Canva for Education…Now District-Wide!

I’m pleased to share that we’ve recently launched Canva for Education district-wide! Canva makes it easy to create, collaborate, and communicate visually – in the classroom and beyond. If you’ve never heard of Canva for Education, you can learn more about the tool here.

With Canva for Education, you can create classroom decor kits, Canvas buttons & banners, education presentations, lesson plans, worksheets, reports, posters, and more. You can empower your students through authentic assessments and tasks, enabling them to create beautiful, real-world deliverables quickly and easily. You can use Canva for student assignments and enable real-time collaboration on Canva projects. Students can turn-in these projects and you can embed your designs easily with the Canvas integration.

Everyone with a district email address will receive all the benefits of Canva for Education, including all of Canva’s “pro” features, at no cost and with no validation or application required. You can log in to our new Canva district team with your district credentials at www.canva.com and you can also find it in the waffle.

Please take some time to review this teacher onboarding guide from the team at Canva. We encourage everyone to review these materials, as there are some aspects of the district Canva platform that will differ from what you may be used to if you’ve already used Canva. If you already have a Canva account under your district email address it’s especially important to pay attention to the pages that have to do with logging in, switching teams, and copying files. You can view just those pages here.

If you have any questions about Canva, or would like to learn more about using Canva in the classroom, you can contact a Tech Integration Specialist by submitting a ticket. There are also lots of great resources available at designschool.canva.com.  

See additional resources below.

 

Some upcoming changes to students’ online access and experience

Googel Zoom

We’d like to alert you to two online services we use (Zoom and Google) who are enforcing changes to the student experience in the coming school year.  In June we posted about Google’s upcoming age-based changes taking effect and have re-posted our information below with a bit more elaboration.

ZOOM meeting changes

This summer Zoom announced a policy change that will be going into effect in a few weeks that prohibits any student from having a Zoom account associated with a K-12 educational institution. This is being done in part to align their terms and conditions since people under the age of 16 aren’t otherwise permitted an account (up until now those under 16 had only been permitted under the “School Subscriber” terms within Zoom for Education accounts) and in part done to increase the security of meetings. Their new solution is called external authentication, which allows institutions to have an increased level of security without having students in their account.  Students will be able to join Zoom meetings safely and securely without the use of a Zoom account and will simply authenticate for meeting access using their district Google account. Some FAQs they have shared are posted below.

Will Breakout Rooms work if my students do not have Zoom accounts?
Yes, you can still use Breakout Rooms as usual. If you would like to pre-assign students to Breakout Rooms, you will need to upload a CSV file with the details .

Will my guest speakers or teacher be able to join a meeting?
Any external guests will not be able to join the meeting unless that specific party has an authorized account in your SSO Identity Provider.

How is this different from standard Zoom/SSO Authentication?
This is authenticating users upon joining a meeting and does not create a Zoom account.

Can I pull a report of the students and have accurate attendance information?
Yes, all student’s names will be documented accurately with their associated email address.

[We had a virtual meeting with our account representative last month to discuss these upcoming changes and among other questions asked about the ability for users to add their personal pronouns. While they said that it was possible, it would have to be mapped via a field in Google since Zoom accounts were no longer going to be associated with our students. At this point, we’re not in a position to set up that mapping, but are looking into other options.]

Safer learning with Google for Education

  • Google is launching a new, age-based setting to control their app experience for users that goes into effect next month. See this support page for more detail. [Since we don’t have a way to group students by their age in our admin console, these settings will apply to ALL of our students, from our youngest to any students at PCEP and Starkweather that might be 18 or older during their time in district.]
    • After September 1, 2021, students will see changes in their experience across Google products.  For example, after September 1, students in K-12 domains can view YouTube content assigned by teachers, but they won’t be able to post videos, comment or live stream using their school Google account. More specifically, our students’ district YouTube accounts won’t have access to or be able to…
      • Create channels, playlists, stories, shorts, or upload videos
      • Watch or create live stream events
      • See or post comments
      • Participate in live chat
      • Use apps, including YouTube Go, YouTube Music, YouTube Studio, YouTube TV, and YouTube VR
    • After September 1, 2021, students will see changes in their experience when signed into Chrome.  For example, after September 1, to ensure a safer web browsing experience for K-12 institutions, SafeSearch and SafeSites will be on by default, and Guest Mode and Incognito Mode will be off by default.

Time to Consider Cross-listing

time to consider cross-listing

As we approach the new school year, those of you who are teaching multiple sections of the same course might consider cross-listing in Canvas. Cross-listing allows you to move section enrollments from individual courses and combine them into one course. This feature is helpful for instructors who teach several sections of the same course and only want to manage course data in one location. So if you are a teacher that has multiple sections of one course or an elementary specialist that has many different sections, cross listing may be a great option for you and a big time saver. However, this action should only be done before a semester starts. Canvas recommends it be done before a course is published. If it is done after a course is published and notably student work has been submitted, that student work will be lost. Review the slideshow below carefully to help you decide if you want to do it. [Please note, teachers should expect to have access to their new, MISTAR-linked Canvas courses a few days before students start school and anytime after they gain access they will be able to cross list them if they choose.]

Please reach out to a Technology Integration Specialist if you need help deciding if this is right for you or if you want assistance setting it up.

Two-Factor Authentication (for staff) to access MISTAR, goes into effect August 27, 2021

2FA Mistar

Due to enhanced cybersecurity insurance requirements in response to the dramatic rise in cyber-attacks, districts must ensure that staff pass two-factor authentication to gain access to personally identifiable data (PII), including student data within MISTAR. Districts, including ours, are required to enable two-factor authentication for staff accessible applications (Q and Student Scan) by August 27, 2021.

NOTE: The Student Connection and Parent Connection applications accessed by students and parents ARE NOT required to be enabled at this time.

  • Upon logging in, each staff user will be required to retrieve and enter a system generated six-digit number.
  • The number will be emailed to their email address and will come from each user’s own email address.
  • If logging into the mobile app and notifications for the app are activated on the device, the number may also be received via push notification.
  • Staff will need to authenticate only once per day (as opposed to each login throughout the day) using the same browser and same device. Each browser or device will require authentication each day access is attempted.

2FA for MISTAR

Access to Google Drive Cloud Assignment service to be “hidden”, effective August 1st

In two of last October’s P-CCS Technology Newsletters (10/07/2020 and 10/21/2020), the technology department had blog posts about the Google Drive Cloud Assignment service (Google Drive Cloud Assignment Going Away in Canvas and Google Assignment Clarification Post). As we shared in those blog posts, the GDCA service is an older service of Canvas’s Google Integration and its technical support and development were effectively being curtailed by Canvas. Canvas’ advice to our district at the time has not changed, if anything, it has grown more insistent — wean users from any reliance on the GDCA service, and for those looking for Google integration continue to direct them to only use our newer, supported service, Google Assignment (associated with Google’s updated assignment creation/management tool).

On August 1, 2021, as we noted last October, we will be hiding access to the service; by hiding access to the service instead of removing it altogether, while teachers will no longer be able to create new Google Drive Cloud assignments, they will still be able to open previously created Drive Cloud assignments in Canvas, both to review them and, when interested, to convert them into Google Assignments.

For information and help on how to convert a GDCA to a Google Assignment, check out the video below:

For more information on Google Assignments, please click here.

Some Updates Coming to Google Workspace for Education

Workspace changes

Google regularly updates/changes their Workspace apps. To follow their launched release changes, visit HERE. To check out details on planned release changes, visit HERE. In no particular order, some recently launched or expected release changes to note include:

File / Video Security Updates

  • Some shared files in your Google Drive will require using a URL that contains a resource key. This security update is being applied to some files in Google Drive to make sharing links more secure. This change will impact users who haven’t previously viewed a file that you’re sharing. As an end-user, this shouldn’t change anything for you other than the link that you initially share if you use the “anyone with the link” option to share a file. This change will be implemented beginning July 26th with full enforcement on and after September 13, 2021.
  • Videos in your YouTube account that were uploaded prior to January 1, 2017 and were marked as “unlisted” will be changed to “private” on July 23rd. You can revert them back to “unlisted” after the 23rd. Read more about this change here. This update doesn’t affect videos uploaded after January 1, 2017.
Google Forms
  • Twenty new font choices are being added to Google Forms.
  • The settings menu is going to be revamped to “simplify” the application of settings.
Google Docs
  • Improved revision history – To see who added or modified a portion of your document, simply highlight the text, right click and select “see editors.” This is so much quicker and easier than digging through revision history!  Show editors
  • Create interactive checklists in Google Docs. There’s a new checkbox option that you can add in place of bullet points in Google Docs. This is available now. See screenshot below for an example.  See this support page as well. Soon we will be able to assign checklist action items to other people and these action items will show up in their Google Tasks (as a reminder, browse to https://mail.google.com/tasks/canvas and login with your Google account. This is a full screen view of your Google Tasks.)
Google checklist
  • Google introduced the idea of a “smart chip” to demonstrate that Docs is more than just a page of text. Smart chips allow you to link to files, people, and events in your document. Just type the @ symbol and tag a person, file, or calendar event.
  • Coming soon…Pageless documents – Unless you are planning to print a document, there is no reason to limit yourself to 8.5×11. Google Docs now supports a “pageless” view that will automatically reflow text to fit the size of the screen you are using. If you do need to print, you can always switch back to the traditional view.

    Emoji reactions in Docs – Starting this fall you will be able to add emoji reactions to portions of a document, a quick way to provide feedback without the need to leave a full comment.

Safer learning with Google for Education

  • Google is launching a new, age-based setting to control their app experience for users. See this support page for more detail.
    • After September 1, 2021, students who are under 18 will see changes in their experience across Google products.  For example, after September 1, students designated as under 18 in K-12 domains can view YouTube content assigned by teachers, but they won’t be able to post videos, comment or live stream using their school Google account.
    • After September 1, 2021, students who are under 18 will see changes in their experience when signed into Chrome.  For example, after September 1, to ensure a safer web browsing experience for K-12 institutions, SafeSearch and SafeSites will be on by default, and Guest Mode and Incognito Mode will be off by default.

Locating Your 2020-21 School Year Canvas Courses

Image of selecting course content to copy

When you next login to Canvas, you may be looking for your courses from last year (the recently ended 2020-21 school year). To find them click on the Courses button on the Global Navigation menu and then “All Courses” to arrive at http://pccsk12.instructure.com/courses. At the bottom of that page you will find “Past Enrollments.”

Visual of buttons needed to access courses

The courses in “Past Enrollments” are view only, including the copies you made per our directions in another blog post. In order to edit your course and start making updates for the 21-22 school year, you need create a new course and copy last year’s content into it.

August 27, 2021 Update: You do not have to create a sandbox course. You can start at step 2 and import your old course directly into your 21-22, MiStar-created course.

 

Two ways to create a course

Give your course a name and then import existing content into the course.

1.

Giving the course a name

2.

Import existing content

3.

Image of selecting course content to copyTo watch these steps in video format: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvR3xt3RIVw

Please reach out to a Technology Integration Specialist if you need assistance.

to ensure greater security, SMARTweb to require multi-factor authentication

SMART MFA

In an effort to make more secure the SMART web interface where staff go to view payroll information and perform business functions, the system will require multi-factor authentication starting July 1, 2021. The initial piece of information staff will be asked for is their email address, and after providing it, staff will need to retrieve an access code they are then emailed to continue to log into SMART. For more about this change, visit this explanation page.

 

SMART MFA details

2021 JULY REMC Free Virtual Courses with 10 free SCECHs // New Web series offering too

REMC courses

VIRTUAL COURSES, The REMC Virtual Courses offer an easy, convenient way for teachers to connect and collaborate during the summer from the convenience of their home. The Virtual Courses are free, offer free 10 SCECHs when completed, and are open to all Michigan school personnel. There are no registration or SCECH fees because REMC SAVE’s vendor partners provide support for all REMC professional learning opportunities.

Register by Friday July 2nd – Classes Begin July 5th

If you have questions or need further assistance with your course registration, please contact Erin Rommeck, REMC Event Coordinator.

NEW WEB SERIES:

Each offering includes a robust toolkit of resources to support teacher planning and student learning. Participants may choose to attend one or more of the seven sessions. To earn SCECHs, participants must attend the live webinar and complete the assigned task following the webinar. Two (2) SCECHs per session.

Blended Learning Sessions:

Teaching Strategies for Virtual and Blended Learning Environments: Introduction

Session details and dates available:  https://bit.ly/3jDOBDO

 

Teaching Strategies for Virtual and Blended Learning: Help Students Demonstrate Mathematical Thinking K-2 

Session details and dates available: https://bit.ly/3zzgoh4

 

Teaching Strategies for Virtual and Blended Learning: Help Students Demonstrate Mathematical Thinking 3-6

Session details and dates available:  https://bit.ly/3pRD5bz

 

Teaching Strategies for Virtual and Blended Learning: Help Students Demonstrate Mathematical Thinking 7-12

Session details and dates available:  https://bit.ly/3vmZw9I

 

Teaching Strategies for Virtual and Blended Learning Language Arts: Growing Early Literacy Learners K-2

Session details and dates available: https://bit.ly/3xec3xy

 

Teaching Strategies for Virtual and Blended Learning Language Arts: Growing Literacy Learners 3-5

Session details and dates available:  https://bit.ly/3xx4suv

 

Teaching Strategies for Virtual and Blended Learning Language Arts: Growing Literacy Learners 6-12

Session details and dates available:  https://bit.ly/3gkyc7V

 

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