Enhancing Instructional Strategies with Technology

today’s lesson clarity

introductions

• Name
• What/Where do you teach?
• Share a success, a challenge, or pro tip when using Canvas, Google, or Blended Learning strategies.

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schedule

apps will no longer be available on teacher laptops at the start of the 2021-2022 school year. Rationale:

• Added expense ($58/teacher)
• Parallel applications in Google (free)
• Students no longer have access to Office since they use Chromebooks.
• PLE teachers will also be using Chromebooks.

NOTE: Departments or individuals may request access to Office by providing evidence of necessity that is not being met with equivalent Google tools.

Using existing apps in Google Drive and/or converting them to equivalent

Google formats.

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Step-by-step instructions found here.

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Recent Updates

Smart Canvas - a new experience that enhances collaboration in the apps that you use every day - like Docs, Sheets, and Slides - by making them even more interactive and intelligent.

With our new pageless format in Docs, you’ll be able to remove the boundaries of a page to create a surface that expands to whatever device or screen you’re using, making it easier to work with wide tables, large images, or detailed feedback in comments. And if you want to print or convert to PDF, you’ll be able to easily switch back to a paginated view.

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Smart Chips: Type the “@” sign to pull in helpful information from other Google Workspace products while working in a document. Quickly embed files from Drive or tag other people.

Additionally, we’ve improved the insert link experience. You’ll now see intelligent suggestions for Drive files or headings and bookmarks within your document based on your highlighted text.

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Check Lists: Stay on track with whatever you’re working on. Checklists are similar to bulleted lists, except you can mark items once they are complete.

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Writing Tips: Get warnings about offensive words and language, as well as other stylistic suggestions. Admins can easily turn this off if they prefer not to have it on in their domain.

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Assisted Analysis in Sheets will provide formula suggestions that make it easier for everyone, not just data analysts, to derive insights from data.

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New Sheet Views: Toggle between new views in Sheets to better manage and interact with your data. Our first launch will be a timeline view that makes tracking tasks easier and faster. This flexible view allows you to organize your data by owner, category, campaign, or whichever attribute fits best. Using a dynamic, interactive timeline strengthens your ability to manage things like marketing campaigns, project milestones, schedules, and cross-team collaborations.

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Present to Meet from Docs, Slides and Sheets

Easily present your content to Google Meet directly from Docs, Sheets, and Slides with the click of a button.

Embed your live Meet video calls in Docs, Sheets and Slides. This will make it even easier to see each other while collaborating together.

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Forms Updates:

• New “SETTINGS” tab at the top of your Forms, with key settings made more discoverable, like the option to make a Form a Quiz, and control default settings.

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• 20 new fonts to make your Forms more fun and personalized

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• Autosave in Forms -- automatically saving your draft responses for 30 days, or until your submission was complete.

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• During the 2021-2022 School Year, PSD teachers will no longer have access to premium features in Zoom.
• Educators will be required to use Google Meet for virtual instruction and meetings.
• Happily, nearly all of Zoom’s premium features are now replicated in Google Meet.

new layout

Watch this video for a refresher/tutorial.

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Click on the Help Center link for step-by-step instructions on how to schedule and manage Google Meets.

Change your self-view

Point to your self-view to pin or unpin yourself, switch from a floating picture to tile view, or minimize your video feed from your screen.

In picture-in-picture mode, you can drag the corners of your self-view to change its size or drag your self-view to any of the four corners of your meeting window. Important: If you minimize your video feed, it only applies to your view.

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Refreshed user interface

See your presentation content and students at the same time. Easily unpin your presentation to see more of your students on the call. And names are always visible so you can quickly see who’s who.

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Multiple Moderators

More easily partner with other people helping manage a class. You’ll be able to choose hosts in meetings, and all meeting hosts will have access to safety controls.

Hand Raising Improvement

Improved notification and sound so you can easily see how many people raised their hands and in what order. Finally, when a student with a raised hand is done talking, we’ll automatically lower their hand.

Emoji Reactions

Over the past six months, we've launched features like breakout rooms, hand raising, digital whiteboards and customized backgrounds. Later this year, students will be able to more easily engage and express themselves with emoji reactions in Meet. They’ll be able to pick emoji skin tones to best represent them, and react in class in a lightweight, non-disruptive way. Teachers and admins will have full control over when reactions can be used.

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Multi-Pinning

Pin multiple tiles to customize what you want to focus on. Students, for example, can easily pin a sign language interpreter in addition to the teacher so they can see both at the same time.

Live Translated Captions in Multiple Languages

With the presenter speaking in one language, you can get live captions translated into another language in real time.

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Public Live Streaming

Host public livestreams that anyone outside of your school domain can attend, making it easier to host school board meetings, school events, and more.

Safety Controls

• Meeting codes—Each meeting code is 10 characters long, with 25 characters in the set. This makes it harder to brute force “guess” meeting codes.
• Meeting details—Can be changed in the invite. Completely changing the video meeting invite changes both the meeting code and the phone PIN. This is especially useful if a user is no longer part of the meeting invite.
• Attending a meeting—The following restrictions apply when people join a video meeting:
• Anonymous users (users without Google accounts) are not allowed to join meetings.
• We limit the ability of participants to join the meeting more than 15 minutes in advance of the scheduled time
• Only users on the calendar invite can enter without an explicit request to join meetings. Participants not on the calendar invite must request to join a meeting by “knocking”, which must be accepted by the meeting organizer.
• Only the meeting host can admit participants not on the calendar invite, by inviting people from within the meeting and accepting requests to join.
• Meeting organizers have easy access to security controls such as muting and removing recipients, and only the meeting host can remove or mute participants directly within a meeting.
• Meet places numerical limits on potential abuse vectors.
• Users can report abusive behavior in meetings
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Teacher Controls

Host public livestreams that anyone outside of your school domain can attend, making it easier to host school board meetings, school events, and more.

Breakout Rooms

• Educators will be able to set up breakout rooms ahead of time in Google Calendar. This will make it easier for teachers to prepare for differentiated learning, be thoughtful about group dynamics and avoid losing valuable time setting up breakout rooms during class.
• Moderators can choose to have breakout room safety settings match the safety settings from the main meeting.
• When you end breakout rooms, participants will be forced back into the main meeting.

Student Meet Recordings

Once enabled, all individuals in a call that have a Google Workspace for Education Plus license (formerly G Suite for Education) can visit the three dots ‘more’ menu at the bottom right of an active call, and click ‘Record Meeting’. Once said individual stops the recording using the same button (which would presumably automatically occur when the call is ended by the host as well), that recorded video chat is then saved to his or her Workspace for Education Google Drive account.

Additional Safety Controls

• Meeting codes—Each meeting code is 10 characters long, with 25 characters in the set. This makes it harder to brute force “guess” meeting codes.
• Attending a meeting—The following restrictions apply when people join a video meeting:
• Anonymous users (users without Google accounts) are not allowed to join meetings.
• We limit the ability of participants to join the meeting more than 15 minutes in advance of the scheduled time
• Participants not on the calendar invite must request to join a meeting by “knocking”, which must be accepted by the meeting organizer.
• Only the meeting host can admit participants not on the calendar invite, by inviting people from within the meeting and accepting requests to join.
• Meeting organizers have easy access to security controls such as muting and removing recipients, and only the meeting host can remove or mute participants directly within a meeting.
• Video lock: Turn off everyone’s video at once to quickly prevent distractions.
• Users can report abusive behavior in meetings

Tutorials One Stop Shop

BLENDED LEARNING

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MODELS OF

BLENDED LEARNING

STATION ROTATION

This style of rotation is used most in elementary schools because students and teachers are familiar with centers or workstations in a classroom setting.

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This rotation has students moving through different stations based on a schedule determined by the teacher. Stations may include unplugged or online activities and one could be teacher-led.

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INDIVIDUAL ROTATION/PLAYLIST

In this model students do not rotate to every station or activity available, but rather they complete activities specific to their individualized schedules. This schedule is set by a teacher or through software that manages their progress.

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This model is like putting together a learning plan for each individual student or groups.

FLEX MODEL

This allows much more independence for students because there is not a predetermined schedule and students select activities based on what they need to learn. Online learning is a key component in this Flex model.

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Teachers do not work with groups in this model. They are available to work with students as needed and provide individuals with the support necessary as they complete coursework/content.

FLIPPED CLASSROOM

A Flipped classroom has students learning information at home, through online coursework, videos, and/or lessons. Teachers use class time for traditionally what might be homework with things such as projects or teacher-guided practice.

À LA CARTE

Students who are a part of an à la carte model are able to take classes in a regular classroom setting as well as taking online course with a different online instructor. This allows students more flexibility with schedules and class opportunities that are not traditionally offered at school.

ENRICHED VIRTUAL MODEL

In this model students complete the majority of classwork online and it is often seen as an alternative to full-time online school. With Enriched Virtual model, students are not required to attend school everyday, but they are still required to meet face-to-face with a teacher perhaps twice a week.

learning

management

system

If you copy all of your content from one course to another, please unpublish assignments and/or remove them from modules until you are ready to assign them in the current course. If you leave old assignments published in your new courses, they will appear as missing in the students' view of their Canvas grades.

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new semester course reminders

Whenever possible, avoid including links that will require students to click out of Canvas to view them. Embedding links, videos, etc. on a Canvas page will allow students to stay in the platform and click “next” to go to subsequent activities.

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best practices: stay in Canvas

• Don’t use assignments to provide mini-lessons or resources
• Only use assignments for activities that students need to do.
• Assignment due dates automatically populate students’ Canvas calendars.
• Remember that you can assign “on paper” and “no submission” assignments.

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best practices: pages v. assignments

Assignments: External Tool: Find: Google Docs Cloud Assignment

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feature: Google Cloud Assignments

Click here for an overview and video tutorial

• Discussions can be graded with Speedgrader and a rubric.
• Students can/should comment on each other’s submissions.
• To avoid having early submissions receiving the most comments, try a protocol such as “Comment on the submission above and the submission below yours.”
• Responses can be in the form of text entry, video (upload or live recording), voice memo, file upload.

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feature: Canvas Discussions

Consider using Discussions in creative ways:

• Connect virtual and in-person students.
• Allow students to “present their work” and receive peer feedback.
• Use discussions for bell work activities or exit tickets.
• Consider requiring students to submit their own response to the prompt before seeing what their classmates have responded.

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feature: Canvas Discussions

• Create standards-based rubrics and proficiency scales that you can reuse on various assignments and across all of your Canvas courses.
• “Many hands make light work.” Consider creating all of your department’s proficiency scales in “sandbox” so that all teachers can pull any of these rubrics into their own classes.
• Rubrics may be added to Canvas assignments, quizzes, and discussions.

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feature: Canvas Rubrics

• Quizzes are great formative checks that can be set to auto-correct.
• Quizzes can also be used as summative assessments with questions that require higher order thinking (essays, etc.). This type of question must be graded by the instructor.
• You can assign time limits, finite or infinite attempts, as well as differentiate parameters for various students.
• Quizzes are the gateway to Mastery Paths.

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feature: Canvas Quizzes

• Consider using Canvas quiz banks
• Click here to learn how to set this up.
• Quiz can randomly pull x number of questions from each category, standard, etc.
• Great for relearn/redo options.
• Minimizes academic dishonesty.

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feature: Canvas Quizzes

• Simplifies and reads text in multiple languages
• Change text size and spacing
• Break words down into syllables
• Identify parts of speech (color coded)
• Only available on Canvas “Pages”
• Doesn’t work in embedded Google Docs
• Doesn’t apply to discussions or assignments
• Must be accessed through Pages → All Pages (not Modules)
• Requires you to enable pages on sidebar
• Learn more here

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new feature: Immersive Reader

afternoon mini-lessons

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Please sign up for this afternoon’s mini-lessons before you go to lunch.

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• Canvas Quizzes
• Canvas Mastery Paths
• Google Sheets, Forms, Awesome Tables

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Sign up here or in Canvas.

exit ticket • Canvas discussion

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How can you use Google Workspace, Blended Learning Models, Canvas, or

other tech tools to help yourself and your students meet the PSD Graduate Profile competencies: Contribute, Create, Compete, Connect, Commit, and Care?

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thank you

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Need more help or have ideas for

engaging, enhancing, or extending

student learning with technology?

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Consider a coaching cycle with Melinda this year: x5696 • larsmel@pewaukeeschools.org

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