The Stats: Distance Learning with Zoom in Barrington 220

Zoom! If you had not heard of it prior to COVID-19, you surely are familiar with it now!

Shortly after the closure of our school buildings, Barrington 220 deployed Zoom for Education, providing staff and students with a tool to engage “face to face” with each other while distance learning.

Is Zoom being successfully integrated into our distance learning program? Wow! I have been pleasantly surprised when taking a peek at some of the statistics. Here are some averages for this past school week:

Zoom meetings per school day: 669

Zoom meeting participants per school day: 8,674

Stats are one thing, but listening to the stories of how teachers are working and engaging with students is what truly delights. Communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking are all taking place via this new addition to our distance learning program.

If you are a staff member who needs a bit of a helping hand with Zoom, please reach out to your building LTA via email, they are sure to get back to you in short order and would be pleased to provide some assistance. Our tech support staff will also provide any assistance that you may need. They can be reached on school days from 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM at: (224) 655-1500. You can also send the tech support staff a quick email message (techsupport@barrington220.org) and they will quickly get back to you.

We also have some great information available here:

Zoom Video Conferencing in Barrington 220

Are Your Messages Getting Through?

Now, more than ever, it is important to have a secure and proven communication method with parents and students. Teachers are working hard to communicate, and we want to be sure the communications are making it to the intended recipients.

Why is Infinite Campus the best method for communicating with parents?

• Infinite Campus provides the most accurate parent and student email and phone information. 
• Infinite Campus includes all students, all classes (including our new Digital Homerooms at our schools using this feature). 
• Infinite Campus automatically omits students who have moved or dropped a class.
• Infinite Campus automatically includes any new students.
• You can trust the intended person will receive your message.
• Infinite Campus allows for scheduling delivery in advance. 
• The one-step option to send an email and text saves time. 
• If someone reports they did not receive the message, you can check the sent message log to confirm. 
• Search for a person and quickly view ALL the messages they have received. 
• Parents are already familiar with receiving Infinite Campus messages. 

Further, parents tell us that they prefer one messaging source, and they expect to see their students' name in the email and/or text. Infinite Campus makes it easy to insert student name, class name, and teacher name in the body of the email.

Need a refresher on sending messages from Infinite Campus?

Click here to learn more.

Do you have questions, or are you interested in a 15-minute Zoom session? Contact jnilles@barrington220.org for more information.

dLearning Highlighted in Recent One-Minute Spotlights

Recent episodes of Learning NOW in Barrington 220 have included One-Minute Spotlights highlighting Distance Learning (also known as dLearning) during the COVID-19 stay-at-home order. Check out BHS Spanish teacher Sheila Soss and Lines Grade 3 teacher Sarah Dowdy in these great dLearning examples!

Barrington High School Spanish teacher Sheila Soss works with her entire class using Zoom video conferencing. This class was conducted in Spanish as students watched video content, spoke together in Spanish in Zoom Breakout Rooms, and watched a live grammar lesson from the teacher’s iPad. A Zoom Breakout Room gives a teacher the option to break students into small groups for a specified amount of time. During the breakout session, the teacher can visit each room. At the end of the breakout activity, everyone in the class can return to the full group.



Lines Elementary Grade 3 teacher Sarah Dowdy works with her third grade class in a Zoom video conference to teach a math lesson about parallel lines. Sarah uses the online whiteboard features of Zoom and interacts with her students throughout the lesson.

Key's Quick Tips: Take a picture of paper text, have it read out loud, and more

Key's Quick Tips are provided by Kelly Key, Assistive Technology Coordinator for Barrington 220. 

Each month, Kelly Key features a tool to support our students, including a short video demonstration. This month, Snap & Read Universal is highlighted.



The Snap & Read app is available in Self Service on all our iPad devices. Staff and students log in with your Google login.




Snap & Read allows students to take a picture of paper text and have it read out loud. Additional features include:

Read Aloud

Listen to text as it is read aloud. Reads websites, PDFs, and Google Drive.

Text Leveler

Dynamically adjust the readability of text without changing the meaning.

Translation

Translates text into over 100 languages and will read it in that language.

Annotation

Type, draw, write, on Docs and PDFs.

Video Demos:

Text Leveler

Translation

  

Annotate

 

Please contact me with any questions! kkey@barrington220.org

Answers to Your Tech Support Questions

Early in my technology career I had a mentor who seemed to know everything. When we discussed projects, he always had ideas on how to accomplish our goals and always seemed to have the answer when troubleshooting problems. But one late night when we were trying to solve a server issue, he was stumped. I was a bit surprised when he brought up Google, which was relatively new at the time, and searched for the problem which eventually led to the answer. It was then that I realized you can’t know everything, you just need to know where to find the answers.

That’s one role we try to play in the Technology Department—a place to find answers to your technology questions. I’m sure most of you already know you can go to your building LTA if you have a question, or call ext. 1500 when you are here in the district, or call 224-655-1500 from anywhere. You can even open a ticket for your question by emailing techsupport@barrington220.org. 

But what you may not know is you can visit https://techsupport.barrington220.org, sign in with your Google account, and find articles and videos that may answer some of your questions.

In our Knowledge Base you can find an article with important links, a video on How to Start a Meeting in Zoom, or an article on How to Backup Data to your Google Drive. We’re adding new articles all the time so be sure to check back often. And if you can’t find an article that answers your question, click on the red Support button in the bottom right of the window and you can create a Tech Support ticket.

Zoom Continues to Improve with Version 5

Since Barrington 220 became a licensed Zoom videoconferencing organization, the app has continued to roll out frequent improvements in controls (also known as “user interface” improvements), add features, and increase security. Each of these improvements has resulted in the need for a software update.

Thus, updates are important—especially those that enhance Zoom security features.

Zoom has made the update process easy by alerting you to available updates (on the Mac) at the end of a meeting. Of course, when a meeting is over, this may not always be the perfect time to deal with a software update.

If you saw this alert and clicked Later, you can still apply the update. To check for a Zoom update any time on your Mac, open the Zoom app, pull down the zoom.us menu and select Check for Updates...

If an update is available, click Update, wait for the download to finish, and click Install. After the installer opens, follow the prompts—usually you will be asked to Continue and Install buttons, type your computer’s password, and click Install Software. The entire process takes around 2 minutes.

In addition to the stylish new rounded buttons, some of Zoom's new features are in the toolbar at the bottom of the Zoom window on Mac:

Help Our Students

Since most Barrington 220 students get Zoom from the Self Service app, they may have not yet updated Zoom on the iPad. At the end of your next Zoom session or the next time you send a message, please ask your students to go to Self Service and tap Reinstall under ZOOM Cloud Meetings.

The iPad update just takes a minute or so and students will receive all the latest security and other updates from Zoom.

If you ever wish to check the version of Zoom on your iPad, just tap the ZOOM Cloud Meetings app to open it, tap Settings (lower-left corner), tap About, and the version is shown at the top. As of this writing, the most current version of Zoom is 5.0.1.

Five Features to Become a Zoom Master

By now you've probably experienced more Zoom meetings than you care to remember. Teachers are using Zoom on a nearly daily basis to conduct live classes, hold office hours, attend meetings, and collaborate with their colleagues. Now that you've got the basics down, you can try these additional features to become a Zoom Master.

Polls

Polling in Zoom is a great feature if you are looking to collect quick feedback from a group in real time. Polling in Zoom allows the meeting host to ask a single question or multiple choice questions and get immediate feedback from meeting guests. In order to use the polling feature, you must first activate it in your account settings. Once you schedule a meeting, you can create your poll questions prior to the meeting start time and launch your poll at any time during the meeting.

Zoom’s training materials on polling

New Share/Pause Share

Have you ever been sharing your screen and experienced that awkward lag when you want to share something else? For example, you're presenting with Google Slides and want to switch to an assignment. Or have you ever wanted to look something up while sharing your screen, but couldn't because you would have to stop the share? New Share and Pause Share are great features to improve your workflow while hosting a meeting.



The New Share feature allows you to change what you are sharing without stopping the screen share. Wile sharing your screen, tap New Share at the top of the screen. Your sharing menu will appear on your screen, but your viewers will still see what you are sharing. You can navigate to what you want to share next without interrupting what your viewers see.



With the Pause Share feature, you can freeze the screen for your viewers while you view other items on your device. When you are ready, simply tap Resume Share and your viewers will see your live screen again.

Zoom’s training materials on sharing

Annotation

When sharing your screen, you and your guests have the ability to collaboratively mark up your screen. This can be useful during a live demonstration, working through sample problems in math, or modeling how to annotate text. If you give guests the ability to share their screens, they can collaboratively work using annotation in breakout rooms as well.

With annotation, you have the ability to Disable Attendee Annotation for students who may not be able to help themselves from scribbling on a shared screen. You can also Show Names of Annotators so everyone knows who is writing. These features may help prevent distractions during screen sharing.




Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts can help you quickly and easily navigate tasks that may otherwise take several clicks. Keep these shortcuts in mind in a Zoom meeting.

• Command+Shift+A: Mute/unmute audio
• Command+Control+M: Mute audio for everyone except the host
• Command+Control+U: Unmute audio for everyone except the host
• Space: Push to talk (while muted)
• Command+Shift+S: Start/stop screen share
• Command+Shift+P: Pause or resume recording
• Command+T: Screenshot
• Command+Shift+W: Switch to active speaker view or gallery view
• Command+Shift+H: Show/Hide in-meeting chat panel
• Ctrl+Option+Command+H: Raise hand/lower hand