Some links to check out and upcoming Google updates

summary of Google Drive updates

John Sowash’s monthly EDU newsletter always lists ten or more links he briefly describes and commends for educators to check out. Some recent ones he’s called out are:

  • ​Virtual games from Arts & Culture – “Play with Arts & Culture” – a collection of interactive games that make art, culture and history accessible in a fun and educational way. In one, challenge your students to complete a virtual jigsaw puzzle. It’s fun and the whole class can participate!
  • ​Panopto screen recording – this free screencasting tool offers some unique features like the ability to record from multiple cameras and replace your background.
  • ​Dino QR codes – The Chrome browser now has a built-in QR code creator with a cute dino included! No need for a Chrome extension, just click the URL bar and look for the QR code symbol! Jeremy Badiner created a great guide as well.
  • Get to know the student behind the mask – this is a really nice blog post by 5th grade math teacher Becky Thal expressing the importance of connecting with students on a personal level.
  • Mindset Moment with Andrew J. Canlé – these quick videos communicate positive ideas in a short, entertaining format that are perfect for discussion questions or brain breaks.
  • Link Lock – password protect any link with this free, simple web utility.

On February 17th Google announced several updates for Google Workspace for Education. John’s newsletter has organized some of them into infographics shown below.

FOR CHROMEBOOKS….

The screen recording updates are very exciting, encouraging students to press record for formative and summative assessments which can be very powerful and now more easily done on a Chromebook! Stay tuned to see if this will also allow students to record their screen via Canvas Studio.

summary of Chromebook updates

 

FOR GOOGLE DRIVE….

There are also several updates apparently coming soon to Google Drive. The two that will most likely impact students and teachers are Form draft responses and revision history in Jamboard. In Google Forms, students will be able to stop and return to a form at a later date and time. Please note this is set to launch, “later in 2021” so do not plan to utilize this functionality just yet. One of the biggest frustrations with Jamboard has been the fact that frames can be easily removed and those changes are very difficult to track. Soon, it will be much easier to track changes and revert to previous versions in Jamboard.

summary of Google Drive updates

Tips for the Secondary, Hybrid Schedule

Now that P-CCS  is bringing middle school and high school students back on-campus, teachers may wish to further adjust their instruction for optimized learning with the new schedule. The hybrid schedule feels very unique to the times we are living in. Fortunately, schools across the country have been using it and teachers have insights to share. For this post, I have borrowed mostly from the work of Jennifer Gonzalez (Cult of Pedagogy) and Catlin Tucker, an experienced, blended learning coach. Consider reading the original posts for more information.

Four Models:

  1. Station Rotation: Think of your week or class period in 3 kinds of “stations” for students to rotate through: teacher-led, online activity, and an offline activity. Here’s a great template from Stephanie DeMichele. Here’s a link to some specific ideas for core content areas.
  2. Flipped Learning: Move the act of direct instruction to asynchronous video so it can be more accessible for all (pause, re-watch, captions). Think of your week or class period in terms of a pre-video activity, during-the-video activity, and a post-video activity. If you desire, save time, by recording snippets of intended instruction during your live class to post in Canvas, directions here.
  3. Playlist/Hyperdoc Model: Playlists allow students to move through a sequence of learning activities. The playlist can build in choice as far as what modality and what combination of activities students choose. This model is also very similar to a hyperdoc which guides students through a complete lesson flow. In this model, teachers design the lesson in-advance and then spend time in class connecting with individuals and small groups to answer questions, clear misconceptions, and provide feedback.
  4. Pre/In/Post Class: This model simply helps you think about planning in terms of synchronous and asynchronous. Utilize Sections in Canvas to divide your class into cohorts so that each one sees their work at the appropriate time. See the graphic below from Catlin Tucker’s blog.
Ideas for pre, in, and post class work.
Graphic created by Catlin Tucker. Click the image to view the post.

Tips from Teachers (curated from Jennifer Gonzalez of Cult of Pedagogy)

  • Make the face-to-face time special–Try not to use this time to give all your tests or “cram” in all the content you plan to deliver. Use it build relationships and interact with each other.
    • Putting direct instruction on video prevents you from having to repeat yourself over and over and allows students to watch at their own pace
  • Chunk the time–As we move to the block schedule on top of the hybrid set-up it is helpful think of your time in various segments. You can select one of the models above to guide you. If you desire to have the at-home cohort log-on to your synchronous class time you might consider some of these models. They were shared by Beth Alexander, the Director of Teaching and Learning at a school in Toronto.
  • Build community–This is always important and still is as teachers and students face this new classroom set-up.

Teachers can continue to use Canvas and other tech tools to manage and organize their courses. Reach out to a Tech Integration Specialist if you want a thought partner in this process. Submit a tech ticket and select the “Tech Integration” option.

If you are looking for more ideas, check out this collection of resources: https://wke.lt/w/s/N62hdh

 

Black History Month Resources

Image of Applied Digital Skills black history page

February is Black History Month. Wayne RESA has put together several resources that teachers can use this month and throughout the school year to help infuse Black History in the curriculum.

Additionally, Flipgrid has curated several topics for students to engage with on their platform.

Image of Black History collection in Flipgrid

Wide Open School by Common Sense has linked several Black History and Culture lessons organized by grade, Preschool-12th grade. Google for Education has also released several new lessons in their Applied Digital Skills curriculum.

Image of Applied Digital Skills black history page

Managing Your Modules

Anyone with a year-long course (or 100+ modules), might be noticing that is takes quite a long time for all your modules to load. Students and families may also be experiencing this lag when they click the link for their daily work module. To help save time and frustration we recommend that you free up some space in one of two ways:

  1. Unpublish modules from early in the school year. Image of "unpublish" icon
  2. If you or your students are still experiencing a slow down, you can copy the module to your Sandbox course and then delete it from your main course.

Image of steps to copy and delete modules

Use Sections to Manage Green/Blue Cohorts

Image of finished sections

Sections allow you to subdivide students within a course. It allows you to set different due dates for assignments, quizzes, and discussions. This is ideal for managing the Blue and Green Cohorts in the hybrid schedule.

Set up Groups

First go to Settings from the Course Navigation menu and you’ll find a tab entitled “Sections.” You can add and name your sections however you wish.

Here’s what you might have for your classes, the sections will be ordered alphabetically:

Image of finished sections

Add Students to Sections

Click on “People” in the Course Navigation menu to add students to the proper section.

Visual of steps to add people to sections

A pop-up will appear and you can start typing the name of the cohort and it will appear for you to select or you can click “browse” and the options will appear.

Image of editing section enrollments

Do this for each user. When finished you’ll be able to see which cohort/section each user is in.

Image of cohorts denoted in roster

You can remove the section following the same grading process.

Assignments for Sections

For the purpose of syncing with MiStar, it is very important you ensure one of the “Assign to” groups is listed as “Everyone”
or “Everyone Else.” Do not assign to Blue Cohort and Green Cohort, grading sync will not work.

Image indicating use of everyone or everyone else

 

Manage Your Inbox with Filters

Click the "Create Filter button

Our email inboxes can become quite difficult to manage, creating a filter is a great way to clear the clutter without removing important messages that we may need to access later. For example, you may get LMS notifications that you want to filter to a specific place.  Follow these steps to help your inbox manage itself using filter rules.

Suppose you get Exit Ticket response emails. You want to move them all to one folder (Gmail calls them labels) to view all at one time.

Inbox snapshot
You may receive several notifications from Google Forms that you want to create a filter for.

It is best to identify the sender and/or subject of these emails to type into the Search bar. You’ll do an advanced search, so click the drop-down arrow.

Shot of search bar and more option drop-down arrow

Add as much information as possible to ensure you get the right messages filtered. Then click, “Create Filter.”

Click the "Create Filter button

Select any filter rules you see as appropriate for that kind of message. You should apply the appropriate Label (or Create one). You may also want to select “Skip the Inbox.” If the case, rest assured, archived emails in Gmail are not deleted permanently after 30 days. They are permanently stored in your email (and now labelled) until you delete/trash it.

Image of filter menuYou can always remove or edit your filter in Setting by clicking on the wrench icon in the upper-right corner.

shot of filter settings in Gmail

When you are ready to view the filtered emails, access the Label on the left-side menu.

image of inbox label

Build Community through Games and Play

snapshot of playmeo website

In the next few weeks we will be welcoming students back into our buildings. This will be a very exciting time and it will be important to help students feel at ease and games can be a great way to do that. If you are looking for fresh ideas for group activities and games, the Playmeo website is a great resource.

Many activities are free and you can search by learning theme, program outcome, or activity type. Additionally, you can sort by group size and how much time you have for the activity.snapshot of playmeo website

Closed Captions Zoom Update

enable captions in zoom

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.

Zoom captions screenshot
The option to turn on Closed Captioning is in the Zoom toolbar (it may be under “More” depending on window size).

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.

screenshot of adjusting caption font size
Adjust font size in “Video Settings,” under “Accessibility.”

Elaborating on the CC options:

  • Show Subtitles – Displays captioning on the bottom of the video. You can also select Hide Subtitle once subtitles are selected to hide them.
  • View Full Transcript – Opens a panel/pop-up and displays captions in real-time with both the speaker’s name and time stamp. In that pop-up, participants will also see a button to save the transcript (this button might not be available if the host has disabled this functionality). If enabled, click Save Transcript. A copy of the transcript as a .txt file will be downloaded to your machine.
           Note: Transcripts save up to the moment when you click Save Transcript. If you click Save Transcript multiple times throughout the event, it will overwrite/update the existing file. We recommend clicking Save Transcript just before the meeting ends to ensure you have the transcript from the entire meeting. There is no option to auto-save these transcripts.

Bear in mind:

  • Speak slowly, it will help the system capture the words you are saying
  • If there are any loud disruptions (i.e. cars outside or school bells) pause and hold your thoughts until the noise passes.

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.

 

 

Second Semester Transition for Canvas

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.

  1. Step-By-Step Directions with Pictures on how to export content from old course and import it into the new course
  2. Step-By-Step Video (Screencast) Directions

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.