How To: Webinar

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Webinar Image

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!

Online Video Learning Infographic

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Canvas Training Updates

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Canvas Training has been updated!

Hall County School District offers many ways to learn about Canvas by Instructure, our learning management system (LMS).

Learn Canvas Face-to-Face

Five iterations of face-to-face training:

  • June 3, 4, 5
  • August 14, 15, 16
  • October 2, 3, 4
  • January 28, 29, 30
  • March 3, 4, 5

Each iteration offers Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced training. Each training contains activities directed by an expert from Canvas and the training contains activities that show participant competence.

Training Descriptions:

Beginning – Course Basics, Canvas Commons, Course Settings, Modules, Creating Content/Accessibility, Communication Tools, Assignments

Intermediate – Assessment Tools, Outcomes and Rubrics, Group Work & Collaboration, Gradebook and Speedgrader.
PREREQUISITE: Beginner Canvas Training or Growing with Canvas in Hall County online course (found in Catalog)

Advanced – Agenda to Include: managing assessments, group work and collaboration – Google and Office, mastery paths, getting starter with Badgr.
PREREQUISITE: Intermediate Canvas Training

Learn Canvas Online, on your Own

Online, Asynchronous Beginners Canvas course. Each month this course offers a way to work through the content on your own. See your BLaST leader for a reminder of how to sign-up in Catalog for a course as needed.

September 2019 Online Course

 

Learn On Demand with Canvas Experts

Canvas Training Support Services

You can watch videos or sign up for future, live webinars. These webinars have one expert who shows you what to do in Canvas and one Canvas expert who runs the chat window answering your questions.

You need to Authorize this, much like you did the first time you used Google within Canvas.

Make sure once you are logged in to look through the Learning Library and Training Calendar (below).  Your My Learning section is a listing of the sessions you have signed up for, with an option to reschedule.

Register for Live Webinars

Ther remain many ways for educators in our district to learn about Canvas.

Follow this blog for more information and to keep up on the latest face-to-face training on our calendar.

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Lucid Chart and Press Is Now Available

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Find Lucid Chart and Lucid Press on LaunchPoint for K-12 Hall County students and teachers.

Initial train-the-trainer training happened 9/26/19.  Find the session handouts at the end of this document.  The demonstration concept map can be found: bit.ly/LC-Demo and will work for anyone with a Lucid Chart account.

Lucid Chart

The Flowchart menu contains Flowchart symbols with specific meanings.

Lucid Chart allows for assigning a chart to students via Canvas.  Students receive a copy of the chart in their Lucid Chart account.  Students can submit their Lucid Charts to assignments (just like Google).  Additionally, student submissions can be graded and annotated in SpeedGrader within Canvas.

Lucid Chart offers the ability to create slides from the infinite canvas inside Charts.  The presentation is a “Prezi-like” experience and is worth your time to look at what this could mean for your classroom.

Lucid Press

Many products would benefit from the color palettes and/or the school mascot icons at identity.hallco.org.

Lucid Press offers Smart Templates with multiple product options.  More common products include brochure, flyer, invitations, magazine, and posters.  Lucid Press offers the features for high-quality printing for those interested in that specific facet.

 

Both Lucid Charts and Press offer the ability to collaborate between teachers and between students.  The share functionality can be activated through the platform and via a shared link.

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Turn It In in Hall County Schools

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Hall County Schools provides Turn It In for 6-12 classrooms.

Turn It In is for more than the English Language Arts classroom and for more than just a “Gotcha!”

Is There Help?

Help.TurnItIn.com

Consult the Teacher Quick Start Guide.

Turning on the ETS e-rater, turns on spell check! Turn It In QuickMarks would save any teachers time. Consider including voice comments (up to 3 minutes) for things which go beyond written feedback.

{coming soon Hall County Schools CBA rubrics}

 

How to get help with Turn It In
Step 1 Click Feedback Studio Step 2 Select Canvas Step 3 Click External Tool

 

Not sure if it is Turn It In or you? Feel free to check the status of TII at any time on their status page.

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OneNote

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OneNote is a Microsoft product to help organize content. It integrates with other Microsoft products you already use as well.

It can be used as a productivity tool for planning, collaborating, routine tasks. But it can also be used to push out content to students. It can even allow students to interact with that content and keep a copy of it in their personal Class Notebook (in Canvas).

Where to Find OneNote

Hall County training so far has covered OneNote Online, accessible through Office 365. You access this version via LaunchPoint > Office 365 with your HallCo Credentials.

Office 365 Online Apps

You may intuitively understand the difference between OneNote Online and the other versions. The online versions exist on the Internet, The Cloud. And both OneNote 2016 and the Windows 10 app are tied to a device.

Look for these on your HallCo issued device.
If you have not upgraded to Windows 10 yet, here is one more reason!

OneNote Win 10 app beside OneNote 2016

When you want to explore the difference between OneNote and OneNote 2016, follow this link. You can designate either version to be your default app for opening OneNote links and files. Learn how to change the default version of OneNote.

How to Use OneNote

The OneNote Quick Start can be a great reference until you become familiar with all the functionality.

Teacher Productivity

Teachers have innumerable tedious tasks which need to be tracked, organized, documented. Curriculum maps, parental contact, meeting minutes can all be captured in OneNote and neatly stored and searchable in one place. Outlook integrations are promising (you’ll want to Google for the version of OneNote you select and Outlook) and the ability to share Notebooks with other teachers in

the organization can revolutionize a team, grade level, or school’s organization.

Do you have many handwritten notes? Microsoft has the mobile app Microsoft Lens for you to take a picture and upload to your OneNote or OneDrive.

Student Facing Content

The ability to use OneNote within Canvas is already enabled. Published courses with students, and the Canvas “Class Notebook” Navigation setting enabled, are expected to create a Class Notebook with the same name as your Canvas course within your OneNote. Users have to sign in once with their HallCo credentials the first time they access OneNote via Canvas. After an initial log in per course, the user has access to OneNote within that Canvas course. That appears to be the extent of the integration at this time, LTI 1.0.

In Canvas, the Class Notebook remains accessible no matter where a student is in the course. The Class Notebook could be used to push out and organize information for students, as textbooks used to. The Class Notebook could also

You can enable the Teacher Only feature in a Notebook to hide content form students until you are ready to distribute it.

Student interact (ink over, type in, add to, read) with their copy of your shared items in the Class Notebook. They don’t turn these in, and you don’t grade them. However, you can view them and use them as formative feedback and evidence. Some great ideas for use are given in the Canvas Community post, the Portfolio idea was very detailed and interesting.

https://youtu.be/h_Dc8nDf_U4

Additional Resources:

How to turn a teacher into a OneNote Ninja
www.onenote.uservoice.com

www.onenoteforteachers.com

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