Category: Virtual Academy

Second Notice: End of the Year Tech Checklist

As you make plans to close up your classroom for the summer (and a well deserved break), please take care of the following items:

Copy your Canvas courses so you don’t lose any content! https://tech.pccsk12.com/second-notice-end-of-the-year-canvas-support-action-required/
Please comply with the directions of your principal and main office to turn in or secure all classroom technology equipment such as document cameras, microphones, interactive pens, and remotes.
Please also secure or take home all District-assigned devices (laptop, Chromebook, iPad, etc.), as well as all personally-owned devices..
- If you are leaving the District, complete this form.
Power off projectors/IFPs, sound amps, and desktop computers.
- You may leave printer and copiers plugged in and powered on
Follow the care suggestions for classroom audio

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:

Through June 11: 1:30-3:00 pm each day
Week of June 14: Monday through Thursday, 9:00-11:00 am and 1:00-3:00 pm
No drop off availability June 18-July 5

Thanks for your cooperation!

Introducing IconsMania

Visuals are an important element to help all people understand the message we are trying to convey. Finding good icons on the internet can be tricky as many sites want you to pay to use their icons and the emoji keyboard options starts to feel a little stale. The creator of the popular site SlidesMania (has a wide range of Google Slides/PPT templates that are free to use) has brought us IconsMania. These icons are beautiful, editable, and free. Just like SlidesMania (which she created during the pandemic, designing slides that her elementary student would enjoy), these are built with educators in mind and the collections will continue to grow.

Simply go to IconsMania and search for what you need or browse the collections. While browsing you can limit the options to colorful, outline, or monochromatic. For example if I want icons to help communicate the schedule for the day, I can use the school icon collection.

If you select that you are a Google user, it will give you a template that will open in Google Slides. From there you can copy/paste them. If you wish, you can copy them into Google Drawings and save them individually as a PNG. Doing it this way makes it easy to resize or customize as you need. If you don’t want to customize them you can click “I just want the PNGs” will allow you to download a zip file containing all the icons.

Student Project Idea

This can also be a great resource for student creation. One of my favorite possibilities is the Number Mania eduprotocol. In short, students fill out a Google Form with one fact about a topic. Then they look at a view only spreadsheet of facts collected by the class and design an infographic in Google slides. The Slides template can be pre-populated with relevant icons to streamline the creation process, eduprotocols are meant to be implemented in one class period. This a great way to build some background knowledge and interest around a new topic.

Image of linked slide — Slide made by Amanda Sandoval. Click it to view the templates and examples up close.

If you interested in trying this activity, reach out to Kaelyn Bullock by submitting a tech ticket and selecting “Technology Integration.” I’d love to help you plan this out for your grade level/content area.

If you are looking for more icon resources visit the Noun Project or Flaticon.

Math and STEM Activities with Jamboard and Equatio

Many teachers have found Jamboard to be a flexible tool for students. However, it does not have a lot of tools for Math. Teachers can utilize the free-for-teachers Equatio extension to bring in many more math tools to enhance student learning. The Mathspace feature allows teachers to incorporate shapes for all levels of math from shapes to clocks, coins, and protractors. It also have some great Science shapes like pulleys, gear wheels, magnets and more. To learn more about how to add Equatio and use it in Jamboard, check out the post by Eric Curts.

View Grades and Submissions for ‘Concluded’ Students in Canvas

This post is for teachers who do not “see” some of their students in Canvas because those students’ enrollments have ‘concluded’. Enrollments are concluded, for example, as students move from one school track to another (e.g. between Virtual and Safe Start schools). If you are unable to “see” some students, there are three areas in Canvas (via Grade or People in the Course Navigation Menu or via User Details) to do so. We recommend using the Grades option described below.

**Option 1: Grades (in the Course Navigation Menu)**

For concluded student enrollments, all content in the Gradebook is read only and cannot be changed. You will need to input any grades into MISTAR manually that weren’t already moved via grade passback when the student was still active.

To see the grades of students who have concluded their enrollment in your Canvas course, do the following:

HINT: Be sure to drag the right side dividing line of the Student Name column so that you can see both the entire student name AND the label “concluded”.

The above guidance is from: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-view-grades-for-inactive-or-concluded-student/ta-p/753

**Option 2: People (in the Navigation Menu)**

As with the Gradebook, individual grades can also be viewed through this approach.

Option 3: User Details

As with active students, you can review grades and other details of your concluded users. Please see https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-view-user-details-for-an-enrollment-in-a-course/ta-p/1216 for elaboration.