As the school year moves forward, we understand that everyone gets busy and sometimes details get lost in the mix.  In particular, the Tech Department would like to remind everyone that it’s important to secure both your teacher devices and student cart-based devices when not in use, and especially over night.

Please secure your district-provided device in a locking closet, cabinet, or desk, and make sure the student device carts have all of their devices in them and are locked each night. We all want to protect these valuable investments!

Additionally, with the colder weather coming, it’s important to remember that district devices should not be left in cars in that cold weather. When a computer/ipad is brought from consistent cold temperatures into a warm building, its ambient temperature change causes condensation internally; condensate (water moisture) in turn can cause damage to the system board and other electronics. Everyone knows how important our computers are to us on a daily basis and we don’t want anything to happen to them so please help keep our devices from experiencing “temperature swings”! Thanks.

 

John R. Sowash is a former Michigan HS biology teacher and principal who has been helping teachers use technology to improve instruction for many years. One way he has been doing so is by writing a fantastic blog about all things Chromebook.  Bookmark it and enjoy learning!

Visit: https://www.chrmbook.com/blog/

21Things4Students is Project-Based Curriculum for Grades 5-9, supports MiTECS competencies

On October 8th Google announced that their app Grasshopper, created for students to use to learn to code, now can run in a web browser. The app/site has several courses designed to intuitively help someone build coding skills. Each lesson starts with an introduction to some vocabulary before moving into the coding lessons. Each lesson has a tutorial, a practice activity, and a quiz. You have to successfully complete each lesson before progressing to the next one. Grasshopper will save your work in progress.

For more information visit https://grasshopper.app/ and to start coding today on a Chromebook, Mac or Windows PC, browse to https://learn.grasshopper.app/

The Regional Educational Media Center Association (REMC) of Michigan promotes the transformative use of technology and provides Michigan schools with access to educational resources to help teachers increase student success. They’ve just released their October Connect newsletter with info on the 21Things4Students project-based curriculum (https://remc.org/21things4students), fall learning opportunities, upcoming free virtual courses, and more.

Here’s a link to their October Connect newsletter.

Here’s a link to an archived list of their most recent Connect newsletters.

And finally, a link should you want to subscribe to either (or both) of their once monthly electronic mailings of the Connect Newsletter AND/OR on upcoming and available free virtual courses!

The Read&Write for Google WEB Toolbar can be used to access web pages in the Chrome browser. Students and staff can use supports like text to speech, word prediction, talking and picture dictionaries, study skills highlighters and more.

RW4G@PCCS website: WEB Toolbar https://sites.google.com/pccsk12.com/rw4g-pccs/toolbars/web-toolbar?authuser=0 RW4G

@PCCS website: Tools Demo https://sites.google.com/pccsk12.com/rw4g-pccs/toolbars/tools-demo

Read&Write for Google WEB Tip Sheet https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wEOXhwyAh45PgjfsOUZhXEo6hXmPHbj6JmRtxh-KuIk/view

Last May (2019), all Google EDU account holders around the world that had YouTube Brand accounts were notified by Google that their YouTube Brand accounts would be deleted a couple of months later, in July 2019. While worldwide millions received that notice, in our district it was ~60 staffers and ~2400 students. Google later decided to instead suspend EDU Brand accounts in July and only outright delete them this coming November (2019). For the ~60 P-CCS staff, the Technology department submitted online forms necessary to obtain a temporary one year extension (until July 15, 2020) from suspension / deletion of their Brand accounts. Student brand accounts were not eligible for any extension and were suspended this past July.

One major result of the account suspensions that were not foreseen by Administrators or Google, is that if a user had configured their Brand account to be the default account to use when signing into YouTube, they could not view YouTube videos at all until they changed the default channel by selecting the box under “Settings > Advanced Settings” within YouTube.

If you encounter any students unable to view YouTube, please let them know the following:

Affected student users need to sign-out of Google (or delete their cookies) then navigate to youtube.com/channel_switcher and sign in again, remembering to change the default channel once they sign-in. Once this has been done on one device, it will fix the issue on any of their other devices.

Some students might find it easier/possible, to simply delete their Brand account by browsing to  https://myaccount.google.com/brandaccounts and deleting the Brand account. Once deleted, they should be able to again log into YouTube.

For those interested, especially those staffers with Brand accounts and a one year extension, guidance on content retention as well as more background on the situation can be found here.

 

 

 

If you think you might have missed an email sent to a group that you’re a member of, head to groups.google.com, click on My Groups, then find and click on the name of the group and in most instances a page will open listing past email messages to that group.

At Groups, you can also adjust how emails are sent to you for each group for whom you are a member by clicking the down arrow to the right of “Every new message” found on the right hand side of the landing page: 

Note, some groups are set to show who are their members; others are not. If set to show, click on “Members” to see a list along with the date they were added/joined the group.

This and more can be explored by visiting groups.google.com.

UPDATE: If the original solution does not help you regain access to Google Mail (Gmail), see if the following helps:

On the mail page that doesn’t load, depress both the control key (ctrl) and the F5 key at the same time. The page should refresh and mail should load.

————————————

Should the above not work, another temporary solution is:

STEP 1) Navigate to: chrome://settings/cookies/detail?site=mail.google.com
(you may need to copy and paste the link in your browser)

STEP 2) Find the below entry and click on the X:

STEP 3) Reload your Gmail or visit http://mail.google.com

If this does not resolve your issue, please submit a service request.

Original Post

If you ran into the issue with Gmail this week, you know who you are. From time to time, Google’s Sync technology that allows your browser to save your bookmarks, passwords, form data, etc., seems to get a bit glitchy. This week, it appears to have kept some of you from being able to access your Gmail.

Fortunately the fix is easy and can get someone back up and running in a snap. So, if you have an issue with one or more Google apps and you hear the suggestion that it might have something to do with your profile (or you just want to try this and see if it helps), here’s what to do:

Remove your “profile” and then add it back to the browser. After doing so, you will want to choose “Link Data” when you are adding your profile back so that it syncs important things like bookmarks, passwords, form data, etc. See elaboration on these steps below:

Remove a person or profile

After you remove someone from Chrome, their bookmarks, history, passwords, and other settings are erased from the computer.

1. On your computer, open Chrome.
2. At the top right, click Profile .

1. Click Manage people.
2. 
3. Point to the person you want to remove. For this exercise you want to remove yourself.
4. 
5. At the top right of the person (aka you), click More   Remove this person.
6. Confirm by clicking Remove this person.

Once you have removed yourself, you can add yourself back as well and re-sync or link your data again. See below for the steps to add yourself back to the Chrome browser.

Add a person or profile

1. On your computer, open Chrome.
2. At the top right, click Profile .
3. Click Manage people.
4. Click Add person.
5. Choose a name and a photo.
6. Click Save. A new window will open and ask you to turn on sync.
7. (Optional) Turn sync on in Chrome with a Google Account for the new profile. Their bookmarks, history, passwords, and other settings will automatically sync.

Using a Chromebook? You can share your Chromebook with other people by adding them to your Chromebook.

Do you want to learn more about the Texthelp suite of tools for teachers & students?  Below are some supportive resources Texthelp touts.

The tools include:

• Read&Write : A UDL tool for literacy
• EquatIO: Make math digital
• WriQ: Instantly access student writing & level
• Fluency Tutor: Increase student fluency & track progress

Welcome to the Texthelp Training Portal!

Technology can be the spark for wonderful things, but its real value comes from empowering users – in the workplace, at school or at home. To get the most out of the Texthelp products, we offer three main areas of support.

Courses – From learning the basics to integrating into instruction, Texthelp short courses bring together strategies and best practice. Each course has simple instructions, videos, and great examples to help you become experts in Texthelp software. You can gain achievements along the way!

Certification – Here is a chance to show what you know with two levels of certification: Level 1 Certified User requiring passing an assessment and Level 2 Role-Specific Practitioner requiring passing and a project.  Earners receive badges and certificates.

Resources – Why recreate the wheel? We have plenty of checklists, lesson plans, strategies, help/tip sheets, presentations, and ideas to get you started and keep you going.  Many are contributed by educators just like you.

Go to: https://training.texthelp.com/course/index.php

R4WG@PCCS website: bit.ly/RW4GinPCCS