In your school day, you can use the status of a person or an application to help you work more efficiently.
Personal Status
Outlook
Your Outlook online status is automatically reflected by your presence online in conjunction with your Outlook Calendar appointments. This is on by default and is a courtesy to your colleagues and our families. You can view the status of colleagues in the To field of outgoing emails in
If you use Webmail (clicking the browser version of mail from LaunchPoint) your status and the status of others are not shown to you. Using the desktop version shows the status.
Teams
Microsoft Teams uses your Outlook account status to inform Teams by default. However, you can manually set your status as well.
Application Status
When you are on a roll at work the last thing you need is to stop to figure out if something is really down or is it just you.
Here are some TIPS for how to work with STATUS in your daily applications.
Vendor Website Status
When you initially encounter an issue working in an application you may try to refresh the app, the browser, reboot the machine. But if the issue persists consider going directly to the vendor’s site for any recent issues. Common high-use HallCo apps with status pages:
Canvas LMS: https://status.instructure.com/
(include MasteryConnect)
Google Workspace Dashboard: https://www.google.com/appsstatus/dashboard/
NewsELA: https://status.newsela.com/
Nearpod Status Page: https://status.nearpod.com/
Service Status Microsoft: https://portal.office.com/servicestatus
Incident IQ/ Hall County Status
Our engineers also internally update the Incident IQ page for reported problems that have been verified internally; so this site may vary from the vendor’s status pages. However, this status site also includes LaunchPoint, Destiny, and Infinite Campus.
Finally, you can always use the Internet itself to check with Down For Everyone Or Just Me and Down Detector.
Do you remember grading in your first year of teaching? It felt great to find your stride!
Usually, a veteran teacher gives helpful hints that help you find the right way to grade.
Online submissions are just different enough that you may need some more ideas. Here are some tips to help you find that stride – online!
Schedule Time to Grade
Use your calendar to schedule a time to grade. Include links to the courses and any feedback spreadsheet you have created/borrowed/repurposed.
Work with your colleagues teaching the same modality/modalities as you at your school to assure you are in line with the turnaround time for grading. Post your grading schedule in several places (make note of where for future updates): Office Hours, Announcements, School website, etc.
Quality Comments
Consider what might happen if students focused on our commentary over a letter or numeric grade. Feedback to students should encourage reflection and confirm learners’ understanding (Garrison et al., 2010). While grading is a necessity, the teacher can mix up the percentages with a credit/no credit assignment to help students focus on teacher comments. Students are more likely to consider improving submissions using feedback than static grades. Providing timely feedback is a major component of Teacher Presence (Gurley, 2018).
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When building or revising an online course, consider the range of submissions from students. Perhaps the submissions range from an erroneous submission (wrong file/format) to complete and accurate submission. If you have the opportunity to build a rubric, build your feedback comments at the same time. If you make only one comment per submission, consider a comment which covers many possibilities and then you can just copy and paste a portion of the comment or delete a portion before submitting.
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Here is an example of a comment sheet for a course. I use emojipedia.org and the emojis copy and paste nicely between the Google sheet and the Canvas LMS SpeedGrader. Feel free to make a copy and modify it as needed.
There’s A Canvas Guide for That
How do I leave feedback comments for student submissions in SpeedGrader?
How do I use a non-scoring rubric to assess submissions in SpeedGrader?
How do I use free-form comments instead of ratings in a rubric in SpeedGrader?
References
Garrison, D. R., Cleveland-Innes, M., & Fung, T. S. (2010). Exploring causal relationships among teaching, cognitive and social presence: Student perceptions of the community of inquiry framework. The Internet and Higher Education, 13(1-2), 31–36. doi:10.1016/j.iheduc.2009.10.002
Gurley, L. E. (2018). Educators’ preparation to teach, perceived teaching presence, and perceived teaching presence behaviors in blended and online learning environments. Online Learning, 22(2), 197-220. 10.24059/olj.v22i2.1255
As Skype for Business is being replaced with Microsoft Teams, we offer training to get you started.
What is a Webinar?
A webinar is a web-based seminar. Since the term was introduced early to the mainstream it is sometimes used to describe any online meeting. Precisely, you could attend a webinar and receive a lecture-type experience, host a webinar and be in charge of delivering information via an online lecture platform, or attend on online meeting and be expected to interact with the host and other participants. Often the term webinar means different things to different people, so it is always good to start with a clarification of your role in any online meeting or webinar beforehand.
Technology
Web-based platforms host webinars. Some have different features and benefits from others, but the basics are:
VIDEO, the host shares his/her image and it is polite of you to share your image as well. The exception would be if where you are would be either distracting or has people in the background who should not be on camera (minors).
Participants need a laptop/computer to view the audio portion of a webinar. Participants need a camera to share in the video portion of a webinar.
AUDIO, the host always shares his/her audio. In some settings, your audio may not be turned on at all, or it may default to muted and you may turn it on when you need to speak, or it may default to on. It is courteous to KNOW if your audio is on or muted and to mute accordingly. Unless you are speaking to other participants in the webinar you should be muted.
Participants need earbuds, headphones, etc. to participate in the audio portion of a webinar.
Two popular webinar PLATFORMS in Hall County now are Zoom and Microsoft TEAMS.
Hosting a Webinar
Preparation
The host must set up the webinar within the platform in advance if the audience os unknown or other preparations need to take place in advance (guest speaker). Invitations are often emailed but can be messaged via platforms such as Microsoft Teams.
The Day Of
Visually inspect and test any large displays projecting the webinar and have audio devices ready and tested for large audiences watching one display.
Remind participants if they are viewing individually on their laptop to update their devices, know the time and location of the event, and have the proper audio/visual equipment needed to successfully participate.
Right Before
All hosts should meet in the webinar platform right before the webinar to test everyone’s access and equipment. Pass the hosting back and forth as a test for the actual webinar.
Attending a Webinar
Timing
If you are a participant to a webinar allow yourself plenty of time to be settled in front of your display in advance of the start of the webinar. Know the date, time, and duration of the webinar in advance for your planning. Log in a few minutes early in case there is an update to the platform you need to perform.
Settings
Some webinars default participants to audio and or video off. It is polite to turn on your video once the webinar starts and keep your audio muted unless you are speaking.
If your audio is off, look for
other opportunities to participate with the host and other participants. Often there is a chat feature in these platforms; note if the chat message goes to everybody or can go to just certain participants/the host.
Enjoy!
The opportunities for webinars is expansive; look for webinars from professional organizations and educational vendors. Happy Webinar-ing!
