Mega Magical Monday & Totally Tasty Tuesday Update

Welcome back from sunny Cupertino Director of Instructional Technology Robinson, it's good to see you again.

Padlet has decided to be uncooperative this week with error messages and missing padlet pages on the iPad, this is a district wide issue as far as I can tell.  I have sent a tech support ticket to Padlet, and I'm hoping to hear back from them in the next day or so.  There is some discussion that this may be an iOS 10 issue, and not so much a Padlet problem.  Troubleshooting will continue.

Explain Everything continues to be a problem child.  According to our support person at EE the problems are being addressed, unfortunately the fixes run at their pace and not ours.  He has generously offered to fix problems on a case by case basis until next week when the developers run an updated fix that will eliminate all of our issues.  All issues that you sent me today have been fixed according to support, please keep them coming.  I have my fingers crossed.

Turnitin/Schoology (High School):  Yeah, the status has not changed in nearly a month, we are continuously being tossed back and forth, the two companies cannot get together and iron this out.  I have expressed our disappointment with both tech support personnel and I'm confident that eventually we'll be able to launch the turnitin app.  I'm think that we should ask for a partial refund...

G suite:  Ewww

IXL (Middle Schools):  I'm waiting to hear if there are more problems.  Please toss those to me if you have them.  I tested the "parental email" error message, and I was not able to recreate the problem.  All of the names for IXL English have been added, we have at least 50 licenses left if you all have some more to add.

Respondus (Middle and High Schools):  Running Smoothly as far as I know.  Have any of you had any feedback at the middle school level?  I think that BHS has finally mastered it.

Food a Pedia (Middle School):   I sent an email to USDA.gov asking about Food a Pedia for iPad.  I'll update you when I hear from them.

Discovery Education:  All students from each school have been uploaded successfully.

I think that this is it for now...Happy nearly Wednesday.  

OMG it deleted my draft on Mega Monday try again on Toasty Tuesday

I am officially angry with Blogger...I saved my draft 3 times and it still deleted it.  GRRRR

Mastery Manager:   Seems to be functioning properly, the data is uploaded through Saif, the uploads have been happening the last couple of days on a pretty regular basis. Sandee and I are going to keep an eye on it.

Explain Everything:  Full functionality with GSSO was supposed to be 100% implemented today, it is not yet, I'll be calling Samuel @ EE in the morning if I don't hear from him before then.  The
220 video has been uploaded to Gdrive folder and shared with you. Here is the link 220 Spotlight Videos

Discovery Education:  It's taking to long to hear back regarding GSSO for Discovery Ed, the promotions for each school will be completed tonight.

IXL Math/English:   Fully functional for students and Teachers,  we have about 50 kids signed up from Prairie for English, Station is trying to figure out which students to add, I'm going to check with BHS today.

Carolina Science: Sixth Grade is up and running, the website is kinda clunky, and not terribly streamlined.  I've got one tutorial video done that helps to clear up some of the confusion.  I'm awaiting confirmation that the elementary school teachers have registered/created accounts before I upload students.  I've found with this website that you must follow the "order of operations" or it won't work the way it's supposed to.

Subscription Sheet:  I've reached out to the Librarians & LTAs in hopes of getting help with the final login information and we'll be set to roll with this!

Turnitin:  This is the message I got from our "integrations specialist" @ Schoology.  I'm assuming that she's talking about the people from Turnitin are out of the office.  I feel like we're not being taken seriously.   

Angelique Rutter, Oct 4, 5:02 PM EDT:

Hi Shawndra,

Thanks for checking in. I will follow up for an update. I had received an Out Of Office message in response to my original message. 

Best,

Angelique Rutter
Schoology, Inc.

Are We Through with Thursday

Are we Through with Thursday?

Got some fabulous free lunch leftover from the Librarian meeting today, SCORE!

Explain Everything:  The Google Single Sign On option will be 100% active on Tuesday October 4, 2016.  In the mean time, the students could use the 2nd Explain Everything App located in Self Service, this one does not include the collaboration feature.  Once everything is running properly I'll give you a heads up.

 Turnitin:  The issue from Turnitin Configured within Schoology has been escalated via internal tech ticket to their Engineering Dept.  I have high hopes that our problem will finally be resolved.  

Reflector 2:  Still waiting for Mark to push it out to teachers...He's out of the office until Monday, I'll check in with him then. 

Oooops, forgot to take screenshots of the publish process....

Monday, Manic Monday

Monday, Manic Monday
9/25/2016


Carolina Science:  Instructions were sent out for creating Teacher Accounts.  Sixth grade students  will create their own accounts during Science Class, those instructions have been sent out as well.  The middle school instructors and teachers may begin right away.

Instructions for Elementary School Teachers were sent to building LTAs with directions to share with all teachers for grades K, 1st, 4th, and 5th.  Login information for Elementary Students will be uploaded by the fine folks at Carolina Science, teacher accounts must be set up first.  I'll send that to them mid week with an anticipated GO-LIVE date of Friday 9/29.          

Having created Blogs in Schoology, Seesaw, and now Blogger, I find that Schoology and Seesaw are totally user friendly and easy enough for students of all ages.  However, Blogger is more...blog like. It's professional looking with lots of great tools to create polished blog posts. May be more beneficial and manageable for the older age groups, 6th or 7th-12th grades on first glance.  I shared a Google Drive folder with you that has the three blog tutorial sheets inside.  Enjoy!!

Explain Everything:  Has been handed off to Russ regarding push to iPads with licensing attached for students, Mark is going to touch base with him and let me know where we are.

Reflector 2:  Mark is going to try to work on Reflector today, I hope to hear back from him very soon.