March 2021
Top Stories
Women's History Month
In November of 2020, we witnessed history being made as the votes poured in and Kamala Harris was elected the first woman in the history of the United States to become the Vice President (elect) and was sworn into office in Jan 2021. She said, “The generations of women - who throughout our nation’s history have paved the way for this moment… I stand on their shoulders.”
Women’s History Month is an opportunity to learn about and celebrate women. Women that showed resilience, tenacity, and courage to make a difference in the world. Take the opportunity to read about and reflect on women in politics, STEM fields, young activists, athletes, and across history.
If you are not sure where to start, The National Women’s History Museum has created online resources and (standard aligned) lessons for K-12 classrooms. Click here to find digital lessons created for your grade level.
Hybrid/Online Teaching
As all ASD staff and students transition (or prepare to transition) to hybrid learning, there are new challenges presented by student schedules, social distancing, and classroom technology.
DOT have updated their staff support pages to reflect changes with hybrid, including a brand new section to offer support for Concurrent Teaching.
Puget Sound ESD are also offering an opportunity for regional teachers to share their experiences with hybrid/online teaching. The panel will take place on 22nd March at 3:30pm. Interested staff can sign up through the informational flyer here.
Tech Tools
Google Updates
Google have launched, or announced, several new updates to core education tools like Google Classroom and Google Meet. Click through the slideshow below to read more about these features. For upcoming releases, there are no firm dates announced yet. You will see them show up in your Google tools soon!
Washington TeachKit
The new Washington Digital TeachKit offers educators over 20 guides to using educational technology tools ranging from Audacity to Zoom, curated by Washington State teacher librarians.
With links to training resources, user communities, and lesson plans, this new professional learning guide is designed to meet Washington educators where they are -- providing both basic and advanced resources to help educators use the right tools to help learners whether they are learning from home or the classroom.
Tool pages focus on widely-used digital learning tools and services in Washington State including guidance and resources for student engagement, management, and instructional design.
Guide pages allow educators to explore different families of digital learning tools and services to help them match the instructional need to the educational technology solution. Additional resources help educators understand planning in the pandemic, social and emotional learning, educational technology standards, and more.
Securly Classroom
Securly Classroom is a new tool that can help teachers to work more effectively with online students. It allows for:
Sending links to student browsers
Chatting one-on-one with students
Viewing screens to see their work
Restricting certain websites
This is available now to all Auburn teachers. To get started and access training resources, click on the link below:
Instruction
Securly Classroom with Small Group Instruction
Staff working with small groups of students might find the process of unselecting students from a large shared Google Classroom (especially a grade/subject-wide Classroom) cumbersome and prevent them from utilizing SecURLy Classroom. Since this new monitoring tool synchronizes with Google Classroom, generating a separate Classroom for a small group can make managing a group slightly easier. Further, staff not connected to a section can still create their own Google Classrooms to invite students, with which they can start a SecURLy Classroom session. Support staff, like paraeducators, could find this helpful to monitor the students immediately in their groups by having a separate Classroom for each of their individual groups.
Visit the SecURLy Classroom page for more resources around this exciting tool.
Step 1: Make a Small Group Classroom
Step 2: Invite Students to Google Classroom
Data Security & Privacy
Multi-Factor Authentication
Multi-Factor Authentication (or MFA) is a security system where more than one type of login is required to a website or app. Typically, it is a combination of one or more of:
Username and password
Mobile/SMS authentication code
Fingerprint/voice authentication
Many online services use this, and ASD staff are encouraged to enable this for any websites or apps that allow it -- especially for any that are accessed through an ASD device. In our current world of frequent phishing attacks, this provides an extra layer of security to keep your data (and that of our staff and students) safe from hackers.
Help Desk
Guest Network
As our schools transition to hybrid learning, the guest Wi-Fi network has been reduced in speed to accommodate district devices better. Staff should try to avoid depending upon personal devices in the building that use this network. If any district devices are running slowly, please see your building tech to submit a Freshservice ticket to assist with the issue.
Google Meet Video Troubleshooting
If Google Meet users find that the screen is going black or black/green, they can turn the video resolution from Auto to Standard definition (360p), and it should to fix the issue.
To change the resolution, open the three-dot menu, and choose Settings. The video settings can be found on the left hand side of the pop-up window.
Shout Out!
Winter Training Series Concludes
Spanning 42 days, the Winter Training Series concluded on March 8th with over 425 staff members participating in the 50+ asynchronous and synchronous sessions offered. With the support and guidance of multiple departments and teacher leaders contributing to the training series sessions, staff continued to prepare for the transition back to in-person learning while exploring new tools, resources and concepts. The following feedback is just a small sample of the positive feedback the event received.
"I always appreciate having the opportunity to do this asynchronously and do this in the evenings, some classes are full or we don't get to go to extras. I like that we have the option to do more. There are always so many great ideas to take away from our peers and trainings."
Elementary Teacher
"...getting the front porch ready for hybrid learning really opened my eyes to what some of our students had been dealing with this year and made me want to do whatever I could to help get everything ready for the students to start coming back and to make sure they felt welcome and safe at school."
Support Staff
"There was a great deal of information that I will use to improve my instructional practice. Some of it is background knowledge to keep in mind as I design lessons like the Four C's from the Stem Careers. I also developed some new Technology skills like how to create a YouTube channel and create videos."
Middle School Teacher
Look for the Spring Training Series scheduled to begin on June 4th. More information shared in the month prior.