The January newsletter’s focus is on Research & Study Skills using the RW4G WEB TOOLBAR and more! Don’t miss this month’s Teacher Feature! WriQ, a writing assessment tool from Texthelp (the same people that brought us Read&Write for Google). WriQ offers both free and premium features to help you improve student writing outcomes. Click on the link in the newsletter to learn more and check out the extension in the Chrome store!
Adobe Flash has been supporting online games, content, and interactive features since 1996. But due to the changing and evolving of newer technologies other mediums such as HTML5 which are more power-efficient and faster, Flash has become less and less popular. At one point 80% of the content on the internet was Flash-based. Since 2017, that number is down to 17%. Due to this, Adobe has determined an End of Life (EOL) date of December 31st, 2020 for the plugin.
What does this mean?
Many different learning websites including sites such as Starfall and CoolMathGames were entirely Flash-based. When the announcement by Adobe was made to end Flash (plugin player support/updates and distribution), many websites started to convert their content to HTML5 and other delivery mechanisms. However, it is up to websites to make this transition. So, as you are planning different learning activities for students, please ensure that you have vetted the website to see if it relies on Flash. A way to check to see if a site uses Flash, Right-clicking on any part of a website will make a box appear with options you can click on. If you see Zoom in at the top of the box and About Adobe Flash Player at the bottom of the box, then you know that you have Flash on the website.
If the site migrates to open web standards (such as HTML5), you shouldn’t notice much difference except that you’ll no longer see prompts to run Flash on that site. If the site continues to use Flash, and you give the site permission to run Flash, it will only work through the end of 2020.
For more information please check out these articles:
https://www.blog.google/products/chrome/saying-goodbye-flash-chrome/
https://theblog.adobe.com/adobe-flash-update/
The Dearborn Public Schools Technology Department is excited to announce a professional development opportunity for teachers: the Saturdays with Moodle series! They will offer 5 classes all about Moodle and some of its more popular features. Attend as many classes as you desire, and leave with something you can use in your classroom the next week! All classes are at the Administrative Service Center, 18700 Audette in Dearborn, and run from 9:00 am-1:15 pm. Cost is $50 per class.
See this flyer for registration information.
https://docs.google.com/
Scratchwork is an online whiteboard and video conferencing tool designed with math students in mind. The platform works like many similar services as it provides you with a whiteboard on which you can draw, type, and import images to annotate. Scratchwork is a little different than other services because it includes a Latex editor for writing equations.
Giving students an opportunity to use digital math tools is an important part of the modern classroom and allows students to:
There is a free version available that includes:
Remind previously announced that their service would no longer work with Verizon after January 28, 2019 due to increased cost of Verizon text messaging services. It appears that Remind and Verizon have come to an agreement, which will prevent any interruption to Remind notifications sent to Verizon customers. While this is good news for now, we encourage staff to promote the use of the Remind app for notifications to avoid any potential future interruptions to text message notifications.
For additional details, please visit: https://www.remind.com/blog/verizon-update/
This resource comes from Richard Byrne. Richard is an Edtech expert and former High School social studies teacher. He is the lead author of https://www.freetech4teachers.com/
Use Google Classroom and Google forms to your advantage with creating quizzes that can be auto-graded. When students complete the quiz you will get a Google Sheet of all of the student’s answers and their scores from the quiz. And because it was created in Google Classroom, it will also allow you to assign a particular due date.
Enjoy!
Be Internet is a digital citizenship tool that was developed by Google to teach and prepare kids to use the internet in a safe and meaningful way. This site has videos, resources, and an interactive game called INTERLAND. Where kids can immerse themselves in different worlds and learn about including, What is ok and not ok to share online, discerning what is fake and real, security, cyberbullying, etc. Resources and games are intended for 3rd grade through Adults.
Site:
https://beinternetawesome.withgoogle.com/en_us
Last week another large online data breach was reported. (Read the article from CNET.) The technicians that checked the breach list found that much of it was current and accurate, which is rare for such a large data set.
What can you do?
Visit these sites for information and next steps if you have been a victim of identity theft:
Hope you find this helpful and that it serves to keep you digitally safe during harrowing digital times.
On Saturday, January 12, 2019, MISTAR was updated to version 3.6.1. This update contains over 40 system enhancements and improvements. Click the link below to see a list of the changes, as well as additional details on each.