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Showing posts from September, 2015

The Parent/Student Side of Standards on Infinite Campus

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With the move towards standards-based grading on Infinite Campus under way this fall, one of the big questions is how it looks for the parents & students on their portal. You can see what the portal view looks like for a particular student by navigating into the student's profile on the "Campus Tools" side of IC and then clicking on the grade tab. When you find your class in their grades, there is a gradebook icon that looks like this: Once that is selected, there is a button at the top to view as the portal user: That will show you exactly what the student/parent will see on the portal for your particular class. But, without needing to go through all of the clicks, these two screenshots give you a general idea of how it is displayed to the student/parent depending on which screen they are on. I hope that helps clear up some of the mystery of the standards-based side of Infinite Campus. I don't think it is nearly as confusing as we all e

Checking Past Class Attendance in Infinite Campus' Campus Instruction

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Did you know that you can easily check the attendance for a past class section through your planner view in Infinite Campus' Campus Instruction? And, even better, it is really easy! Navigate to the week or day view in your planner. Click on the link below the course title that says "Students: #/#" If it says 0 then there are no students in the class. If it is not a fraction, then either all students were present, attendance was not recorded, or the course section has not met yet. If you need help finding your way, just make an appointment with me !

Sharing to Google Classroom

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I recently had a teacher come to me a bit mystified that he did not see the famed Google Classroom button when he was logged in to IXL as their blog had said he would. I'll admit it. I was baffled. After several troubleshooting steps and talking with our awesome technology support team, we determined that it is because how the button is coded into their site is resulting in it being blocked by our firewall. Long story short, they have it paired with a Facebook button, which will never finish loading because Facebook itself is blocked. But don't despair. I found a way to accomplish the same exact thing that the button does, but using an extension in Google Chrome instead. There are two different extensions in the Chrome Webstore , which you can find when you search for Google Classroom . I would recommend choosing one of the two options shown below: Share to Classroom from Google  (the icon on the left): If all of your students are using Chrome, I would highly recomm

Is your MacBook Air running out of space?

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After several years with the 1:1 deployment of the Apple MacBook Air in our schools, many are suddenly finding themselves with no room on their hard drive. Opps! Although the MacBook Airs are portable, they don't have very large hard drives to accommodate all of the files that we tend to generate over the years. Fortunately, there are a couple options if you are running out of space. If you use the Google Drive application on your computer, you can modify the settings in the application to only sync the folders that you need on your local drive. This is especially helpful if you are a Google Classroom user. You can find directions on how to do it here . Speaking of Google Drive, if you use your school (GAFE) Google login, you actually have unlimited storage space in your Google Drive in the cloud. So you can upload any old files you need to keep, but don't want on your hard drive, into your Google Drive and the delete them from your local drive. If you'd like assis

Needing Pages? Keynote? Other apps?

Now that laptops have been rolled out to the students, we're starting to see more and more students who are missing applications like Pages and Keynote. But it's super easy to get them! They (or you) just need to accept the VPP invitation through Self Service. Here is a super quick presentation walking you through each screen of the process. You will need to have an AppleID to make it happen, which most people have already. But feel free to comment on this blog post if you don't or if you'd like directions on how to create one without using a credit card. If you don't see anything within Self Service, you may need to put in a tech ticket to have a technician check the system. I would encourage you to take a moment with your class just to make sure they are all set with their VPP invitations as it will save you time down the road to know that all of your kids are on the same page.

Being social? Hashtag it!

# I had a teacher in the middle school ask me if we had any hashtags going on for the school or district so that he could use them while being social about what's going on in school. Great question! Since I didn't know of any, I did some searching. #BonnyEagle is being used by students (mostly high school), teachers, and staff around the district. #BonnyEagleMS and #BonnyEagleHS are not being used, but would be easy to use for school specific sharing. #BonnyEagleTech  has minimal use, but Rich Peterson and I are using it to share about the tech department and tech-related thoughts. So, if you are looking to incorporate more social aspects into your classroom, try using those hashtags to bring the outside in a bit more.

Do more with Google!

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It feels like every day I learn something new that we can do with Google. Some of it has been around and I've been under a rock. Others are brand new. Today I learned about Google Tips and even noticed that they have 55 tips specifically geared towards the school year. My recommendation is to pop the 55 tips up on your board while your students are coming in to class. They include tips to ditch the notecards during your presentations, using street view to explore the world , and using the Google Cultural Institute to explore significant moments in history. Go check out  Google Tips . The tips are quick and easy and I'm sure you'll learn something new and cool.

Use Chrome + Google Classroom? Get the Chrome Extension!

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I just saw a post on Twitter sharing the Google Classroom extension for Chrome to make sharing to your Classroom super easy. It gives you an icon in Google Chrome that, when clicked, lets you select what class you would like to share it with. Super easy!

Changes with Google

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I wanted to take a moment to break from my typical tech coach talk and let you know that Google has just rebranded themselves and, therefore, several icons have changed. I know it seems like a minor point to most, but I also know that it can catch some folks by surprise. More information about the change can be read about on their official blog announcement . Basically, all of their icons are moving to a san-serif font with the 4 colors previously used (blue, red, yellow, green). The "e" at the end is also tilted a smidge as it has been for a few revisions. All of their favicons, those little icons on the tabs in your browser window, are also going through a revamp. So, if you noticed things looking a bit different in your Google world, you aren't imagining things. And, for my fellow Google fans, the evolution of Google's branding is certainly interesting for those of us who just can't imagine what life would be like without it.

Messenger with Infinite Campus' Campus Instruction

Today I had a teacher drop me a line needing a refresher on how to use Messenger on Infinite Campus' Campus Instruction. It may have taken me most of the afternoon to whip this together, but here is a screencast to walk you through the three options. There is no audio with the video to make it easy to watch (and not listen to me yap). I will add in the links mentioned at the beginning of the video as time allows. In the meantime, feel free to fast forward through to the messenger type you'd like to review.