Book Creator is one of the 8 district purchased tools and a great way for students and teachers to get creative in crafting digital books.  

In Book Creator you can combine text, images, audio and video to create:

• Interactive stories
• Digital portfolios
• Research journals
• Poetry books
• Science reports
• Instruction manuals
• ‘About me’ books
• Comic adventures

Recently, Book Creator added numerous accessibility improvements in their latest update.  A few of their updates are:
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Now you are able to auto-generate captions for videos that you add to Book Creator.  Generate the captions and then manually edit them as needed. When recording audio, you can now add transcripts to your recording. Book Creator developed speech-to-text functionality in November 2017, but now they’ve supercharged it so you can dictate your text in 120 different languages. 

​Directions: Add Captions to Video
Directions: Generate a Transcript
​Directions: Use Your Voice to Type the Words
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Updates have been made to make the screen easier to read.  Fonts and images have been updated.

Read to me is a great feature that allows students to have books that are shared with them.  Not only is the book read to them, but students can change the settings to have the speech rate changed, the page displayed changed, and have the book read in different voices and language.
For more information: intercom.help/bookcreator/en/articles/2398649-read-to-me-in-book-creator

Along with the added accessibility features, book creator has some other great features that add some amazing functionality to your books.  A few of these features are autodraw, app smash, embed media, and insert audio to name a few.

Let us know what amazing things you've been doing with Book Creator to enhance creativity and provide accessibility for all students!

School administrators are now able to request a school-based YouTube account (schoolnameyoutube@jeffcoschools.us). ​Administrators may request the creation of a school-based YouTube account by submitting a work ticket in ESS. Having a school-based YouTube account allows the school’s video content to live with the school, rather than on an individual staff member’s YouTube channel. For security purposes, these accounts cannot be used to log into any other applications other than YouTube. For more information on school-based YouTube channels, please see this best practices document.

Originality reports and rubrics are are two newly available Google Classroom tools. Originality reports support instructors in detecting plagiarism in student work. Students can use the reports to check their work for citation accuracy and for poor paraphrasing before they submit their assignment. This allows students the opportunity to improve their work based on the feedback provided by the originality report. Google allows teachers to activate originality reports on 3 assignments per classroom.

The rubric feature creates opportunities for students to set expectations, provide feedback and evaluate student work. Educators might consider using rubrics for complex assignments that require multiple steps and/or criteria. You can attach a rubric to an assignment a way for students to reference when understanding their grades.
 

• Classroom Support: Run an Originality Report
• Classroom Support: Grade with a Rubric
• Classroom Support: Creating or Reusing a Rubric for an Assessment

In becoming better acquainted with our new digital tools this year, we have discovered that PDFs stored in Shared Drives are not compatible with Read and Write PDF Reader. This is because Read and Write is tied to an individual user's account, and when files are moved into a Shared Drive, they are no longer associated with individual users. If you need to use Read and Write's features on a PDF in a shared drive, the best option is to make a copy and then move the PDF to your individual drive. Please see this help article for additional support.

It's been a while since we've had information about Schoology shared out so here are a few quick items to help you stay up-to-date. 

In case you haven't heard, back in late 2019 PowerSchool purchased Schoology. What does this mean for current Schoology users? Nothing is changing, and we will see enhanced features and options in the future according to our Schoology connections. We will keep you updated as new features become available. If you want to read more about the acquisition, click here. 

Assessment season is right around the corner and many teachers and students are working on preparing to share their amazing learning and knowledge. Did you know Schoology can serve as a robust platform for digital assessments providing practice opportunities for students of all ages? Schoology Tests/Quizzes have a wide variety of options for teachers to create customized assessments in a variety of ways. 

A few of the customization features for teachers include: 

1. Grading for a Test/Quiz - Any Test/Quiz in Schoology provides a variety of options for teachers to setup grading by category for a dynamic grade book, and grade by points or letter grade. Additionally teachers can assign an assessment to their whole class or just specific students. When grading, any multiple choice can be automatically graded for quick access to data saving time on teacher workloads. Teachers can also control the number of attempts thus allowing students to work on demonstrating mastery over longer periods of time. Last, Grading Statistics can be enabled so students can see how they compare to the rest of the class. No names are shown to student, just the grades/scores of their peers.
2. Question Type - Schoology has a wide range of question types available to create dynamic assessments. A few of the options include true/false, ordering, drag and drop, labeling images, short answer/essay, and much more. With a wide variety of options, teachers can challenge students to demonstrate their knowledge and learning in a variety of ways, as well as, practice using digital assessment tools and strategies. Schoology also has a large question bank which teachers can draw from to easily create and modify their assessment questions. 
3. Results of Tests/Quizzes - Keeping up with student growth is no easy task for teachers but Schoology has made it much simpler. Teachers can get instant results for an easy to understand overview of how students are performing. In addition to an overall view, teachers can dig into each question to determine if there are gaps in understanding for specific topics/content. Teachers can also get a breakdown by student to provide differentiated supports without spending large amounts of time grading and transferring data before making instructional decisions. 

For more information on how to use Schoology assessment features, you can visit the Schoology Help Center. Check out the Course Materials resources or more specifically resources for Tests/Quizzes to get started.

Schoology has a Kiosk available for students on any Jeffco owned Chromebook. The Schoology Kiosk allows students to enter Schoology and work only in Schoology on their Chromebook without having access to any external content such as a web browser. The Schoology Kiosk can be a useful tool for teachers to provide students learning and assessment experiences in a more controlled environment. To learn more about using the Schoology Kiosk on district-owned Chromebooks, take a look at the Schoology Kiosk Google Doc. There is also a link included on the document for access to a quick video demonstration. 

Jeffco Schoology is set up to automatically create courses for every teacher coinciding with their class rosters in Infinite Campus. Teachers will see their classes auto-populating the Course Section of their Schoology account. It is asked that teachers DO NOT DELETE these auto-created courses in Schoology. When a teacher deletes an auto-created course, it creates a backlog of Schoology sync issues and also causes students issues with seeing current or future courses they are auto-enrolled in. Once an auto-created course is deleted by a teacher, it cannot be reinstated. It is asked that if teachers aren't using those courses, or they don't want them interfering with current courses, they move them to the bottom of their course list. This can easily be done in the My Course section of Schoology by dragging courses in the order of desired preference. Teachers can delete any courses they have created at anytime without issue, this only applies to the auto-created courses within Schoology. If you have questions or would like further support, please reach out to either Nick Steinmetz or Lisa Summit in the Jeffco Educational Technology Department. 

More Schoology updates, new features, and opportunities for learning will be coming in the next few months. If you have questions about Schoology you can contact the above supports at anytime or reach out to your Jeffco Ed Tech Specialist. 

​Step Three: Play the Flashcard Factory Game

When you're ready to begin, click the blue Play Flashcard Factory button (see the image above). Pear Deck displays instructions on your screen (the Projector View) telling students how to join the game. Just like they enter a Slides Session, students need to go to joinpd.com, log in with their Google Account, then enter the code to join.

Students' names will appear on the teacher’s screen as they join. Students are automatically assigned a partner to create example sentences and illustrations for the new terms during the game. Once they have joined the session, teachers will click Clock in to enter the Production Phase. Students can then start creating their cards. As a class, students can review the cards on the Projector View and choose the best examples to be included in the final Flashcard Set. Learn more about how the game is played.

Step Four: Choose the final Flashcard Set

​When you are ready for students to stop working in the Production Phase, and you want to decide which cards to send to the final set, go to Quality Control.

One of the digital tools purchased for all teachers and students this year is Discovery Education. You may remember this tool for its amazing video collection, but it is so much more. Discovery Education (DE) contains standard-aligned, digital curriculum resources for staff and students. ​

With the easy interactive search features, teachers have the choice of searching for content by Trends, by Subject, and by Colorado Academic State Standards. ​

​One of the most surprising resources in DE are the Professional Development teacher resource tabs. Teachers can join DE’s lesson sharing and social network in the Educator Network and Professional Learning tabs. Teachers share lesson ideas, find instructional strategies, located Discovery Ed learning opportunities around the country, and ways to become a DEN Ambassador. The Instructional Strategies tab offers cross content teaching strategies.

​The last section is the heart of creation and workflow. Teachers can create Studio Boards, “favorite” videos & channels, and much more under the My Content tab. This is a place where everyone in the same school can also share resources; both teacher or student created material. Studio is really where content creation lives. Teachers can create Studio Boards to share with students much like a multimedia text set or a traditional poster board (see Studio features image). Students also have Studio. They can create their own content and then share it back to their teacher through the Classroom feature. DE has workflow built right into the program.

So far this school year, students have created over 2,000 Studio boards.   Students are typically creating science and social studies boards to demonstrate their learning and share with others in their class. The sample below is a  middle school student’s board.
Your EdTech specialist is excited to share more about this amazing tool.

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