Video Conferencing - Streaming - With Google Hangouts

Video Conferencing is not always the solution (see below), but it has become remarkably easy to conduct a video conference/streaming session with up to 250 participants via Google Hangouts with your Chromebooks. Teachers have used the video conferencing in Hangouts to communicate with other classes, in other schools, share with professionals who are at work, or communicate with an absent student. You can use the on-board video and audio devices to stream video, audio, and computer screens with participants. Here is a brief How-To -

1. Have all participants use their District-issued Chromebooks. (For students to participate, submit a Tech Help Desk with the specific student number and the request that s/he be allowed to use video-conferencing.) (As of Tuesday, March 10, students have the rights to launch Google Hangouts for Video Conferencing and Chatting, so that, in the event school were closed, teachers would have the option to invite students to a remote video conference to conduct classes or continue instruction.)
2. Schedule the class, session, or meeting in Google Calendar.
3. Invite the staff, students, or colleagues by clicking 'Add guests.'
4. Click 'Add location or conferencing' and then 'Add conferencing.'

Once you 'Save' the session or meeting, invitees will receive an email with both a link to click and join-in, as well as a phone number for participating via phone. If everyone uses a Chromebook, you do not need to use phones for the audio. Merely enable or allow the microphone and speakers on the Chromebook to run. Someone can join the meeting via their phones, if they only wish to listen. But if they also wish to see the proceedings, or share a screen, they will have to have a computer or Chromebook. But encourage participants to use either their Chromebook, or a phone. Not both.

Some other resources and implementation tips are available here.

Cleaning Computers/Chromebooks

The District Supervisor of Technology in Butler, Ms. Evelyn Horner, recently sent the following email to her teachers. It seems applicable to us in Bloomfield:

Good afternoon all! - 

     Most of you have been assigned a Chromebook or mobile device, and as such, will need to clean the equipment that you have in your possession. However, most of us also use shared desktops. 

     Housekeeping is cleaning the facilities at night, but you can help yourself during the day. Regardless of whether the devices are shared or not, I offer the following tips to try to keep devices clean. 

     Make sure the device is OFF - as in OFF - not just asleep, but OFF. 

     Did I mention that it needs to be OFF?

     Never use any product containing any alcohol, ammonia, or other strong solvents to clean your Chromebook / Device or computer.

     Do NOT spray or wipe your Chromebook / computer with any Windex/household cleaner/water and/or cleaning cloth/wipes.

     After spraying the cloth with a safe solution, wipe your keyboard, mouse, and touch screen as applicable. 

Note that you may want to wash your hands or have hand sanitizer around and use it BEFORE you touch a computing device - particularly if it is shared. Just as important to know that even if the device is largely exclusive to you - you may have picked up a germ or 2 in your travels - Wash or sanitize your hands before you touch your computing devices. 

If you have any questions about cleaning or sanitizing a computer, please submit a Tech Help Desk ticket!

Use Phrases As Passwords

Like Bloomfield, many systems, schools, and companies have tightened password rules to enhance security. Increasingly, we have to enter more and more characters of different types to comply with new password requirements. For example, the Board Docs program used for BOE Meetings and Policies recently required a minimum of ten (10) characters with upper and lower case letters, numbers, and at least one special character. Another system used by the District now requires a blank space within user passwords.

It is actually easier -sometimes- to meet the new requirements by using memorable phrases or even sentences, rather than trying to remember lengthier and lengthier words. Passphrases are more secure. It is easier to use passwords that are made of full sentences. To use numbers, you can selectively substitute the number zero in place of the letter 'O', or use the number '3' in place of 'S'. But it is easier to remember "Tear3 in the Rain" than the word dihydroxyphenylalanine -unless you teach Chemistry.

Faculty Survey

Teachers are invited -encouraged- to spend a few minutes completing this survey on Chromebook/computer usage in their schools/classrooms. It should only take five minutes, if you complete the mandatory questions. Thank you!

NJSLA Test Preparation

Angela Brisini has put together these resources to help teachers prepare for NJSLA -

These links will provide teachers and students with the experience of an online practice test within the selected grade level/subject area: 

ELA Practice Tests NJSLA

Math Practice Tests NJSLA

Science Practice Tests (Grade 5, 8 and High School)

Lastly, I include an online tutorial that allows teachers and students to review how to navigate the testing frame and all the available features: 

Test Nav Tutorial NJSLA

Regards,

A. Brisini

Please coordinate with Librarians and fellow teachers to make sure that all Chromebooks to be used for testing have been turned on and updated prior to being used to test.

Please report in Spiceworks any outages or problems with WiFi before testing begins.

BTA

Instructors: Please make sure your teachers complete the course survey, either on SharePoint, or Google forms.

As explained in the last District Tech Committee, beginning this summer, Instructors will have to request/reserve rooms for BTA courses by creating an account on the "ML Scheduler." Here are directions for creating an account. It will not be necessary to reserve rooms, until the summer BTA course requests.

Student Journaling

When I was a high school student -and when I taught 7th through 12th graders- in a previous century (20th, not 19th), one of the most memorable and successful activities in which I engaged as a student or teacher was 'Journaling.' The practice would start early in the school year. At some point in the class, at the beginning, middle, or end, usually after a unit or chapter or project had been completed, the teacher would announce 'Journal Time.' It was always the same sequence: students sat silent for several minutes. At first, I might remind the class what we had just finished, what we did, and what we were supposed to learn. Later we would just sit in silence for a minute or two, while they reflected. Then students would write a sentence or paragraph on 'How They Felt' about that lesson or learning. They recorded whether they were interested, bored, curious, blase, dubious. Whatever they were feeling, as they reflected on the lesson, they recorded. Then they would compose a second sentence or paragraph on 'Why' they felt as they did: Was one aspect of the learning particularly attractive, or unappealing, to them? Did they find a correlation with something that they had learned elsewhere? Were they interested in learning more about some topic? Did they think the material could have been taught differently?

In talks with those who taught me, I learned that some of them did this exercise merely to check spelling and grammar (sometimes we had to use any new vocabulary that we had learned -spelling and grammar always counted - hyphenations and parentheses were never permitted). Others just wanted an activity that gave them some quiet time. In any case, the efficacy of the exercise was putting students in touch with their affect and feeling, trying to touch what motivates and interests them, "meta-awareness."

I dreaded marking the notebooks. It was a horribly tedious task to collect the notebooks and grade them, while they took a test or engaged in some other activity. The equally unappealing alternative was to collect the notebooks, pile them on my desk, and stay late, or arrive early to grade and return them the next day. I usually just checked that they had done the activity.

By the end of the year, it was a homework assignment to "Journal." Then I could grade or check that the reflection had been done in a more leisurely fashion, as I did routinely during the semester.

In years since, I have come across lots of literature and educational practice on the value of student journaling. One article emphasizes important practices: be consistent; give clear directions; use prompts, if students need them at the beginning; build toward 'free writing' where students are self-revealing; always review what they write; and "encourage self-evaluation." There are lots of other references for K-12 students: http://42explore.com/journl.htm; https://www.edutopia.org/blog/student-journals-efficient-teacher-responses; and for graduate students.

I have wished that I taught students in this century, when a journal could be recorded as a single online Google doc, or a series of submissions in Google Classroom, all of which I could review from home, without a pile of spiral-bound notebooks. Moreover, in any electronic gradebook, I could simply record "Completed" without having to enter a numeric score. What I did find as a teacher is that no, single journal entry was by itself persuasive or influential, but as a practice inculcated in students over time, they would learn to learn on their own. One of my successes as a teacher was a student who won state-wide forensics competitions, based on his personal research of the topic of 'principled, non-violent' resistance, which he learned, through journaling, about Martin Luther, then Thoreau, and finally Martin Luther King, Jr. His recitation of "I Have a Dream" speech was beyond inspiring. I hope all the Technology that we have fosters this reflection, rather than crowd it out. At the very least, you get some quiet time!

Tom A.

When NOT to Video Conference. . .