Technology Update: STU-CON 2017 & WeVideo 1-24-17

Help spread the news!

Share the STU-CON 2017 Informational flyer with your families by going to https://goo.gl/APlpMz and downloading the image above. You can also embed this image in your electronic communications home - right-mouse on the image above, choose “Save as Picture”, rename the file, and save it to a location where you will be able to find it for the future. The Technology Department is putting together a FUN evening for our students, families, community and staff on March 23. Food will be provided by our fabulous Bryte Culinary Arts students as we support our WUSD students in sharing their tech-knowledgy! There will be music and CTL, our Chromebook vendor, has graciously donated two (yes, 2!!) Chromebooks to give away as door prizes! Teachers - Please gather your teams of students and submit your registration so we can save your time slot. All time-slots are 30 minutes long beginning at 5 pm. Your role will be to supervise and assist as needed. Your students are the stars of the show, but will need your organizational skills to help them shine! And, you will be compensated for your time.

Not sure what to do?

Unable to make it, but want to send a team?

You really want to be a part of STU-CON, but not sure how?  

Email Kim, Melissa, Edmund, or Christy - we are here to help!  Go to https://goo.gl/wik6XC for our contact information. To sign up your student team, visit https://goo.gl/3NRgQ3.

WeVideo is Here!

WUSD Students and Teachers now have access to premier cloud-based video creation and editing program using WeVideo. Visit wevideo.com and use the signin with Google button and you’ll be added to our WUSD account and have access to premium features such as green screen and more! Want to learn more about multimedia creation in your classroom? We are offering a 3-part video creation series on February 21, March 23, and April 27 from 3:30-5:30 in Room 48. You can register at goo.gl/ZNfwgd

Partial Screenshot on Chromebook

Taking a screenshot on a Chromebook is as easy as control + shift + switch window.  Highlight the selected area and depending on settings your image is saved in your Google Drive or locally.  If you want to take a screenshot of an entire page, use control + switch window.  

Hapara Update: Create Your Own Classes

Reading Specialists, Language Specialists, Resource Teachers, and any teacher working with students who may not be rostered to you during Designated ELD or Afterschool...Great News!! You can now create your own classes in Hapara.  The classes created for you by Aeries will remain and  now you can create classes to meet your needs and take advantage of all that Hapara has to offer with all your students you work with on a regular basis.  Here's how:

WeVideo is Here!

WeVideo is here for teachers and students! WeVideo offers a cloud-based, collaborative video creation and editing solution. Students can record video along with audio and lay different tracks combined with the premium WeVideo features such as music, transitions, special effects and much, much more.

For those interested in getting started, visit WeVideo.com using your WUSD Google Account and click the sign-in with Google and you're ready to start creating. To help jumpstart your creations, we are offering a 3-part video creation series to build your skills using this program by providing hands-on activities that you can use with your students. These sessions will be offered starting February 21, March 23, and April 27. All sessions will be held from 3:30-5:30 in Room 48 at the District Office. Due to the progressive nature of skills and practice of this series, attendance is expected for the entire series.  Teachers will be paid their hourly PD rate.  Register today at goo.gl/ZNfwgd.  Additionally, our Technology TOSA, Edmund Lynch is available to help demonstrate WeVideo in your classrooms. If you're interested, please reach out to Edmund directly via email.

Coming Soon: Read&Write

Read&Write by TextHelp will soon be available to teachers and students. Read&Write is a literacy toolbar that exists in the Chrome Browser, in G Suite Files, and pdfs. This toolbar has many features to support all learners such as text to speech, dictionary, a visual dictionary, the ability to annotate text, and much, much more.

If you are interested in learning more, we are offering a 3-part series beginning January 19 by providing an introduction to the tool. Session 2 on February 23 will focus on using Read&Write to Support Vocabulary Instruction and the third session on March 30 will focus on using Read&Write to Support Writing & Research.  All sessions will occur from 3:30-5:00 in Room 48 at the District Office. Teachers will be paid their hourly PD rate. Due to the nature of this series, attendance is expected at all 3 sessions. Registration is available at https://goo.gl/m2TU0R. Teachers interested in exploring Read&Write in advance of upcoming training, you can install the tool using this link.

Technology Update: STU-CON 2017 & H Drive Storage - 1-12-17

Happy New Year!

STU-CON 2017 – March 23, 2017

STU-CON 2017 is our first annual student powered technology fest and it will be held from 5-7 pm at City Hall in the Galleria. STU-CON 2017 is a showcase for our students to share how they've been learning with technology in their classrooms. It's an opportunity for families to come and learn from their own children and have a chance to explore and engage with the technology our students use daily. We're counting on you, our teachers and staff, to help by putting together teams of students that can lead demonstrations or present projects that you’ve done in your classroom over the last year. This could be anything from using Google apps to robotics to video to podcasting - whatever it happens to be that your students are doing - we want to hear from you!

More Information: https://goo.gl/wik6XC
Form to Sign your Team up: https://goo.gl/3NRgQ3

H DRIVE STORAGE

It’s time to apply some minimalists strategies to your H Drive. We've had several requests for additional storage on the H Drive and unfortunately, that's not possible/ Everyone has the same amount of storage space allocated to on our servers and if we increase for one, we will need to increase for all and we don’t have enough server space to do that. If you're finding that you're running out of storage space on your H drive then it might be a good time for a spring cleaning. Take a moment to look at the files in your H Drive and ask yourself these three questions:

1. Do I need this? If Yes, then decide what to do with it. If No, then delete it.
2. Do I need this semester? If Yes, do nothing. If No, then upload it to your Google Drive for future reference.
3. I don’t need it now, but I might in the future? Face it, all teachers are pack rats and hate to delete anything!If Yes, then upload it to your Google Drive If No, then delete it.

Don’t forget to empty your trash when you’re finished. (Right-mouse click on the trash can and choose “Empty Recycle Bin”)

A couple of reminders about Google Drive:

• Don’t upload personal info (like credit card numbers, social security numbers)
• You can upload an entire folder at one time, recommended to keep the same file structure.
• If you’re uploading individual files, you may want to create a new folder in your Drive to keep everything organized.

Annual Equipment Maintenance

On Friday, January 13, we will be performing the annual maintenance on the universal power supplies for the District’s network between 12 and 3 pm.  This means our entire system will at the District Office will be on our battery backup.  This should not interrupt or impact the network in any way during this time, unless there's a black out or brown out, which we don't anticipate. This is a necessary maintenance to keep our system up and running. You don't need to do anything, but we wanted to let everyone know about this scheduled maintenance.

Again, Happy New Year and we look forward to serving you in 2017!

KIM HARRISON
Director II, Technology

New Google Classroom Updates

Some long-awaited and often requested features in Google Classroom were released today.  You can now post assignments, questions, and posts to individual students or groups of students. Differentiation and group work via Google Classroom made much easier!  Read more about all the new Classroom features released today in the Google Blog. 

Reopen Closed Tab

Close a Chrome tab accidentally? No problem. Try this keyboard shortcut! Use Control + Shift + T to reopen the last closed tab in your Chrome browser.

Hapara Teacher Dashboard Organization

Did you know you can organize and customize your teacher dashboard in Hapara? By default, your teacher dashboard is organized alphabetically by student first name. You can sort your cards by either first name or last name in both alphabetical or reverse alphabetical order.

What if you could organize your teacher dashboard to match your seating chart, by group project, or something else?  You can!   Your teacher dashboard is 100% customizable within the 4 horizontal square layout.  You can drag and drop the cards on your teacher dashboard to create the layout that works best for you! If you want to copy that layout to another screen within your teacher dashboard by clicking the x arrows to the right of the ABC sorting button.

If you want your teacher dashboard to be organized by flexible groups, you can also filter your groups. If you don't already have students assigned to groups, this support document from Hapara will guide you through the process.

Organize your Google Drive in 2017

To celebrate the new year, WUSD EdTech will be sharing organizational tips throughout the month of January.  We've been using Google district-wide for 18 months and  there are over 500,000 files now stored in Google Drives! With that many files, you may be getting overwhelmed by your Google Drive.  Here's a few tips to help organize your Google Drive in the new year.

Google Drive Organization Tips