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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.

Key's Quick Tips - New iPad = New AT App Request

After you and your students receive your new iPads, please note the following:

App Requests

If a student with an IEP or 504 plan requires an app that is not available in Self Service, you will need to submit a new app request using the form below. This applies even if the app was previously requested and available on the old iPads.

bit.ly/220ATapps

Accomodations

You will also need to re-enable any accessibility features or accommodations your students previously had on their iPads. Examples include:

• Turning on text-to-speech
• Installing and logging into the Co: Writer add-on keyboard 
• Adding accessibility keyboards or other tools

Directions and video tutorials can be found here: AT Features and Set up Instructions

Important Note

Communication iPads and large-vision iPads provided directly by me will not be replaced. No action is needed for those devices.

Coming Soon

We will soon be rolling out a new app that will replace Co: Writer, Snap & Read, and Grammarly. More information to come!

The Role of AI in Opening Day 2025–26

Welcome back, everyone! On our 2025–26 Opening Day for staff, the Barrington 220 Executive Council was pleased to present Opening Day Live (ODL), a Saturday Night Live (SNL) themed production that we created to introduce our district’s educational themes for the year: authentic learning, culture, and our new hashtag theme, #BReal. Like SNL, we also riffed on current and relevant topics including, but not limited to, our student device guidelines (B Here. B Now. B Engaged.), our SEL curriculum, general back-to-school sentiments, and Artificial Intelligence (AI). 

Before a brief exploration of our use of AI in this production, I’d like to specifically thank the amazing staff who served in writer, director, and leadership roles in the production: Nicki Gavin, Writer & Director; Mark Domanico, Opening Day Live Band Leader; Brandon Pemberton, Choir Conductor; and Brigid Tileston, our Coordinating Producer. I have also included the full production credits below in case you missed the scrolling credits at the end of the ODL production.

If you have been in Barrington 220 for at least a couple of school years, you may remember that last year, we created an original mini-musical using AI as a “creative partner” that we performed during Opening Day. That entire process taught us that AI was a high-quality tool, but that it did not replace “human intelligence.” For example, we found that AI worked well for generating an initial working story and script, but the script needed to be heavily edited and rewritten. The dialog, in particular, needed the most help to sound more human. Last year we also attempted to use AI for composing music and creating choreography, but we abandoned AI's use entirely when we found that the AI tools of the time did neither of those things well. However, we did find that AI-generated lyrics provided a good starting point for our songwriters, but they also required significant human rewriting in all three of the songs. 

This year, we had similar experiences, but found a few new uses for AI and saw AI improve in a few areas. Since our production this year consisted of several derivative works/parodies of known SNL characters and scenarios, we were able to use AI to help us create initial scripts. However, the scripts needed considerable rewrites to make the dialog believable and to improve the jokes and humor. In fact, as we saw last year, the more our students and staff actors rehearsed, the more the scripts were improved through improvisation and suggestions by the performers.

Of course, the amazing Opening Day Live Staff Band and Barrington High School and Staff Choirs delivered phenomenal live performances without any AI assistance. However, the opening theme song to the “Dougie Downer” sketch was “composed and performed” by AI. 

For the "Dougie Downer" 20-second opening, the AI music creation tool Suno was used with considerable trial and error. First, I felt that the lyrics generated by Suno were not optimal so I attempted to write them with the help of ChatGPT. After 20 or more attempts, I abandoned ChatGPT and wrote them myself. The writing process using ChatGPT was likely valuable to help me generate ideas along the way, but the AI-generated lyrics never had a structure that seemed to work. The ability to add original lyrics to Suno is a new feature since last year so I was able to paste my original lyrics into this tool and then add descriptors about the style I wanted. This process took 12 iterations to arrive at the theme song heard on Opening Day. At the end of that project, I’m not sure I saved any time using AI, but the 20-second song sounded very impressive and matched my description: “1950s TV theme style, 120BPM, major key, happy, bouncy, harmonized female singers, 20 seconds.” 

AI was also used for other specific tasks including:

• Assisted in removing backgrounds from photos used in the “Dougie Downer” sketch opening.
• Generated background text for the Opening Day Update sketch opening.
• Generated the brick background image used along with the ODL logo.
• Generated the intentionally bad A.I. classroom image used in the Opening Day Update sketch.
• Generated the AI Robot animations (using Apple Memoji) for the Opening Day Update sketch.
• Assisted in creating general communication and organizational materials for the production. 

To paraphrase Mark Twain, the rumor that AI is poised to take over the world is greatly exaggerated—at least in the context of this production. 

From the beginning of the rise of AI tools in the last few years, we have taken a proactive approach here in Barrington 220. While many other school districts went on an AI-banning spree—or worse, decided to ignore AI—we created a staff task force to draft AI guidelines and tested several AI tools, both for staff and student use. We continue to find through our various trials that AI can be very helpful as a tool in certain circumstances under certain conditions, but it is currently not ready to replace humans.

As promised, here is the full list of credits for Opening Day Live on August 18, 2025. You will only find a list of humans here. For this production, I could not bring myself to credit AI any more than I would credit my SUV for helping me get to the production on that morning. 

Barrington 220 Opening Day Live 25/26

Cast, Creatives, & Crew

“Coach Ricky vs. AI”

Josh P., Coach Ricky Rawlins 

Brin F., Mrs. Bell

Maymuna M., Student 

Aspen R., Student

Ruhi Sh., Student

Logan T., Student

Nicki Gavin, Writer & Director

Opening Credits Sequence

Produced by BHS-TV

Aidan K., Director & Camera Operator 

Julia S., Co-Director & Editor 

Peter C., PA

Kevin H., PA

Dr. Jeff Doles, Teacher

John Roncone, Announcer

Opening Monologue & Message

Dr. Craig Winkleman, Superintendent

Tim Maguire, Authentic Audience Member

Brandon Duke, Authentic Audience Member

Amy Suessen, BEA President

Shawndra Shelton, BSEO President

“Together Two Twenty” Video

Eric Steckling, Producer & Editor

“Dougie Downer”

Doug Connell, Dougie Downer

Jenny Shannon, Staff Member

Shawndra Shelton, Staff Member

Erica Ward, Staff Member

Kevin Krivosik, Trombone

Doug James, Voiceover Artist

Nicki Gavin, Writer & Director

“Bronco Cheerleaders” Video

Amy Winkelman

Craig Winkelman

Nicki Gavin, Writer & Director

“Opening Day Update”

Nicki Gavin

Brad Gillette

Nicki Gavin, Writer & Director

“Learning 1980s Style” Video

Aspen R., Student 1

Brin F., Student 2

Josh P., Student 3

Ruhi S., Student 4

Written & Produced by BHS-TV

Aidan K., Director & Camera Operator 

Julia S., Co-Director & Editor 

Peter C., PA

Kevin H., PA

Dr. Jeff Doles, Teacher

Barrington 220 Choirs

Brandon Pemberton, Conductor

Ryan Palmer, Piano

Mark Domanico, Percussion

Barrington High School Choir

Sam B.

Ashley C.

Matias C.

Jayden C.

Lilah D.

Camryn F.

Ethan G.

Tilly H.

Ella H.

James J.

Eli L.

Ethan M.

Daniel M.

Mariana N.

Joshua P.

Aspen R.

Adrian R.

Maggie S.

Barrington 220 Staff Choir

Janet Blake

Riley Cook

Erin Donahue

Mike Duggan

Emily Durham

Lori Ford

Nicki Gavin

Kelly Haradon

Katie Hildebrand

Erin Kirby

Noemi Lara

Cat Lasky

Erin Lindsey

Amy Lovi

Tim Maguire

Diana McKee

Laura Minerva

Kate Moody

Katie Muhtaris

Nazarii Mykhailenko

Mike Nelson

Natalie Pollack

Kaitlin Popovich

Nancy Reed

Alison Rohrbach

Tom Root

Abby Schaub

Ben Sorce

Karen Tischhauser

Kateri Tumminello

BTP Candles Video

Junior H., Student

Ken Hoving, Special Education Teacher, BTP

Live Production Crew

Josie S., Prop Construction/Stagehand

Raaniya A., Stagehand

Jake M., Stagehand

Maymuna M., Stagehand

Aidan K., Camera Operator 

Peter C., Camera Operator

Opening Day Live Band

Mark Domanico, Band Leader & Bass/Guitar/Keyboards

Garrett Luczak, Bass/Guitar/Keyboards

Hector Ontiveros, Drums

Josh Beatty, Tenor Sax

Janet Blake, Vocals

Chelsea Hedges, Vocals

Alison Rohrbach, Vocals

Jeff Simon, Vocals

Jeremy Wemhoff, Vocals/Guitar

Special Thanks

Barrington High School Bands, Kevin Krivosik, Director

Barrington 220 Staff Interviewed for the Together Two Twenty video

Barrington Historical Society

Susan Buerckholtz

Willow Creek Production Staff

Brigid Tileston, Coordinating Producer

YES to LEARNING in IC!

We’re excited to announce the return of the Yearly Event Series (YES)—your go-to resource for timely, targeted learning for all modules of IC.

YES includes timely instruction on a wide array of Infinite Campus topics that will easily save staff hundreds of hours during the school year! Whether you're new to the system or a seasoned user, these sessions offer practical tools and strategies to improve your workflow and efficiency.

Our first session will be

Adventures in Ad Hoc and Core Reporting

September 16 & 17, 2025

This session will explore the ins and outs of ad hoc and core reporting—canned reports for attendance, behavior and health and helpful tips for creating and using ad hoc reporting. Expect useful takeaways, real-life examples, and time-saving tips.

The session schedule will be emailed out once it becomes available, for now SAVE THE DATE!

Keep an eye out for future YES sessions. We look forward to kicking off another great year of learning with you!

Say YES to learning!

Need Interpretation or Translation Services? We can help!

Welcome to the 2025–2026 school year! As you plan for meetings, events, or family communications, remember that the Barrington 220 Interpretation & Translation Team is here to help make every interaction clear and accessible.

Whether you need in-person support, help with phone or Zoom calls, or documents translated, the process is simple and streamlined:

1. Submit a Request

Fill out our quick and easy Interpretation & Translation Request Form—or visit the Barrington 220 website. After logging in under the Staff tab, look for Interpretation & Translation Request.

2. Provide Details

Upload documents for translation or share the date, time, and details of your event so we can match you with the right interpreter.

3. Plan Ahead

Document translations: Allow 5–10 business days.

Interpreter requests for meetings/events: Submit at least 10 days in advance for the best chance of securing support.

Note: Last-minute requests will be handled as best as possible, but availability may be limited.

For any questions or special situations, contact:
📧 Hector Ontiveros – hontiveros@barrington220.org