We’ve recently migrated our listserve to Google Groups. You can find more information and join the group here. Please check out our archive of monthly newsletters, as well as our weekly updates. Lots of good information to share with colleagues and staff.
Check out this week’s Learning with Google event to learn about news and updates about the rebranding of Google Workspace for Education.
So many new features rolling out in Google Meet right now. Read this post for all the details.
Registration / Call for Presenters
The Pacific Northwest Summit, featuring Google for Education, is an annual, educator-led conference. We have learned together the past eight years in our fast-paced day of collaboration and fun. Each year has its own theme: Legos in 2010, Cookies in 2011, Robots in 2012, Mt. Hood in 2013, Bikes in 2014, Paper Airplanes in 2015; Augmented Reality in 2016, Doorways to Learning in 2017, Maps in 2018. an anniversary in 2019. This year we’re learning about resilience and our connection to both this Pacific Northwest we call home and to each other.
The summit is an annual event on the second Friday of October—in a normal year, statewide in-service day for both Washington and Oregon.
This year’s format is a bit different, with two shorter days and a mix of live webinars, curated resources, and birds of a feather sessions. It’s a good bet that most will focus on the professional practice of teaching and learning in distributed environments, fondly known as Comprehensive Distance Learning. Google Meets has new features, Google Voice is back en vogue, and the steady eddies of docs, calendar, gmail, and classroom are keeping us sane.
In addition to those how-tos, and show-and-tells, we also encourage sessions that are conversations. Topics can include google themes, but we also welcome conversations about COVID, connecting with students in this pandemic year, Black Lives Matter and anti-racism efforts, the new trauma of the September wildfires across the region, or…really any of the issues that impact our professional and personal lives this year.
We’ll see you October 9.
Google is currently making fixes to address the glitches in Google Meet: students joining a Meet before the teacher starts it, students being able to mute or remove the teacher and others, and students rejoining a Meet. Google Meet is also now integrated with Google Classroom. These changes are slowly rolling out. Continue to create nicknamed Meets, which will eventually enable the student restrictions. Check out the videos below from @ericcurts and @rangathetrainer for sneak peeks and to learn about the new features.
Governor Kate Brown announced a statewide school closure for students in Oregon from Monday, March 16 through Tuesday, April 28. Read more information and see regular updates here.
PPS Coronavirus Updates
As the United States and rest of the world deal with the outbreak of COVID-19, commonly called the Coronavirus, Portland Public Schools is closely monitoring the situation and is making updates and resources available to our families and staff. Below are updates we have sent, via email, to our families on COVID-19.
Extended Spring Break Home Learning Resources
Above students and parents will find a collection of links to learning activities. The “CLEVER” icon will link students to a familiar Clever Student Portal with links to many learning applications from the classroom. Clever will require that students log in using their PPS user name (@student.pps.net) and password. If your students has forgotten their logon info, parents can email support@pps.net to request info by email. Please be sure email from an email address listed on your child’s registration, provide your student’s first, last name, date of birth, and parents full name on record.
The grade level activity links are curated lists of additional fun, creative, and engaging learning activities students will enjoy. Most of these will not require students to log in with their PPS account.
Online Learning & Tips for Teachers
Check out this webpage for a compiled list of webinars about distance learning, as well as as some other teacher resources.
March 2 – BESC Staff & Early Adopters
This group will have Gmail and Google Calendar running alongside their Outlook email. Staff have the option of working in either platform but it is recommended to use one in order to minimize confusion.
March 23 – All Staff & 9-12 Grade Students
All users with existing PPS Email and Calendar services including students in grades 9-12 will be transitioned to Gmail and Google Calendar. After April 6, 2020, access to Outlook email and calendar will no longer be supported.
More info and FAQs available at pps.net/gmail-faq.
You can find all our monthly G Suite for Education #CopierPD tips here on the PPS G Suite for Education resource page. So far this year, tips have included multiple Chrome users and Google document URL tricks.
How to Manage Multiple Google Accounts
Check out this G Suite for Education tip, our first in a monthly series.
For a full tutorial and video from Shake Up Learning, visit this link. For your staff, download and print this poster and put it up next to your copier! #CopierPD
Google Classroom
Lots of confusion around Google Classroom as the failed Edupoint/Synergy Gradebook sync led us to opt-in all class sections for the Google Classroom/Synergy sync. Several teacher teachers are seeing duplicate sections and students are being kicked out of classrooms. Please know that our team is working hard to resolve these issues and strange one-off situations. Some good news: in October, any classes that have no activity and have not been accessed will automatically be archived. We have gotten reports of students accessing these empty Google Classrooms and posting comments and replies on the stream.
Netop Vision
We’ve received several reports about how kids are already getting around the screen sharing in Vision. Teacher and student devices must be on the same network. Students may choose another wireless access point after they’ve signed in to the Chromebook to sidestep screen sharing. There was also another report of students turning off notifications to bypass the screen sharing dialog box, but we haven’t been able to replicate that error. Check your teacher settings and the settings we’ve turned on here:
Check out these great end-of-year Google Classroom cleanup tips from Eric Curts. He also includes a podcast version and a video version in the link above.
As the school year winds down, most teachers go through some sort of check-out procedure for their physical classrooms, making sure everything is properly organized or put away for the summer. In much the same way, you may want to do some clean-up and close-out steps for your digital classroom … Google Classroom.
PPS Learning Technologies 