2 begins January 31st, 2022.  You can filter your grade book to view assignments with due dates in the Semester 2 grading period by following the steps here.

Affordable Connectivity Program available for our families

ACP

Please share with our families information about the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), a continuation of the Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB) with a few changes.

  • From the FCC’s ACP website: https://www.fcc.gov/acp
    • The benefit provides a discount of up to $30 per month toward internet service for eligible households. Eligible households can also receive a one-time discount of up to $100 to purchase a laptop, desktop computer, or tablet from participating providers if they contribute more than $10 and less than $50 toward the purchase price. The Affordable Connectivity Program is limited to one monthly service discount and one device discount per household.
      • Eligibility
      • A household is eligible if a member of the household meets at least one of the criteria below:
      • Has an income that is at or below 200% of the federal poverty guidelines; or
      • Participates in certain assistance programs, such as SNAP, Medicaid, Federal Public Housing Assistance, SSI, WIC, or Lifeline;
      • Participates in Tribal specific programs, such as Bureau of Indian Affairs General Assistance, Tribal TANF, or Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations;
      • Is approved to receive benefits under the free and reduced-price school lunch program or the school breakfast program, including through the USDA Community Eligibility Provision in the 2019-2020, 2020-2021, or 2021-2022 school year;
      • Received a Federal Pell Grant during the current award year; or
      • Meets the eligibility criteria for a participating provider’s existing low-income program.
  • Let’s make sure eligible families in our community are aware of this federal subsidy that is fairly easy to sign up for. The EBB toolkit has been modified for the ACP, but still has all the printable resources needed to spread the word (in English and Spanish). Here’s the link to the ACP Toolkit website: https://www.fcc.gov/acp-consumer-outreach-toolkit.

Device Monitoring/Management Tools

Lanschool is a monitoring tool

LANSCHOOL This is a reminder that teachers in grades 2 through 8 can use LanSchool to monitor and manage the district Chromebooks their students are using.

For elementary and middle school teachers whose students use Chromebooks, the following linked directions will NOT apply to new teachers or those new to LanSchool.  If you are a new-to-the-district teacher OR if you did not install LanSchool in the past please first submit a service request asking for LanSchool so that a technician can assign you a channel to use when you run the installation: Service ticket

Please follow these directions ONLY if you have used LanSchool in the past: Click Here  While the directions have a lot of “clicks”, it should actually only take a couple of minutes to load and install.


APPLE CLASSROOM This is a reminder that teachers in lower elementary can use Apple Classroom to monitor and manage the district ipads their students are using. Please submit a service request asking for Apple Classroom training so that a technology integration specialist can further assist you: Service ticket


SECURLY HOME This is a reminder that OUR FAMILIES can now monitor/manage district take home ipads and Chromebooks internet usage by their student using SECURLY HOME. All take home participant families were emailed sign up details. There are no costs to our families to use this service. Using Securly Home, parents/guardians can monitor and restrict the content that their students can access on their district-issued devices. Here is a brief 90-second video for more information about Securly Home. Families can check out the FAQs on the Securly Home help site or submit a support ticket with Securly for further assistance.

Recent Canvas Updates

December Updates

  • Course Import Warning Message: When you use the “Copy To” option in Canvas, you will now get a warning about overwriting existing content. This displays regardless of whether the actual content was previously imported or not. It is just there to remind you to be careful.
  • Image Option Percentage: Embedded images can be customized by pixels or percentages.
  • To Do Speedgrader Link Tab Setting: Under Settings and Feature options, instructors can choose to open their To Do items in a new tab. This setting is turned on by default.

January Updates (1/15/22)

  • New Quizzes Partial Credit for Matching: You can now choose if students will receive partial credit if they get parts of the matching set wrong. Previously, if they got one wrong, then entire section would be marked as wrong. Release Screencast
  • Ability to Collapse Course Navigation Menu: You will be able to hide the Course Navigation Menu like you can minimize the Global Navigation Menu.
  • Missing Status Removes When a Grade is Entered: If an assignment was marked as missing, when you enter a grade for the assignment, it will no longer have the missing designation.
  • External Link & Tool Module Link (Open in a New Tab) Setting: When you add an External Tool or External Link to a module, you are given the choice if you want the link to open in a new tab or not. The choice you make will now be “sticky” and will remain the default until you chose a different option.
  • Unposted Comment Warning: In Speedgrader, you will now get a warning if you try to navigate away before posting the comment.

Please reach out if you have additional questions about these updates.

End-of-Term Review Templates

As we draw near to the end of the first semester, you might be looking for some ideas to put students in the driver’s seat of reviewing for exams or projects. Here are a few ideas and templates.

  1. Thin Slide Study Guide
    • Thin Slides is a versatile, collaborative slide deck. Generally, each student gets one slide, one picture, and one word to create and briefly present on. This study guide version has a twist in that it has key terms and students write the definition in their own terms and find a picture to represent it. On following days, the process it repeated but each student get a slide someone else has already done. The included template also has an explainer video for the teacher.
  2. Hexagonal Thinking
    • A few years ago, the Cult of Pedagogy blog and podcast posted about Hexagonal Thinking. It serves as a visual way to make connections between ideas. It generates thinking and discussion as students realize the various connections that other people made and explain their own thinking. You could provide the terms you want them to connect or see what students are able to generate on their own with this template.

Submit a tech ticket if you have questions about implementing these strategies in your classroom.

Canvas Quizzes: Accommodations, Matching Partial Credit, & New Date for Classic Quizzes Sunset

Classic Quiz Sunset Timeline Extended

Canvas has announced that it is delaying the sunset timeline for Classic Quizzes until June 30, 2024. Our district may begin restricting the creation of new Classic Quizzes later this year, but existing Classic Quizzes will be available longer than originally anticipated.

New Quizzes Update (January 15): Partial Credit in Matching

In the past, many teachers have bemoaned that partial credit cannot be awarded on Matching questions. Starting January 15, New Quizzes will now have that option! See this post for more information.

Quiz Accommodations in Classic and New Quizzes

We recently received a question about how to accommodate students tests/quizzes in Canvas. There are a lot of moderation options in Canvas, but the specific question was around students that may begin their quiz during class and receive extra time during their Resource hour. Below you will find a resource on how to accomplish this as well information on how students can resume a Quiz, moderating New and Classic Quizzes, and how to reopen an attempt for students.

Please submit a ticket if you have additional questions about this.


You may also view this collection of resources here: https://wke.lt/w/s/5aK43b

 

Some websites to check out

Collage

— One of 2021’s Webby Awards in the Education category honoree’s National Geographic’s MapMaker empowers learners to explore Earth’s interconnected systems through a collection of curated basemaps, data layers, and annotation tools.

MapMaker

— The Blue Marine Foundation’s The Sea We Breathe is an interactive online project that won an FWA (Favorite Website Award of the month) earlier this year. Dive into 3 immersive underwater journeys and discover why a healthy ocean means a healthy planet.

The Sea we breathe

— Perhaps for some lower elementary students using the interactive flat panels, this story of a little bird crossing the river that also won an FWA.

Storybird

Fingerspelling.xyz uses Hand Tracking & Machine Learning to help teach the ABCs in American Sign Language. Created together with the American Society for Deaf Children (also an FWA noted site).

Fingerspelling

— Google’s Internet Saathi project highlights stories of women breaking cycles of inequality (FWA cited).

Saathi

— Solve artistic jigsaw puzzles together with family and friends in this Google Arts and Culture experiment 

Puzzle Party

 

PHOTOS ONLINE — The following are just some of the sites that house collections of photos from the past year. One or more might serve as a conversation starter in your learning environment.

The Guardian’s best photographs of 2021 – and the stories behind them 

AlJazeera’s 2021 In Pictures: The best photos from around the world

TIME’s Top 100 Photos of 2021

My Modern Met’s Best of 2021: Top 50 Photographs From Around the World

National Geographic’s top photos and stories from 2021

25 of 2021 NORTHERN LIGHTS PHOTOS

 

 

 

Free online PD now available through January 7th

DitchThatSummitVideos

Just a friendly reminder 😉 that the free online PD we mentioned in an earlier blog posting is still available for a limited time through January 7, 2022. Here’s a link to many of the over 80 videos already available.  A few you might want to check out include Mike Lang’s Canvas tips, new Seesaw resources, Make Math Collaborative with EquatIO Mathspace (a free to our district teachers online tool accessible via equat.io), and visual learning tips using Canva.


The Ditch That Textbook Digital Summit hosted by Matt Miller promises valuable knowledge from top innovators AND tips you can implement immediately. All videos — more than 70 — will be available in December and early January. Like any other conference, when it’s over, it’s over and the videos will disappear. Speaker videos last anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. They’re practical and inspirational, from hand-picked education leaders. Each video is accompanied by a PDF notes page summarizing the message. Download the notes, share, and keep them as long as you want.

To get a flavor for what might be shared, check out some past Ditch Summit Sketchnotes created by Jen Giffen (@virtualgiff) below: