Tools to Communicate
Communicating with students
**Our students do NOT have access to Google Hangouts**
All of our 3-12 students will have devices to take home, so you should be able to digitally communicate with them using some tools we have available.
Email - all of our grade 3-12 students have gmail accounts
Direct Messaging via LMS
Canvas and Google Classroom offer direct messaging tools to 'message' your students and vise versa when questions need to be answered.
Course Discussions in Canvas - utilizing the discussions option in Canvas allows for the conversation to continue.
Online Discussions in Google Classroom - allows everyone to contribute to the conversation and helps you know if they have mastered the concept
Provide Virtual Office Hours - there are a few tools below that will give you the opportunity to communicate with students through video conferencing when they have questions about their work.
Conferences in Canvas - allows students to join a virtual conference when needed
Zoom - Free Videoconferencing tool from ESC11 (Zoom is waiving the 40 min limit now) **Student do NOT need to have a Zoom account to join a Meeting**
When offering virtual office hours, you need to initiate the meeting. Best practice is to not have students initiate the meeting. Set a recurring meeting if you offer hours the same time each day and post the link in Canvas or Google Classroom. If a student wants a meeting outside of your office hours, they need to email/contact you and you create the meeting and invite them.
Student Instructions for Joining a Zoom Meeting Chromebooks | Macbooks
Using Zoom to teach an online lesson/conference with students (Created by Zoom)
communicating with parents
This is a trying time for parents as well. Be sure that you are communicating with them and keeping them at ease as to what is going on.
Phone calls
Add *67 before the phone number you are calling and your number won't show up on their phone
Google Voice (sign in on personal google account)
Generates a 'pretend' phone number to give to parents
TextNow (free service for text and voice)
Google Classroom Guardian (email summary of classroom activity)
Parent Account in Canvas
Emails
Speak & Translate App (iOS) - Live Translate
communicating with peers
Tools for video conferencing with each other.
Google Meet - interactive video conferencing tool from Google