EACS Technology Newsletter March 29, 2016

1. For teachers in grades K-12: District Expectations for the use of Canvas in March are: Create 4 or more Schoolwork assignments, and have Discussions for each group. Post weekly lesson plans (in either announcements or calendar).

2.For teachers in grades 4-12: Do you know Classkick? Classkick is a free app in the App Store: Classkick. With Classkick, students work assignments on their iPad and get help from their teachers and peers. Teachers create assignments, see all their students' work in real time, and give lots of feedback. Students can help each other anonymously. A special thanks to the teachers at LEEL for this one.

3. For all staff using Google to search for anything: this link: Google Cheat Sheet will give you a printable Google cheat sheet for basic searches, "not so" basic searches, and specific content searches. You will need the Pinterest App to open the link.

4. For all staff: Password and email security is always a topic to think on. Please remember: password or email requests that are legitimate will only come from EACS's email address, ending in "@eacs.k12.in.us", and EACS WILL NEVER ASK FOR YOUR PASSWORD VIA EMAIL. If you get any such requests from any other email you do not recognize, please inform HELPdesk and delete. Additionally, please, never write your password down in a location easily seen by others.

5. For all staff using Canvas: The EACS Technology Dept, in conjunction with teachers and building principals, and as a response to many teacher requests, will "unhook" Canvas from the RDS student information system starting in August of 2016, allowing for improved teacher ease of use and more freedom in creating courses. This will requires teachers to create their own class courses and placing their students in the courses. A brief tutorial on Canvas's EACS Teacher Professional Development will be forthcoming.

6. Fun technology fact: about a year ago, the topic of Graphene was mentioned in the "Fun Technology Fact" section of this newsletter. Here is an infographic: Graphene Infographic (You must have the Pinterest App to open the link and see the infographic) about some of the incredible abilities and future uses of this material, which is just carbon at the atomic level. Some examples include: it is 200X stronger than structural steel, it has 1000X the electrical conductivity of copper, is 97.3% transparent, conducts heat 10X better than copper, among other amazing characteristics.