Welcome to the Schoology Source - your source for everything Schoology related. Over the course of time that Schoology has been used as a learning management system (LMS) in Jeffco, it has changed quite a bit and has become an even bigger powerhouse tool that can greatly support students and teachers during the 2020-2021 school year! The aim of this recurring blog segment is to help you understand those changes, so that you can leverage the power of Schoology to support both hybrid and remote learning environments!

In order to meet the needs of teachers, our Ed Tech team is beginning to offer our face-to-face professional learning sessions in an asynchronous format as well! If you missed attending the Getting Started with Schoology session on August 14th, you can check out this Getting Started with Schoology multimedia text set with loads of bite-sized videos to get you going. You can find videos on our new Schoology model classroom, linking course sections to save you time, embedding Google straight into Schoology, the new Schoology assessments and much more! Also, be sure to check out all of our other Jeffco-specific digital tool YouTube playlists, as well! ​

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. 

Don't start from scratch next school year! Leverage the Resources section in Schoology to save, reuse, and share resources you have created. The following step-by-step directions will walk you through these processes so that you can take what you have developed this year and save for use next year, making modifications where necessary.

In your Personal resources, you have a Home collection of resources, folders and files that you may want to use in your account. A collection is a master area that helps organize all of your saved work. This Home collection exists by default, and it’s only available to you. To share collections of resources with other faculty and connected users, you can create additional collections. To share a newly created Collection with others:

1. Click on Resources/Personal
2. Click on the title of the collection you have created
3. You will see a "Share" button option to select.
4. Once you select the "Share" button, type in the name of the person with whom you want to share the collection of resources.

You can create a collection for every year, for each grading period, or for each course.

Are you a PLC school looking for ways to track your student data to better inform instructional decisions? Are you making the shift from a focus on teaching to a focus on learning? PLCs entail whole-staff involvement in a process of intensive reflection upon instructional practices and desired student benchmarks, as well as monitoring of outcomes to ensure success. PLCs enable teachers to continually learn from one another via shared visioning and planning, as well as in-depth critical examination of what does and doesn’t work to enhance student achievement. Schoology provides many features which can help support these efforts.

Reflection is a crucial element of modern pedagogical systems. Today’s educational practices place a high importance on the ability for students to self-assess and build meta-cognition through reflection. Using Schoology for this task makes this work easy for both the students and teacher. Using digital journals, students can journal on their own device, on a classroom device or from home. 

Building individual discussion threads only one time for each student using Schoology discussions is an easy way to support this practice. The following presentation identifies 4 easy steps to set this up.

• This method provides privacy between you and the student.
• Able to start conversation and follow-ups with students.
• Doesn’t have to be graded/assessed.
• Posts are ongoing, chronological and archived.

Are you ready to start your students in digital journaling? Ask your school Digital Teacher Librarian or Educational Technology Specialist for support in getting started.

Earlier in October, Jeffco hosted the Connect Colorado with Schoology conference at the Ed Center. There were participants from all over Colorado and over 17 school districts, including some travelers from Nebraska and Wyoming. Jeremy Friedman, founder and CEO of Schoology, was the keynote speaker and provided a great overview of the many new features Schoology has added, as well as features that are in various plans of development that will make using Schoology even more robust and efficient.

Teachers are increasingly turning to tools to help support digital workflow in their classrooms. Student online work, discussions, assignment tracking, and instant feedback are some features that digital workflow tools can provide.

Two common tools available for teachers within Jeffco which can support these needs are Schoology and Google Classroom. Jeffco Ed Tech has created a comparison chart to help support the discussions which many schools are having regarding these two tools.

Choosing the best tool for the job always begins with the instructional purpose in mind. Teachers may find they need one or both of these tools at various times throughout the year to help meet their needs.

Digital Teacher Librarians and the Jeffco Ed Tech team are great resources as your school enters into these conversations.

Looking for more information about digital workflow? Read our related blog.

You've conquered the copy machine, those formative assessment tools have no secrets from you, and you've mastered surfing on the web. Now it's time to take your instruction to a new level.

It's time to use Jeffco's Learning Management System, Schoology. Whether you implement one feature or many, you can enhance your instruction and your students' 21st Century learning style through the use of this versatile system, already on all Jeffco computers!

Have you ever needed to prevent students from searching the internet, the computer or another computer application for information during a Schoology test/quiz? If your school has Chromebooks, you can enable a new feature called a kiosk.

What this feature does is it locks down a testing environment. It prevents digital cheating during online tests/quizzes. Students cannot print, copy or go to another website. Additionally, it prevents anyone from accessing other applications when using this feature.

So much to be done! So little time! The pressure on teachers to get everything done by the end of the school day is formidable. How do you cover the curriculum and allow students to be active learners? Take a baby step into the world of Blended Learning. Blended Learning is “blending” the best of both worlds...the face to face interaction of the classroom with the flexibility of online activities such as discussions, video instruction, content delivery, and group work. Whether it is through a 1:1 environment, or the use of just a few student devices/computers in the classrooms, blended learning will save you time and energy in effectively and efficiently covering the content that needs to be covered.

One of the most useful things in presenting digital content is to use a source’s embed code. You can embed many things to your webpage or learning management system, like Schoology, and get rid of paper and textbooks! ​