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Messenger 2.0 - Have you MOVED your messages?

This is a reminder that Message Builder will be deprecated at the end of October 2025. After this date, any messages saved in Message Builder will no longer be accessible.

What You Need to Do:

If you have saved messages in Message Builder that you want to keep, they must be recreated in Messenger 2.0 before the end of October 2025. This is the only way to ensure your templates and communications are preserved.

Why This Matters:

Saved messages in Message Builder will not transfer automatically to Messenger 2.0.

After the deprecation date, you will lose access to any content that hasn't been manually recreated.

We strongly encourage all users to review their saved messages as soon as possible and begin transitioning to Messenger 2.0.

Thank you for taking prompt action to ensure a smooth transition.

Opening Day Authentic Learning Update

On Opening Day for 2025–26, we kicked off our journey into Authentic Learning across Barrington 220. Thank you to everyone who brought energy, ideas, and curiosity to the first session!

Participants accessed the Authentic Learning course in Schoology, where they:

1. Listened to an introduction to Authentic Learning.
2. Completed Phase 1, which used Brisk Boost to guide learning.

In Phase 1, participants demonstrated their understanding of the district’s definition of Authentic Learning by identifying its key components in both hypothetical lesson ideas and actual videos from Barrington 220 classrooms.

If you completed Session 1 on Opening Day, thank you! You’re ready for Phase 2 coming later this Fall.

If you didn’t get the chance, you can access the course using this Join Code: 6FDS-PHDK-SCNMH

You can start by clicking through and reading Authentic Learning Phase 1, the Google Slides document in Framework 220 Authentic Learning, and then move on to the two Defining Authentic Learning AI-guided activities.

For each activity, click the square+arrow icon in the top-right corner before getting started. Please be sure to enter your first and last name to record your progress.

Click Allow cookies to proceed.

Please follow the directions on the first slide. The arrows in the bottom-left allow you to navigate between slides. The text box on the right is where you can type in your responses to the Brisk Boost chat.

As you meet the lesson objectives (outlined in the top right), you will see an increasing amount of green filling the Lesson Objectives progress bar. Once you complete each task, close the window, and your progress will be saved.

The upcoming sessions will build on this foundation and include moving from defining Authentic Learning to applying it in your classrooms and teams.

If you have any questions, please email me, jjrobinson@barrington220.org

"Let's Try It!" Brisk Next Beta

"Let's Try It!" If you know about an innovative instructional practice, structure, or tool and you'd like to give it a try, let us know! We hope to continue to sow grassroots innovation by providing support for ideas—like NotebookLM and Snorkl last school year.

In Barrington 220, we’re exploring how AI can support learning and teaching in ways that align with our strategic plan. Three years ago, teachers began using Brisk Teaching, a tool that empowers teachers to give AI-created timely, meaningful feedback to students that is aligned to state standards and follows a teacher-created prompt. Brisk continued to evolve, and last year teachers began setting up students to use Brisk Student Boost to allow students to control the timing of the feedback they received. We adopted Brisk Student Boost as part of the first Authentic Learning sessions at Opening Day 25–26.

Recently, Brisk announced Brisk Next. Think of Brisk Next as your AI co-teacher, designed to streamline planning and open up space for more student-centered learning.

With Brisk Next you can:

• Start from a lesson plan, a standard, or just an idea.
• Generate class materials, student activities, and quick assessments.
• Bundle resources into collections to assign or share.
• Use Boost Activities to see exactly what students will experience—and track their progress.

"Try it!" here: Brisk Next and follow the steps here: Getting Started Guide

Who's next?

To get started or propose your own "Let's Try It!" idea, please email me at jjrobinson@barrington220.org.

Let's try it!

Guest Author Feature: Are students more likely to believe a TikTok than their textbook?

Submitted by Nancy McFadden, Barrington High School Teacher Librarian

Information overload is a daily occurrence for our students. How do we help them sort through the noise and learn to be more discerning about the information they absorb? While students are likely to judge the trustworthiness of a TikTok or YouTube video based on the number of likes or views, we want to push our students to be more thoughtful in how they evaluate a source. Media literacy skills emphasize the concept that all messages are created with a purpose and that the medium containing that message is important to understand its meaning.

To begin, we need to help students understand the difference between three kinds of misinformation. These differences are primarily based on the intention or motivation of the creator.

Misinformation is false information that is inadvertently spread—the intent is not to deceive; it's simply a mistake. In contrast, disinformation is false information that is deliberately created and shared in order to influence or obscure the truth. Finally, malinformation refers to false information that is specifically designed and shared with the intent to cause harm.

To deepen students' understanding, this topic can be paired with a quick Social Emotional Learning (SEL) lesson on recognizing our emotions. False information often aims to trigger strong emotional responses, which can short-circuit our ability to think critically. By teaching students to recognize these emotional cues, we can train them to pause, ask critical questions, and analyze information through a more reflective and informed lens.

One practical strategy for analyzing information is a technique used by professional fact-checkers called lateral reading. This digital literacy skill helps identify misinformation by prompting students to ask one essential question: Who created this content, and why? Unlike traditional vertical reading—where we evaluate a website by scrolling through it and looking for clues—we encourage students to leave the site entirely, open a new tab, and investigate what other reliable sources say about it. This shift in approach helps them better understand the context, credibility, and potential bias behind the original source.  Students can ask any or all of these questions: Who created this? What is the evidence? What do other sources say? What is the author’s intention?

To accomplish all of this, a terrific source for teachers to know about is the News Literacy Project’s Daily Do Now slide deck. This is a weekly collection of bellringers to increase student awareness of different aspects of digital manipulation. See which one makes you stop and think and then try it with your students.

When we equip students with the tools to navigate misinformation, we’re not just teaching media literacy—we're fostering resilient, independent thinkers.

To find more ways to embed Digital/Media Literacy, team up with your teacher librarian to co-teach media literacy lessons that help support critical thinking skills and balanced research strategies.

*Some phrasing in this article was assisted by OpenAI’s ChatGPT.