AACPS OIT Byte

Meet Paige Richardson! Q: Tell us about your role in AACPS. A; My official title with AACPS is Instructional Technology Tech Support, but I deal directly with the MOI (Materials of Instruction) process and everything behind the scenes.  Q: Can you give us a behind-the-scenes look at what happens when coordinators find a textbook, website, software, product, etc. they want to use? What's the process? A: If a Coordinator would like to utilize a material for instruction, they must first check the Taimms (Textbook and Instructional Materials) catalog to see if it has already been approved or not. Once they have done that and determined it hasn't gone through the process, they must go to the Brightspace course and complete the request form. Once it has been determined that it can move forward, they must enter a request for evaluation in Taimms. If it is a digital material, AACPS requires technology documents to be completed before being brought to the committee for review.  Q:Can ...

  By Kerri Lambert, Teacher Specialist, AACPS Office of Instructional Technology This is the seventh and final post in a series about the Maryland Digital Learning Standards.  Collaboration, the third of the famous 4 C’s of the 21st Century is a natural fit for the Maryland Digital Learning Standards as technology allows for a variety of collaborative activities. Whether it’s working simultaneously in a document to meeting virtually with an expert or community member, technology allows individuals to work as a team to expand their knowledge base and find solutions. So what exactly does the standard say about this all important concept?  7. Global Collaborator  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 connect with learners from a variety of backgrounds and cultures, engaging with them in ways that broaden...

By: Darren Towers Educators are constantly seeking efficient tools that streamline their workflow while enhancing student learning experiences. Among the arsenal of resources available in Brightspace, one new tool that has garnered particular favor among educators is the Quiz Converter tool. At its core, the Quiz Converter tool simplifies the process of importing quizzes from various formats into Brightspace, thereby saving educators significant time and effort. Whether the quiz is in a Word document, Excel spreadsheet, or another LMS format, the Quiz Converter seamlessly translates it into a compatible format within Brightspace, preserving question structure, options, and scoring mechanisms. In today's diverse educational landscape, where resources come from various sources and formats, the ability to convert quizzes effortlessly ensures that valuable content is not lost in translation. This versatility empowers educators to curate quizzes from a wide array of sources, including t...

by Tracey Brown Instructional Technology Teacher Specialist      If you’ve spent any time around OIT lately, you have probably heard Tracey say it, there is no single bigger bang for your engagement buck than Minecraft Education in the classroom. Educators today can struggle to connect with students, inside and outside of the classroom. Smiles and greetings in the morning are met with a muffled grunt from inside of an oversized hoodie that presumably contains a student. If this is your reality then Minecraft can be the tool that wakes your students up and gets them actively engaging with you and each other, even if only for the duration of the lesson or project that utilizes the app. What Can My Students Do with Minecraft in the Classroom?      Minecraft Education can teach or reinforce content through worlds built by Minecraft experts and provided for educators and students from right inside of the app’s Library, but that isn’t usually where we suggest th...

By: Samantha Wilkinson, Office of Instructional Technology I think it is fair to say that I’m a big fan of podcasts- digital audio files, typically in a series, which can be streamed or downloaded from the internet. At any given moment, I have no less than 3 podcasts on rotation while I’m in my car, going for a walk, or even when cleaning my house. It's gotten to the point that I’m beginning to think my favorite podcast hosts are actually my friends in real life. The intimate details that they share weekly make me feel a connection to them that I can’t deny.  So that got me wondering why. What makes podcasts so addicting? For one thing, it is the literary element. The stories I’ve heard in certain podcasts… oh, the stories! I’ve laughed outrageously and sobbed all within a 20-minute episode. If there are multiple voices or characters, the more enthralled I am. To be honest, the narratives I hear when listening to my various pods often launch the most significant conversations I hav...

 By Kerri Lambert, Teacher Specialist, AACPS Office of Instructional Technology On March 7th, OIT went global with our semi annual eCoach Day. During this day of virtual professional development, eCoaches, Brightspace Campus Champions, media specialists, and other guests took time to “Explore the possible: Connecting Classrooms to the World” through 33 unique sessions offered by vendors, AACPS teacher specialists, and AACPS classroom teachers.  Session topics were varied, covering everything from Generative AI, Google Earth, Talkies in Wixie, to coding with robots and other applications. With the global connections theme, many sessions focused on how students can connect and interact with the world beyond the classroom walls. Discovery Ed took teachers on virtual field trips, Lumio by Smart demonstrated how to integrate global perspectives across content areas, and our own Samantha Wilkinson and Tracey Brown showcased Google Arts & Culture and Google Earth, tools that all...

By Kerri Lambert, Teacher Specialist, AACPS Office of Instructional Technology This is the sixth post in a series about the Maryland Digital Learning Standards.  If you’ve been following along in our series of blog posts about the Maryland Digital Learning Standards, one thing should be clear by now. It is that the standards are designed to encourage students to be active learners, concerned with building their own knowledge base and creating content; not simply consuming it. This is particularly true of Standard 6: Creative Communicator. Let’s take a closer look, but first, the standard as it’s written:  6. Creative Communicator Students communicate clearly and express themselves creatively using the platforms, tools, styles, formats and digital media appropriate for their goals. Students: a) choose the appropriate approved platforms and tools for meeting the desired objectives of their creation and/or communication; b) create original works or responsibly repurpose or remix ...