Please join the Department of Technology & Innovation in welcoming our two newest members to the team, Leslie Seelye and Jake Benz!
Prior to joining the team as a Technology Support Associate, Leslie Seelye was a Software Requisition and Fulfillment Analyst at Discover Financial in the Technology department. Before Discover, she spent a couple of decades at Siemens in the Accounting and Technology departments.
Leslie has three children and enjoys outdoor activities including kayaking, bicycling, fitness, and long walks with her dogs Puck, Bailey, and Lola.
Jake Benz came from Apple where he served as a Genius at the Deer Park store. He spent three years in various roles from sales, to administration, to warehouse. Jake was also a Mac Technician and trained new hires.
Outside of Apple, Jake spent 15 years playing hockey and still loves to watch and play the sport. One day he hopes to get his coaching license. Jake spends a great deal of time programming and learning about technology, even when not at work. Technology has always been his passion along with the rest of the science field.
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.
Hot off the press...Share Only a Portion of your screen in Zoom's Advanced Settings!
When teaching in Zoom:
Do you have more than one window open, but just want to show a portion of your screen to students?
Do you have an interactive slides presentation that needs to stay out of presentation mode to make interactive, but you only want your students to see the slide you are on?
Do you want to zoom in on a math problem?
Show students specific text in a book?
Support a student with a vision impairment by only showing the content you are talking about at the time?
...Then use the advanced Portion of a Screen feature in Zoom!
This is also a great way to support students with vision impairments, or students with attention difficulties. It allows you to target specific areas on your screen that the students will only see!
Directions
Screen Share
Advanced
Portion of Screen
Adjust the Green Box to show only what you would like. While you are adjusting, it will not show what is on the screen.
Students will now only see what is inside the green box.
As Barrington 220 and other districts continue in distance learning mode as the COVID-19 pandemic continues, teachers may be getting new requests from parents about ways to assist their children in distance learning.
At the beginning of the school year, Barrington 220 offered several sessions in each of five learning modules in our Distance Learning Resources for Parents series. Those resources are still available on a dedicated website for access any time.
The 2020–21 school year marks the five-year program anniversary of the Barrington 220 Blended Learning program. Ty Gorman, Director of Instructional Technology, has produced a short video featuring a few teachers and students to commemorate this milestone.
Using our district’s adopted blended learning definition, blended courses include both online and face-to-face learning opportunities with teachers that include student choice of time, pace, path, and/or place for learning experiences. Barrington 220 teachers use blended learning strategies to personalize the learning experiences for students based upon individual needs.
The Blended Learning program in Barrington 220 continues to grow. Barrington High School currently offers 135 sections of blended learning courses taught by 82 teachers who have completed blended learning cohort training. Seventeen new blended teachers completed the cohort in 2020. During the past five years of the Blended Learning program, over 5,000 students have participated in blended learning courses and activities. During the 2020–21 school year, approximately 1,800 BHS students are currently enrolled in a blended course.
Previous blended learning experience among Barrington 220 teachers at elementary, middle, and high school levels had a positive impact on both distance and hybrid learning since blended strategies are well suited for distance and hybrid learning modes. New formal blended learning teacher cohorts have paused since most Barrington 220 teachers are learning to use blended learning strategies as part of our distance learning professional development. Barrington High School currently offers over 80 blended learning courses.
Moving forward, Barrington 220 will continue to offer formal blended learning teacher cohorts after the pandemic—enhanced by what we learned using blended learning strategies in distance and hybrid learning modes. We will continue to add high school blended courses (and sections) and expand blended modes at middle and elementary levels.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Technology & Innovation has continued to produce our web series Learning NOW in Barrington 220 at www.youtube.com/learningnow220. Each episode highlights some of the ways Barrington 220 students are learning in one-minute stories about a particular lesson or activity. The series aims to create a better understanding in the Barrington community about how students learn and how the classroom environment has changed with the addition of a technology device in the hands of every student.
If you have not seen them already, please take this opportunity to catch upon our One-Minute Spotlight videos that showcase distance, hybrid, and concurrent learning across the district:
Hybrid Learning: Barrington High School - Mr. Kaiser - Woods—BHS Woods Teacher Jason Kaiser spent the beginning of the school year in distance learning while he taught his students about safety and planned projects. Later in the quarter, small groups of his advanced woods students visited the wood shop and used tools and materials to create projects.
Distance Learning: Countryside Elementary - Ms. Juengling—Countryside teacher Marie Juengling uses the Jamboard online interactive whiteboard and Zoom Breakout Rooms during distance learning to allow her students to think, debate, and develop ideas.
Distance Learning: Lines Elementary - Ms. Dowdy—Lines Grade 3 teacher Sarah Dowdy works with her class using Zoom video conferencing to teach a math lesson about parallel lines.
Concurrent Learning: Barrington High School - Mr. Pemberton - Choir—BHS Director of Choirs Brandon Pemberton conducts a choir rehearsal with some students live on the BHS outdoor stage and some students attending on Zoom in a concurrent classroom mode.
Concurrent Learning: Barrington Middle School–Prairie - Ms. Canace & Ms. Aliperta—Students in Ms. Canace’s and Ms. Aliperta’s classes at BMS–Prairie learn in a concurrent classroom environment—where some students are in-person in a socially distanced classroom and some students are learning from home on Zoom.
