Rolling Out macOS Catalina on Barrington 220 Laptops

When September and October roll around, you can expect three things; cooler weather, footballs flying through the air, and a macOS upgrade. The upcoming version, titled macOS Catalina, is a 64-bit operating system and will offer several new features that may find their way into your workflow. But before I touch on those, there are some important things to know before you upgrade.

The biggest change coming with Catalina (version 10.15) is that the macOS will no longer support 32-bit apps. That means it’s possible that an app you use every day may not work with the latest OS. And even though many of our major software vendors, including Microsoft, Adobe, SMART, and Bomgar have said that their software will work with Catalina, it’s critical that you make sure you have latest versions of the apps on your computer to ensure compatibility.

To help facilitate a smooth transition to Catalina, the Technology Department will temporarily limit your ability to upgrade to Catalina. This will give us a short window in which to test 10.15 in our environment. We will choose a small number of staff members to be in our test group and give them access to Catalina. This will give the Technology Department some insight into the upgrade process in our Barrington 220 environment and bring to light any roadblocks staff members might face. We can then communicate to all staff members what to expect during the upgrade process before opening it up to everyone.

Once the upgrade is vetted, we will push the upgrade software package to your computer in the background. That way when you’re ready to upgrade, the software will already be downloaded and available on your Mac. The upgrade process could take as long as 30 minutes to complete, so we recommend performing the upgrade at home after you have finished working on your laptop. 

During your installation you may get a warning about any 32-bit applications installed on your Mac that won’t work with Catalina. Please call x1500 or open a ticket by sending an email to techsupport@barrington220.org with the name of the app(s) so we can facilitate a remedy or discuss an alternative. Please do not close your computer during the upgrade.

Once you’ve installed Catalina, here are a few of the new features you can expect to see:

Sidecar

Sidecar will let you use your iPad as an external monitor and use a Logitech Crayon or Apple Pencil for annotating and drawing. Sidecar works either wired or wirelessly and in either extended or mirrored desktop views.

iTunes Replaced with Multiple Apps

iTunes will no longer be a standalone app. Instead, all its music functions will be covered by the Music app and all its video functions by the Apple TV app. Podcasts also get a separate app, just like in iOS on the iPad.

Find My

Find Friends and Find My iPhone apps will be joined into one app called (somewhat curiously) "Find My."

Notes

The Notes app will have a new gallery view, shared folders, and more powerful search.

ClassVR in Barrington 220

For the past year ClassVR headsets have been making the rounds at Barrington 220. 



The District Teacher Librarians recently enjoyed a training day with Tierney the developers of ClassVR. 

Click here to learn more about ClassVR, check out available lesson plans, and pick up tips and tricks from educators across the country.

Students in Mr. Sricharmorn's Grade 5 class at Grove take time to enjoy the view.



"The VR headsets provided students an immersive opportunity to work on including details in their writing. The level of engagement and excitement to write about their experience was incredible."



The VR headsets are available for checkout by request. Please contact your building Librarian or LTA.

To request a new account, or for more individualized training, please contact Shawndra Shelton at sshelton@barrington220.org.

Schoology & IC Gradebook Integration

Schoology offers a grade book integration with Infinite Campus (IC), and this feature has been enabled for grades 4–12. This process allows teachers to pass grades from the Schoology grade book directly to the Infinite Campus grade book.  

When you opened Schoology for the first time this summer, you may have felt like you were seeing double. If you created your own courses in Schoology, you will see your unique course, and a course shell. Moving forward, new courses will be created and automatically populated based on information provided by a syncing process with IC. 

Synced Course Example

Teachers will simply save all reusable course information to their Schoology resources at the end of the grading period and import these resources into the course shell at the beginning of each new school year. The course names will be aligned with the naming conventions outlined in Infinite Campus; these names cannot be changed. All courses created through the sync with Infinite Campus cannot be deleted; however, courses can be rearranged individually to move the most relevant to the top.

Click here for directions to reorder your courses, this process works for both students and staff.

Click here for a detailed instructions regarding the grade passback.

Please note: Courses must be re-ordered from the web browser on a laptop or an iPad. The app does not support this option.

Teachers at BHS piloted this system last spring, and after working through a few minor concerns, the feedback was largely positive.

Click Here to access helpful information and instructions from Schoology.

This feature is available now. For specific questions or individual support please contact Shawndra Shelton by email or telephone.

sshelton@barrington220.org(847) 842-3572

How to Get Help with Email Groups (Google Groups)

Google Groups are commonly used here at Barrington 220 to communicate amongst staff members. Each year we receive a number of questions concerning Google Groups and how to get included in or make changes to a specific group.

Your initial point of contact for additions and changes to a group should be your building administrative assistants in the main office at each building. Each building has an administrative assistant who is responsible for maintaining the “All Staff” Google Group, as well as any other Google Groups that your school building may be using. For district-level Google Groups such as “BSD First Grade Teachers” or “BSD Special Services,” please contact a Barrington 220 Administrative Center Admin Assistant within that department. These staff members will gladly help you.

Please also note that we use some automated tools to ease the burden of Google Group administration. When a new teacher is hired, they automatically become a member of the “All Staff” Google Group for their primary school location, which then places them on the “All District Staff” Google Group. There are a few other groups that we are able to automatically populate, but the rest of the Google Groups require some manual attention.

Three Cool Infinite Campus Tips

The district's journey with Infinite Campus is well into the eighth year with new features being added on a regular basis. Monthly updates keep the district's Student Information System current with state and federal reporting requirements, and provide new tools for working with student data.

Three newer features of Infinite Campus users are finding helpful include:

A New and Improved View of the Student Schedule


Located at: Student Information/General/Schedule

Notice the red line indicated the class the student is scheduled into at this time and includes the teacher name and room number. Several other schedule views are available by selecting different view options:

• Day 
• Week 
• Agenda 

The Campus Student Profile
Visit the student's Profile page when you are in need of a quick overview of how the student is doing in school.

• Current grades in progress 
• Missing Assignments 
• Absences 
• Behavior Events (including outstanding detentions) 

The Student Profile, complete with contact information can be generated as a PDF for printing.



Located at: Student Information/General/Profile

Students Are Becoming Pros at Scanning Their Student ID Cards
All Barrington 220 students have been issued one or more student id cards for identification, scanning on and off the bus, purchasing lunch, or checking out a library book. To increase safety BHS students are asked to scan their student ID to enter the building each day. Campus attendants process around 2,800 student scans between 7:40 am and 8:30 am daily.

Recently BHS students began scanning into the Testing Center in place of signing in and out on paper. Scanning stores the date/time in Campus for viewing and reporting. Beginning next week, BHS students will be asked to scan in and out of the Wellness Center, and soon additional scanning stations will be available in the Counseling and Dean's office.

The vision is to continue with the expansion of the scanning options to include:

• Attendance Office (check in/check out) 
• Health Office 
• Counseling Office 
• Dean's Office 

Note below how one anonymous student appears to only have their student ID about one-third of the time, but this is not the norm. The majority of BHS students enter the building wearing their lanyard and student ID.

Hats off to the Campus Attendants for doing a great job with the new process!



Located at: Attendance/Scanning/Custom Scanning Data

Highlights from IXL Live

Did you know?
IXL offers more than 8,000 skills for students to study.
AND
These skills can be assigned to align with Math MAP RIT Scores. ELA coming soon!



What is a SmartScore? The SmartScore is a "predictor of performance". It assists in goal setting for students and real-time measurement of student growth. A Smart Score of 100 indicates Mastery, 90 equals excellence etc. Teachers can help students set SmartScore goals based on progress. The SmartScore adjusts automatically while the student practices, this provides "real time" motivation for reaching their goals. Click here for more information regarding the IXL SmartScore.

Fun Fact: "Most questions on IXL are algorithmically generated, rather than pulled from a small question bank. This means students can practice as much as they want and almost never see the same question twice."



Recommendations & Suggested Skills: Recommend work for students to complete, skills you suggest to students will be delineated with a star. Teachers may also share a skill url with students, try it with Schoology or Seesaw.



Trouble Spots: Assists teachers in pinpointing specific areas where students are having difficulty. Teachers can view trouble spots for each student in the class at one time, or they can gather individual information.



Real time Center: The real time center allows teachers to view student practice in "real time" including their SmartScore, trouble spots, and progress.

IXL is available for grades 1-5 (Math and ELA) and grades 6-8 (Math only), BHS accounts available on a case by case basis.

Click Here for IXL user guides.

Click Here to visit IXL's Youtube channel for educators.

Contact sshelton@barrington220.org or your building LTA for further assistance.

The Slow and Painful Death of Adobe Flash

For many years, Adobe Flash was an important part of your web browsing experience. Adobe Flash was designed to animate and stream interactive content to web based media. It was used to stream video, audio, and enable Rich Internet Applications (RIA) on computers and other devices. Adobe Flash played a major role in providing interactive digital educational materials to students of all grade levels. Since the technology was ubiquitous in the early days of the web, Flash was an integral part of the development of tech-rich classroom environments in the early days of EdTech.

If this is starting to read like an obituary, that’s because in 2017 Adobe announced that it would stop updating and distributing Flash on December 31, 2020.  

Adobe Flash was designed with PC desktop computers in mind, and it has never been supported by iOS mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad. In fact, in April of 2010, Steve Jobs penned a letter entitled “Thoughts on Flash” detailing his reasons for not supporting the third-party application on Apple devices. The letter is a fascinating read if you are interested in the culture of Apple or tech history in general. Nearly ten years ago, Jobs outlined six reasons why Flash was not an ideal choice moving forward.

In order to access Flash-supported content, users of iOS devices have always needed an external app. The most popular of these was Puffin Academy, which has been used in Barrington 220 for a number of years.

In anticipation of the final death of Flash, the developers of Puffin Academy announced that as of July 1, 2019, users are no longer be able to download the app from the App Store. In addition, Google Chrome no longer supports web-based media requiring Flash on iOS devices. What this means to you is that there is effectively no way to access software that requires Adobe Flash on an iPad or iPhone.  

The good news is that this transition has been anticipated for many years. Digital content creators that offer current and supported educational materials have been developing apps for students and teachers to use. One example of this is iCivics—a fun and interactive way for intermediate students to learn about government. iCivics depended on Flash in its early days, but has been app-based since 2016. In cases where digital content still relies on Flash, we have found that the publishers are no longer updating or supporting those materials because they are out of date and most likely in the process of being retired and/or replaced.  

If you have materials in your curriculum that require Adobe Flash, you are encouraged to reach out to your LTAs and iDAL coaches to help identify alternatives. We are committed to providing the most current and impactful digital resources for our students. If you would like to request new software or apps, remember to visit bit.ly/220SARF to begin the process. 

Infinite Campus Professional Development Update

Response to the opportunity to learn about Infinite Campus and receive Board Credit and/or PDH (professional development hours) has been greater than anticipated. This is great news and has resulted in a need to fine tune the process for tracking participation and awarding credit. More than 500 Infinite Campus Professional Development topics are available online.

The Human Resources, Professional Development, and Infinite Campus staff met to outline a process to ensure staff members have the opportunity to participate in and receive credit for the topics supporting their Barrington 220 job responsibilities. In early November a chart outlining the conversion of Infinite Campus Topics to Board Credit or PDH (professional development hours) will be posted. Beginning December 1 staff members can sign up to participate in the online Infinite Campus Professional Learning. The request will be evaluated for approval by Human Resources and upon approval staff will receive recommended topics for completion. Infinite Campus Professional Learning will close for the school year May 1, 2020, to allow for awarding of earned credit.

Staff members with completed topics currently will receive the appropriate credit for the work.

Elementary Launchpad - The Destination for Information!

This is a guest post by Pam Meiser, Teacher Librarian at Barbara Rose Elementary School.



The Elementary Launchpad is the first stop for students to access databases, library resources, ebooks, audio books, creation tools, and links shared across the Barrington 220 School District. The Launchpad is accessible from each school’s website under the section labeled Students.

If your student doesn’t have a direct link to the Launchpad on their iPad, have your child save the link on their home screen by clicking on the share button in the upper right corner, then select Add to Home Screen in the bottom ribbon.



Databases automatically sign in when students and staff are at school. At home, users need to enter a username and password. Select the blue password rectangle at the top of the launchpad. Be sure to read the password hint to gain access to this handy page!

The password page provides descriptions of the resources, allowing you and your child to decide which will meet your needs. You can easily navigate to many of the resources directly from this password page.

The Launchpad provides an opportunity for discussion between you and your child. Explore the Launchpad together. Which links does your child use most often? In which class/subject are they used? Have your child demonstrate how to navigate within their favorite resources. Choose a new destination and see where you land!

If you need help or have questions, please reach out to your school’s Teacher Librarian or LTA. We’re happy to support you!