AACPS OIT Byte

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...

 By Kerri Lambert, Academic Specialist, Instructional Technology If you’ve ever gotten into a conversation with me about the various applications AACPS staff and students have access to, there’s a good chance you’ve heard me say “I’m a Google girl, but Wixie has my heart.” For me, Wixie is one of the most versatile programs we have access to, and it just keeps getting better with each update. This summer is no exception; as Tech4Learning, the company behind Wixie, rolled out a slew of improvements and new features. Here are few of my favorites:  Path Animation One of the old projects that we used to have students create in Wixie was a version of stop animation. Students could design a page, duplicate it, and then move an object(s) on the page a smidge, then duplicate that page, and repeat it until the object completed some kind of movement to illustrate a concept. When viewed in story mode, it appeared as if the project was a single page with an animated object moving around....

By Kerri Lambert, Academic Specialist, Instructional Technology Anne Arundel County Public Schools has partnered with Discovery Education for over 20 years, and for good reason. Beyond offering high-quality resources, Discovery Education continuously evolves, introducing new content and features that enhance its value for both teachers and students. The 2024-2025 school year is no exception, with the release of numerous, high interest new updates, channels, and series. New Search The big new feature in Discovery that rolled out in time for Back to School was a completely revamped search functionality. You currently have the choice to use the new format, and I highly encourage you to turn it on! The new search functionality highlights all of the best that Discovery has to offer, not just videos. When you do a search, the page is divided into Top Lessons & Activities, related images, channels, Top Videos, and even related keywords if the search didn’t return exactly what you were loo...

by Tracey Brown Instructional Technology Academic Specialist Did you know that October 14th through the 18th is Digital Citizenship week? While it can be difficult to find time to add more content to your already packed curriculum, in today's digital age, it's essential for students to understand and practice responsible online behavior. Teaching digital citizenship in K-12 schools prepares students for the challenges and opportunities of the digital world including the permanence of your digital footprint, and critical thinking to evaluate the quality and accuracy of online information. If you can find some time during indoor recess, after school clubs, advisory period, or other flex-time, here are some ideas for what to do with students to boost their digital citizenship knowledge: Adobe Express Adobe Express contains multiple templates for students to create a Digital Citizenship pledge or to share what they know. Templates include posters, infographics and web pages. One en...

by Tracey Brown, Instructional Technology Academic Specialist   Microsoft Whiteboard Microsoft Whiteboard is an app that can be found in your AACPS OneDrive/Office 365 account. When you click on OneDrive from Classlink, you want to select your “waffle” in the upper left corner. If the app doesn’t appear in the pop-out menu, select more apps and scroll down as all apps are listed alphabetically in the full list. Check out the Microsoft Support page for Whiteboard for specifics on how to use this application. Nearpod Collaborate Collaborate is an interactive board, great for class discussions and brainstorming. It can be added as a component of a larger Nearpod lesson, or done as a standalone activity from the Quick Launch menu. It can also be delivered to students in a self-paced lesson, like for homework, or in a live, teacher-paced lesson. Check out Nearpod’s Help Center page on How to Build a Collaborate Board for specifics on how to use this application. Lumio Shout It Out! Sh...