Just a reminder that BrainPop (and at the elementary level, BrainPop JR) are available digital resources for all of our elementary, middle and high school students. Log in is via Clever (clever.com/in/pccs).
Their latest newsletter offers the following:
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
We hope you had a relaxing and rejuvenating summer break. As you work on getting your Canvas course(s) up and running, we want to offer you support. On Wednesday afternoon (September 1) we will offer office hours via Zoom from 12:30-3:30 pm. Add to your calendar.
If you are looking for other forms of support, the Help option on the Course Navigation Menu has several great options. See the image below.
You can also schedule a one-on-one coaching session with a Canvas representative, also known as a Panda Pro. https://tech.pccsk12.com/panda-pros-coaching/
As we enter our second year with Canvas as our district’s learning management system, it’s important to continue to have it serve as the digital centerpiece for our classrooms. In an effort to foster a more uniform experience for our students and families, staff are encouraged to construct and maintain their Canvas courses bearing in mind these P-CCS Canvas Best Practices.
If you have questions or would like assistance implementing any of these practices, please consider attending a “WorkLab” session on Thursday, August 26 during Canvas Camp or one of the Canvas Q & A sessions on either Thursday, August 26th or Monday, August 30th.
Finally, know your friendly, district Technology Integration Specialists will also plan sessions for each of these items during the first six weeks of school (and sessions will be recorded and posted) as embracing these best practices will help our students.
Pack your bags for Canvas Camp! Join your Technology Integration Specialists for Canvas sessions heading into the new school year. We will be offering a variety of sessions:
SCECHs are available for attendance. Interact with the image below (click the + button) for more details and to add the sessions to your Google Calendar click here.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
Give your course a name and then import existing content into the course.
1.
2.
3.
To 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.
As you make plans to close up your classroom for the summer (and a well deserved break), please take care of the following items:
Virtual Academy Teachers: Please return monitors and other borrowed equipment, such as document cameras to the Board Office. You may drop off during these hours:
Thanks for your cooperation!
As you make plans to close up your classroom for the summer (and a well deserved break), please take care of the following items:
Thanks for your cooperation!
*PLEASE NOTE: In early August, ALL MISTAR created courses will un-sync and therefore courses will be deleted off of dashboards. Please make sure you follow the directions below to ensure all work (assignments, discussions, videos, etc.) will save correctly.
With Canvas being utilized for the foreseeable future, and with the end of the year approaching, we wanted to pass along some directions on how to ensure that your course(s) and work created this year can be used for next Fall. The directions below will enable you to copy your course into a “Sandbox” type course, so when you return in the Fall, all you will need to do is import your “Sandbox” course, into your MISTAR rostered course.
Watch the less than 3-minute video below or watch it on YouTube. https://youtu.be/ibyFUeqSurY
Optional, further back up step: For Directions on saving your course to your computer/google drive click here
