MC Digital Blog

We had a lot of fun at our Digital Lunch, Laugh, & Learn Day at CHHS provided by the JCS Digital Learning Team!  We explored the Greenscreen using the Do Ink App, Google Virtual Reality Glasses, Anatomy 4D, Elements 4D, Robotics using Play-doh, circuit board, and a clipboard to play Mario and the piano, and created mix music on the Chromebooks using YOU. DJ  

This morning ALL of our Chromebooks went off the server! ALL 601 of them! Teachers were calling me frantically as I was frantically calling the district for help. It was down the entire 1st block- 90 minutes of instruction time was taken away. Time is always valuable in the classroom, but with only 23 days left before final exams begin-- time is of the essence!  Mrs. Rous, our school librarian, posted and tweeted on her blog today about technology failing with some good preparation tips for the future. Check out these tips Mrs. Rous provided in the event technology crashes on us again. She says it best by stating, "So don't curse it when it crashes, but always have a back-up plan "just in case" and you'll be fine." The Bookshelf ATE My Shelf Marker...and Other Media Tales!: When Technology Fails (Or At Least Lets You Down) : Repeat after me: Technology is my friend. Technology is my friend. Technology is my.... Yes, it's true, even if it let'...

Imagine: It is  7:12am , you have ten minutes until students enter your classroom and when you try to access Google Drive you see this message: Image credit At this point, you might feel like this: Image credit Thankfully, Google has some features and tools to keep us working even when the internet is down. The key is that we need to prepare for this situation in advance (while the  internet is working ). Watch this episode of the Google Apps Show and learn all about accessing Gmail and Google Drive without an internet connection ( click here for the direct link to the video ):   With offline access, you can be prepared and productive anywhere from the ball field to the beach!

Starting first thing Friday (tomorrow) morning, we will be updating Chrome on ALL desktops and laptops. Chrome will attempt to install on startup. However, you could see a pop-up message- please be sure to read the message! The box will automatically disappear and the install will begin after 5 minutes. IF you click OK, the install will begin immediately. If you are logged into the computer, the "postpone" option will appear. By clicking the postpone option, it will "cancel" the update until the next Group Policy Update (GPU). GPU happens during every login and every subsequent 30 minutes. We apologize for the short notice, but Chrome only supports one version back of their current browser and we want to make sure ALL testing is not impacted by this change. Thanks for your understanding.

We all love Quizlet, right? It allows teachers to build vocabulary word banks and quizzes. Students love it because it is an easy way for them to study the words on interactive notecards and to be able to "quiz" themselves. Well, it just got even better! Review games have gone LIVE! This is great collaborative tool for a competitive review game with your students.  Students do not need an account to join the game. Students go to   quizlet.live   and enter the unique code to join the live session.  Once all students have joined the live session, they are randomly placed in groups of 3-4 students. Teachers can reshuffle the groups as many times as needed. Teams work together to solve questions. Communication is essential to earning points for your team. If a team misses a question, their score resets. The first team to answer all questions correctly wins the game. Check out this short video or visit this direct link https://vimeo.com/161809207 : Introd...

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Johnston County Schools has a new Learning Management System (LMS) available for all staff and students. Canvas has been adopted as the state LMS and is accessible via the NCEdCloud portal. Canvas is integrated with the Home Base system, this means that student information is automatically populated into your courses on Canvas. Grades issued in Canvas have the ability to be transferred to your PowerTeacher gradebook. Want to learn more about Canvas?  Register  for one of our upcoming information sessions!

What about Moodle? Johnston County Schools staff will no longer have access to Moodle after  July 30, 2016 . If you have a course in Moodle that you would like exported into Canvas,  please fill out this form  prior to  June 14, 2016 . Additional information about Canvas can be found at  bit.ly/jcscanvas Stay tuned for more Canvas updates as we start exploring this great new resource for our district!