Free, High-Quality Digital Learning Resources

The Michigan Learning Channel (MLC) is a statewide public television partnership offering free instructional content to support the education of students and to provide alternative resources for families and teachers. Designed to enrich school learning, the instructional content is aligned with Michigan’s educational standards and follows widely accepted sequences for mastering skills throughout the school year. Some of the programs include Read, Write, Roar, Curious Crew (science), and InPACT (physical education).

This programming is being broadcast on special on-air channels established by each of the participating public television stations in Michigan. It is also available as a livestream and stored for on-demand viewing on a variety of digital platforms, ensuring accessibility to all students, teachers and families in the state.

You can find their programming at: https://www.michiganlearning.org/

PBS LearningMedia is a great destination for direct access to thousands of classroom-ready, curriculum-targeted digital resources aligned to Common Core and national and state standards.

Spur your students’ achievement and engagement through the use of audio recordings, documents, interactives, lesson plans, videos, and more! Browse by standards, grade level, subject area, and special collections then favorite and share resources with your class and colleagues. Best of all, PBS LearningMedia is free for PreK-12 educators and students.

You can find all of this at: https://pbslearningmedia.org/

PBS LearningMedia can be easily integrate in Canvas to find out more click here: https://pbslearningmedia.org/help/canvas/

Please submit a tech ticket if you have questions or would like a guide when exploring these resources.

Three March Google Workspace Updates

Workspace

Here are three of the most noteworthy March Google Workspace updates – all will be active by the end of this month.

Embed linked Google Forms charts into Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Drawings

Quick summary

You can now embed linked response charts from Google Forms into a Google Doc, Google Slides presentation, or a Google Drawing. When new form responses are received, anyone with the proper permissions can refresh an embedded chart by simply clicking the “Update” button. This eliminates the need to re-copy the chart from the form.

This feature is useful for sharing real-time responses to polls or surveys and for incorporating Forms responses data into presentations or reports.

Embed form in docs

 

New email draft template in Google Docs

Quick summary

We’re making it easy to collaborate on an email draft in Docs with the new email draft template. You can mention people in the recipient fields using the @ menu without having to remember their email addresses, and collaborate on the message body using comments and suggestions. When ready to send, simply click the button that is shown alongside an email draft. A Gmail compose window will pop up, with email fields (subject, to, cc, bcc, and body) automatically populated based on the email draft in the document.

There is no end user setting for this feature. To insert an email template, go to Insert > Building Blocks > Email draft

Draft email in Docs

 

View additional Calendar statuses in Google Chat

What’s changing

In addition to seeing when someone is out of office, you can now see additional Google Calendar statuses like “In a meeting” or “In focus time” in Google Chat.

Calendar details via chat

Why you’d use it

We hope by surfacing these additional statuses, this will make it easier for your colleagues to identify appropriate times to message you.

Canvas Quick Tip: Drag and Drop Due Dates

Need to quickly change a course due date? Head to the Calendar in Canvas (on the far left of your screen on the Global Navigation Menu). From there, you can drag and drop an assignment due date to a new day.

Gif

 

MISTAR Release 3.9.1 Highlights

Mistar Q

The latest release of our student information system (SIS) MISTAR includes the following updates:

  1. Main Page Enrollment Widget: With this release, the procedure that is used to build the Main Page Enrollment Widget has been updated to include a count for ‘Other’ for students who are neither ‘M’ nor ‘F’. The new field is now visible in the Widget Editor.

MISTAR 1

  1. In Student Profile, when the phone icon in the banner is clicked (1) and ‘Show Student Contacts’ detail is displayed:
  • The Contact PIN now displays in the detail shown (2)
  • It is now possible to choose to also include email addresses for the Student, Counselor, or Advisor when clicking an email link for a Contact. This setting will be remembered when navigating from one student to another (3).

MISTAR 2

 

  1. The Student Pronoun field was added to the Roster tab–If a student has pronouns added to MISTAR they will appear in the student pronoun field in the Roster Tab.
  2. Mass Email will now check and warn if the user is attaching a file too large to upload.  

MISTAR 4

 

  1. Parents and Guardians can now retrieve their PIN and reset their Password from the login page of Parent Connection:

MISTAR 5

Highlights from the March Google for Education newsletter

Women in Culture

Here are some highlights from the latest newsletter for your consideration.

A growing number of BrainPOP Movies Now have “Pause Points”

BrainPOP has launched Pause Points in their top 50 movies with more coming soon! These grade-leveled, standards-aligned question sets are embedded into the BrainPOP movie experience for more scaffolding and active learning across the curriculum.

Read their latest blog article to discover 3 Effective Ways to Use Pause Points in Daily Instruction.

With the addition of Pause Points, students now have new opportunities to stop, think, and express their ideas about what they’re learning on BrainPOP—making movie-viewing a truly interactive experience in your classroom.

What Are Pause Points?

Pause Points are questions and prompts that activate students’ background knowledge, while build subject-specific vocabulary. Every Pause Point scaffolds concepts and skills within a topic that align to grade-level standards. Formats include:

  • Multiple Choice: Check for understanding while practicing standardized test-type questions.
  • Open-Ended: Type, speak, or draw responses.
  • Reflection Points: Prompts provide additional information or summarize key ideas to support understanding.

 

BrainPOP Pause Points

Be Alert: Google Forms Phishing Scam

Be on the lookout for scammers trying to impersonate Google. The spammer will take advantage of the option for “Response Receipts.” These emails are sent from the email address “forms-receipts-noreply@google.com.” which is the official, legitimate email.

The spammer pretends the user has filled out something with Google when they have not and requests that the person fill out their email address and click to verify.  See an image example below.

example google form phishing

While the email address may be official, those links could lead to anywhere and could ask for more information. Keep in mind, if you are getting a response receipt you likely have already completed what you need and should not need to send any new information.

If you think you have received one of these scam emails, you can click “Report Abuse” at the bottom of the email.

If you would like more details about this scam, please read this post, where we sourced the information for this blog.

Two Great Google Updates

Easy Share Button

In the latest update for Chrome, you’ll now see a share icon in the link address bar. Click that “sharrow” and you be able to copy the link or get a QR code with a few less clicks.

image showing share icon in omnibar

Go Pageless in Google Docs

More and more teachers are going “paperless” in their classrooms. As a result, you might not like making formatting adjustments when an image, table, or something else falls right around a page break. Google Docs now gives you the option to “pageless.” View the video below to find out how and see why it might be helpful.

More information from Google on this update.

 

Free Illuminate DnA Professional Development Sessions for SY 2021-2022

Illuminate DnA PD courses

For those interested in furthering your DnA knowledge and skills, all of the training sessions offered are free of charge and most are virtual.

Please click on the link to view and register for the following Illuminate DnA virtual PD sessions (the descriptions of a few are shown below) and there are still more offered that aren’t listed below:

  • Creating and Administering Assessments in Illuminate DnA
    • This hands-on session will teach participants who to create and administer various types of assessments available in Illuminate DnA including Skills Assessments, Flexible Assessments, Item-Bank Assessments, online testing, and paper/pencil testing.
  • Creating Summary Assessments & Custom Reports for Beginner
  • Creating the Individual Reading Improvement Plan (IRIPs) and Other Form Letters
    • Illuminate DnA provides powerful tools to support literacy assessments and data analysis. In this session, participants will explore the 3rd grade reading legislation and consider methods for tracking and reporting early literacy data using the form letter option with their district’s existing IRIP letter. Participants can also bring other letters or forms they wish to pre-populate using the data stored in DnA. Multiple resources will be shared along with time for hands-on exploration.
  • DnA Tips and Tricks
    • This hands-on session will focus on how to quickly navigate Illuminate DnA, access help guides and training videos, locate students, student profiles, and more.
  • Effective Use of Reports & Data in Illuminate to Support Continuous Improvement
  • Illuminate DnA Open Lab AM and PM Sessions

Some recent Zoom updates

Zoom Updates

Customise Zoom waiting room with video – Hosts can add a video when customizing the appearance of the waiting room in the web portal. Participants in the waiting room can view the video while waiting for the host to admit them into the meeting.

Updates to the Zoom Windows Desktop Client

Meeting/Webinar Features

  • Enable Blur Background during a meeting – Users can quickly blur their backgrounds during a meeting, without needing to access their Zoom client settings. The Blur My Background option is available from the start/stop video menu in the main toolbar, the 3-dot menu on the user’s video tile, and by clicking anywhere on your video image. The option is also available on the self-preview screen before the user enters a meeting. This option is available for Windows and macOS.
  • Manage breakout rooms after launch – The host or co-host that launched the breakout rooms, as well as the original host, can now rename, create, and remove rooms while they are in use. To adjust breakout rooms while they are open, this option must be enabled for your account by Zoom and turned on in your Breakout Room settings. All meeting participants must also be running version 5.9.3 or higher. Learn more about managing breakout rooms on the Zoom Support Site.