AACPS OIT Byte

By Kerri Lambert, Academic Specialist, Instructional Technology It’s no secret that relationships are key in the education world; whether it's colleague to colleague, student to teacher, or teacher to families, building a strong community is critical to the success of students. In fact, the AACPS Strategic Plan specifically calls out the sense of belonging as one of the 6 core beliefs, stating: “We believe that genuine connections and relationships are the foundation of a successful community. We are committed to nurturing strong bonds between students, staff, families, and community members so everyone feels connected, supported, and valued." Even the Maryland Digital Learning Standards emphasize the importance of collaboration with standard number 7, Global Communicator: Students use digital tools to broaden their perspectives and enrich their learning by collaborating with others and working effectively in teams locally and globally. Students: a) Use digital tools to conn...

This year Computer Science Education week runs from Friday, December 6th through the 12th. Hour of Code, one of their main events, kicks off Monday, the 9th. Hour of code encourages students to code for an hour to hone their skills, but it also allows teachers to discuss careers in coding and computer science how students can explore their interests and plan their path to achieve their goals. Below are several suggestions for how you can get your students involved in CS week or Hour of Code. Hour of Code Activities for PreK through high school. No coding experience necessary! Filter topics by grade level band and then by content to find something that works for your classroom. Topics include Art, Music, AI, Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies and more! Explore the Hour of Code library directly from Classlink. Minecraft Hour Of Code The 2024 theme is The Show Must Go On! Minecraft invites students to step into the theater to find the show’s missing star, unlock hidden gags, s...

By Kerri Lambert, Academic Specialist, Instructional Technology ‘Tis the season for squirrely students! So what’s a tired teacher, just trying to get to winter break, to do? Pull out all the engagement tricks they have up their sleeves, that’s what! And what better way to get students tuned in then by using technology?  Over the years, we’ve written several blog posts about seasonal activities that teachers can do with students as the holidays get closer (Find them here , here , and here ), and so in this year’s round-up we thought we’d highlight one of the tastiest treats of the season- gingerbread! Why gingerbread? Well, gingerbread is widely associated with winter traditions and holidays across many cultures, with it’s origins dating back to the ancient Egyptians. This promotes a sense of unity and shared celebration, regardless of students’ backgrounds. Gingerbread also lends itself to creativity, perfect for engaging students in teamwork. There’s also plenty of opportunity for...

Written by Tracey Brown - Instructional Technology Academic Specialist   I’ve been around in AACPS long enough to remember a time before we had Classlink. Honestly, that probably isn’t a big feat! Many of us remember the days of the splashpages that we built and set as the homescreens to help students and staff get to their everyday applications with just a click or two. Classlink made things even better, by not only giving you a button to get to the application, but by signing you into it automatically too. At this point, I don’t know what I would do without it! That is why I am sometimes puzzled when I see Classlink load and instead of someone clicking the sign-in button, they quickly open a new tab and go to google.com so they can type in http://nearpod.com . When I ask why they don’t just use Classlink, they often roll their eyes and say something like, “Ugh, I hate that page! I can’t find anything!” If you are one of the people who navigates away from Classlink without giving ...

OIT just wrapped our fall 2024 eCoach Champion day. This is one of our favorite annual events as it gives us a chance to meet with our technology liaisons at the schools and share with them the relevant changes in our applications or best practices for how to use them in the classroom that they can then share with their teachers to ensure our instruction aligns to the MD Digital Learning Standards for Students and Educators. A Big Change One of the biggest changes for this year was the merging of our eCoach and Brightspace Campus Champion programs. Combining these programs had been the goal from the outset, as we can’t think of using our technology applications in isolation from how to use our Learning Management System (LMS). As we started this school year, it seemed like it was time to join these tech experts into one unified team to support technology use at the schools. A Magical Theme The team at OIT puts a lot of effort into devising a theme for each eCoach day. The theme is some...

by Tracey Brown, Instructional Technology Academic Specialist If you've been following our blog for some time, you might be thinking, "this topic looks familiar..." You would be correct! We have written about this before, but that was in 2021, and a lot has changed since then including the make-up of our teachers and substitutes in AACPS. So we thought it was time to dust off this topic, update it where necessary and offer our best practices for leaving technology resources for subs in 2024. Sub plans. A necessary evil in the world of teachers. How many of us have gone to work sick simply because we dreaded having to write up sub plans for the day? And when you find a good sub, you cross your fingers and hope they never leave your school! Adding to the stress of writing sub plans is the ever growing number of digital resources that they need to access in order to fill in for the day. What can they access? What can’t they access? How can they get all the links and videos n...