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Mystery Science: New Updates

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Mystery Science is an innovative, standards-aligned, hands-on curriculum that teaches K-5 students how to think like scientists.  Mystery Science offers open-and-go lessons that inspire kids to love science. The hook, visuals, and activity have all been prepared for teachers!  If you are new to Mystery Science, take a look at the Video Overview below:

 

For teachers that are familiar with Mystery Science, you will find new content for the 2024-2025 school year!

These enhancements include:

  • Vocabulary Supports: Spanish & English vocabulary slides and printouts have been added to our standards-aligned lessons
  • Mini-lesson Extensions: Added mini-lesson extensions that are aligned to a lesson’s Disciplinary Core Idea
  • 3D assessments: All 4th & 5th grade assessments will be 3D assessments
  • Anchor Layer: Added and revised Anchor Layers options for more units
  • Updated Teacher Tools: Revised planning documents; Pacing, Standards Alignment, & other supports here

 

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WeVideo Certifications and Ambassador Programs

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Whether you’re a WeVideo newbie looking to learn the ropes, or a seasoned pro ready to flaunt your skills — jump in! Become a WeVideo aficionado, plus receive a certificate of completion.  Those certifications build upon each other as well.  Continue your learning to become a WeVideo Ambassador.  There are even certification courses for your students!

 

To learn more about WeVideo certifications and ambassador programs please visit:

WeVideo Certifications

WeVideo Ambassador

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Classwize Focus Library Now Live

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We are excited to announce that our newest Classwize feature, “Focus Library,” is now live for all Classwize users! Focus Library will allow teachers to create Focus Plans ahead of time, use the Focus Plan with any class in their Classwize dashboard, and save Focus Plans created in the moment for future use! Please view the video overview & resources below for more information and share them with your teachers!

Classwize Focus Library

Create a Focus Plan

Apply a Focus Plan

Manage a Focus Plan

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Smart Search Now Available in Canvas

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Canvas Smart Search

The Smart Search feature is now available for teachers to enable in their Canvas courses. Below is how Instructure defines the Smart Search functionality:

“Our Smart Search feature relies on an AI-adjacent technology called ’embeddings.’ This technology “reads” the course content and creates a complex mathematical representation of each piece of content. When you perform a search, the technology ‘reads’ your query and converts it into a complex mathematical representation. The tool then compares the mathematical representations of both your search and course content to return relevant results; this result is returned with a ‘Confidence’ rating.”

As of June 1, 2024, searchable items include content pages, announcements, discussion prompts, and assignment descriptions, with plans to expand.

We feel it is important to note this feature is designed to respect course permissions. In other words, if your students are not able to access files in your course prior to enabling the Smart Search feature students should also not be able to search for and access those files after the feature is enabled.

Enabling Smart Search in a Course:

  1. Navigate to Course Settings > Feature Options
  2. Enable the Smart Search feature option

Once the teacher has enabled the feature it is up to the teacher if they want to add Smart Search to the course navigation. The teacher will still be able to access Smart Search even if it is not added to the course navigation for students. Please see the link here about managing course navigation links if teacher wants to enable Smart Search in the course navigation.

We hope you all enjoy the new Smart Search feature in Canvas, and for all of the detailed information please see the Help Guide here.

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Using Book Creator with Canvas

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Did you know Book Creator revamped their Canvas integration early in 2024?

Prior to 2024 the Book Creator / Canvas integration was primarily just single-sign-on.  The features below are now included in the new integration:

  • Create Book Creator assignments in Canvas:

  • Let students turn in Book Creator books directly from Canvas:

  • Read and grade student work from Canvas:

Read all of the details of how to use Book Creator with Canvas here and how to improve your Canvas/Book Creator workflows here.

Also, the video below provides an excellent view of the new integration features as well:

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