Sworkit Kids is a great place to find fun activities to use as physical brain breaks during in-person and online classes, according to Richard Byrne. The video embedded below is his overview of the site.
Closed captions are an essential accessibility tool for people who are deaf or hard of hearing (and for people with other conditions as well). Captioning is also a useful feature for many students as an additional representation of information in a virtual setting. Previously in Zoom, closed captioning was only available from third party providers or by assigning someone to type captions. Now automatic, live transcription of closed captions is an available feature in the Zoom desktop client (not the Chrome browser application). Once enabled, this automatically adds text to the bottom of the video with what the host and others are saying. Please note however, live transcription does not work in breakout rooms, only within the main session.
When closed captioning is enabled, as the host you will see the live-transcript below your video, but they DO NOT automatically appear for your participants. Instead, participants will receive a notification and must click the “Closed Caption” option in the menu bar (and usually click Show Subtitle) to start viewing the captions. Once they have done so, the size of the captions can be adjusted under “Accessibility” in the video settings.
Elaborating on the CC options:
Bear in mind:
If you are hosting a meeting with live-transcription, we recommend making a comment at the beginning of your meeting informing your meeting participants that live-transcription is available and a note about how to enable them. Encourage all your students to try turning the captions on to see if it has an impact on their comprehension or capacity to pay attention. Make it a best UDL (Universal Design for Learning) practice to enable closed captioning during all of your meetings.
For more information on UDL and closed captioning, please read this article.
With the start of the 2nd semester arriving soon, we’d like to again provide step by step directions (please see below) for those teachers interested in transferring content from one Canvas course to another. We shared similar directions covering the export/import process at the outset of our school year to assist teachers in migrating content out of courses they had created and built in to the MISTAR-rostered course shells that appeared in their accounts.
Bulk adjusting due dates and times:
*Please note that canvas exports do not include backups of student interactions and grades. Grades can be exported separately as CSV files.
**Year-long courses do not apply here. However, it is still good practice to make backups of your courses.
Below are some best practices when transferring content, this includes exporting your grades, settings, and downloading additional data.
Best Practice: Keep Sem 1 and Sem 2 clean and separate to have easier content management and processing. For those with a course that spans the year, consider just copying the last module or most recent content from your Semester 1 course into your Semester 2 course so that you are starting with an almost fresh course. (You can always have view access extended to the Semester 1 course so that students are able to review their past work at any time – unless you’d prefer to restrict access to that course content.)
You could also extend course dates in Semester 1 courses if you need students to have more time to participate/work in those courses, although you will need to bear in mind MISTAR grade submission deadlines.
BrainPop’s January 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 some of what’s in their latest newsletter.
The Webby Awards annually note websites with interesting design and elements to explore. Here are some sites you might want to check out, in no particular order:
Future of Tech hosts a free & growing library of resources to get you up to speed on what’s new & next.
Poly is an online library where people can browse, share, and remix thousands of 3D models or scenes.
People Not Property: Stories of Slavery in the Colonial North
Canvas is a Chrome/Google supported drawing app.
Applied Digital Skills reviews digital skills needed for the jobs of today and tomorrow with Google’s free video lessons.
Ted-Ed lessons
AFT’s Share My Lesson
See REMC’s latest newsletter HERE
John Sowash offers five Jamboard templates work for all ages and subject areas! Check them out HERE.
Three of these Jamboard activities work well as whole-class assignments. Two more work best as individual or small-group activities.
These Jamboard lessons work with Chromebooks, tablets, phones, and laptops.
Every so often we share news of EdTech websites to check out. Today we’re alerting you to three, each of which is chockablock with tips and musings to explore within the interface of pedagogy and tech.
In case you want to check out others’ recommendations for EdTech blogs, see BrainScape’s, Explain Everything’s or Kathy Schrock’s lists.
Earlier this week the district updated Canvas with the dates of the three grading periods for all of our elementary school year-long courses. Consequently, elementary school teachers are now able to filter their grade books, assignments’ list, and students’ grades pages by trimester instead of having to view all graded content from the school year. Since implementation, STUDENTS only have VIEW-ONLY ACCESS to first trimester course content and are no longer able to submit work for assignments associated with the first trimester since it is not the current grading period AND TEACHERS similarly CAN NO LONGER ADJUST GRADES/FEEDBACK for first trimester submissions.
Please find quick overview directions and screenshots in this document for term filtering.
* High School Teachers – likely we will be setting grading periods for your semester-long and year -long courses too, so that you may filter by term as well.
Interested in noting apps and services Google has or will shutter? Check out a site that curates this bit of Google history — https://killedbygoogle.com/