Google Classroom Tips!

Continuing with our Google tips, here are some tips for Google Classroom:

1. Add a file to an assignment 

Adding a Google doc/sheet/slide file to an assignment is a great way to keep up with how your students are doing on the assignment before it is turned it. When you do this, select the setting to "Create a copy for each student" and you will have access to see each student's file as they work on it.

2. Assign an assignment to certain students

You can assign an assignment to only certain students. There are multiple reasons why this may be helpful, such as an absent student or A & B versions of the same quiz. 

3. Schedule assignments for multiple classes

When creating an assignment, you can schedule when the assignment goes live AND you can do this for multiple classes at the same time. Each class can have a different date it becomes available and a different due date if needed.

4. Rubric

You can add or create a rubric for an assignment. This allows you to use the rubric you added while grading the assignment.

5. Originality Report

By adding an originality report setting to an assignment, students can run this report to check for citation and plagiarism errors before submitting the assignment.

6. Comment Bank

There is a comment bank option for when grading and leaving comments on student work. This will allow you to add comments you use often to the comment bank. You can then simply select the comment when grading without needing to type it each time. You can even search for the comment you are looking for using key words within the comment bank.

Google Docs and Slides Tips!

It's been awhile since the Tech News Blog had a new post. I hope you are ready for some awesome new tips for Google Docs and Slides - teachers, this is for you!

Google Docs

Set Default Font

1. Open a new Google Doc
2. Type something
3. Highlight and change the font of what you typed to what you want to set as default
4. Click the "Normal Text" dropdown
5. Hover on "Normal Text" and select "Update Normal Text to match"
6. Click the "Normal Text" dropdown again
7. Hover over "Options" and select "save as my default styles"
8. Now when you create a new Google doc, it will use the font you just set as your default!

Video Previews

1. Open the Google Doc 
2. Paste the video link in the doc *Note: You will be prompted to replace this with a smart chip, which will automatically update the link to be the title of the video*
3. To play this video in the same window as a video preview, hover over the link and select "Open Preview"
4. You can now view the video right in your Google Doc window!

Embed Drawings

1. Open a Google Doc
2. Click Insert > Drawing > New
3. Create your drawing or paste your drawing in the box
4. Click "Save and Close"
5. You can now double click and edit the drawing right in the Google Doc!

Google Slides

Maximize space

To allow your slides to show better on your screen, you can hide the menus. There are two different ways to do this:

1. Click "View" and uncheck the "Show Speaker Notes" and "Show Filmstrip"
   
2. Click "View" and select "Full Screen" *Note: Press ESC on your keyboard to exit Full Screen*

Live Captions

While presenting, you can turn on Live Captions for students to see the subtitles for what you say.

1. Open a Google Slides file
2. Click "Present" 
3. In the bottom left corner, click the 3 dots menu button
4. Hover over "Caption Preferences"
5. Click "Toggle Captions"
6. You can also change the location and size of the caption text in the "Caption Preferences"

Publish to the Web

If you want to share a Google Slides presentation, but don't want it to show with all of the menus, you can publish to the web and get a link to share only the slides.

1. Once your Google Slides presentation is complete, click "File"
2. Select "Publish to the Web"
3. Click "Publish", then "OK"
4. You will now have a link to share your slides in a web view without the menus!

PowerSchool Update 21.11.1.0

PowerSchool got some updates! Every so often, we update PowerSchool to the most recent version. This means new features, bug fixes, and other helpful changes. 

Here are the updates you will see as of January 7,2022:

1. New look/colors on some pages.

2. PowerTeacher Pro:

• Filter Assignments: Teachers are now able to filter assignments on the Standards Scoresheet, allowing teachers to view specific categories or due dates for analysis.
• Missing Assignment Report: Teachers can include assignments with a score of zero on missing assignment report.   
• Starting Page: Teachers can now set a default starting page other than the Assignment List.
• Transfer Scores: Teachers can now review the score type and assignment points for each assignment available on Transfer Score, allowing teachers to understand the weight of each assignment. 

3. The Career Tech pages have been renamed Academic and Career Planner, or ACP.

4. Administrators can now assign pathways of courses to an Academic and Career Plan.

5. Health: 

• Search medications by category, such as "fever".
• When adding immunization records for a student, the count on the Health - Immunization tab now displays the dose totals correctly.

6. Security: Username and Password fields have been updated to disable autocomplete, spellcheck, autocorrect, and auto-capitalize

7. PowerSchool Admin:

• Blank Records: The Entry Codes and Exit Codes allowed the creation of blank records which allowed duplicate values. Validation is now in place to ensure that there are no blank codes.
• Enrollment Summary Report: This report now includes a breakdown of all genders defined in the Gender code set when clicking on the student total links.
• Contacts: "Contacts" page now shows when an account is locked due to multiple invalid login attempts.
• Forms: All forms can now be translated to all languages supported by PowerSchool.
• Enrollment Email: There is now an option to resent the Enrollment email through the Pre-registration Submissions report.

8. Graduation Planner: Now can configure a Graduation Plan with a required minimum GPA that is calculated using one of the options below:

• All courses that a student has taken
• Only those courses that were applied to the Graduation Plan

9. Parent Portal: Schools are now shown in alphabetical order.

New Google Tools & Features!

 There are some new tools and features on Google for Education that are available NOW!

Google Classroom/Google Meet

• Students can't join if the host isn't on the meeting
• Only students in Google Classroom can join the meeting
• Anyone outside the class roster has to ask to join
• Co-teachers in Google Classroom are automatically made co-hosts of the meeting
• Pin or unpin presentation or other tiles for display
• Turn off all videos at once

Google Docs

• Checklist with clickable checkboxes

                        

• Smart Chips
• Use the @ button to tag a person, attach a file, a calendar event or a date

• If you add a calendar event with the smart chips, it will give you the option to create a meeting note template and also add the note template document to the calendar event!

Tasks

• To-Do Lists 
• Show on the side of Gmail
• Add a date to show in Google Calendar - make sure the Tasks calendar is enabled

Hopefully these amazing features will help save you time and effort! 

Enrollment Notifications - Secretaries Only

When a new student enrolls, an email is sent to the building secretary to inform of the new enrollment. The secretary then needs to acknowledge this new enrollment. The student will continue to show up in emails each day until the enrollment is acknowledged. Once it is acknowledged, the student will no longer show up in the daily email. 

Enrollment Acknowledgement is done in the student record > Custom Info > Contact Info.

Special Programs Staff

There are similar emails for new students with specific tags marked by the parent/guardian on the Enrollment Form, such as Special Education and English Learner. These students will need to acknowledged as well.

As always, if you have any question, don't hesitate to reach out to the tech department.

Troubleshooting Parent Portal and SchoolMessenger

Parent Portal

There are two new articles on the knowledge base for tips on troubleshooting parent portal login issues. 

- One of the articles is for how you as staff can help troubleshoot before contacting the help desk.

- The other article can be shared with parents/guardians to have them check things on their end.

Knowledge Base - Parent and Student Portals

On another note, settings have been changed for the Knowledge Base and you will now need to login with your staff account credentials to view the articles. If you have any issues, contact Brittany Hice.

SchoolMessenger

There is a new knowledge base article to show how to see a broadcast report, check recipient delivery status, see if a recipient has blocked our communications, and remove them from the blocked list if needed.

Knowledge Base - SchoolMessenger

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Little SIS and Google Classroom Sync

An update is coming for Google Classroom sync from PowerSchool! A program called "Little SIS" pulls class information from PowerSchool and creates or updates classes in Google Classroom. This happens each night to ensure classes are always up to date based on the rosters in PowerSchool. 

This update will allow teachers to have better control of the classes pulled into Google Classrooms. 

When a Google Classroom is provisioned, an email with a link to the Teacher Review website will allow teachers to review the information.

The Teacher Review will allow teachers to:

• Review the class information pulled from PowerSchool
• Merge multiple classes into a single class
• Link a provisioned class with an existing Google Classroom 

This is accomplished using a drag and drop feature.

We think this will be a great tool to help ensure student rosters and classes are always up to date, while allowing teachers more control over their Google Classroom structure.

Keep an eye out for more information coming later this week!