Embedding Media In Schoology

@LisaBerghoff/@Joe_EdTech

As a teacher, I'm always thinking of the one or two kids in my class who are the hardest to motivate. They're the ones who ask things like "why do I need to know this?" or "when will I use this in my life?". They have a harder time engaging with the curriculum and often will look for the bare minimum requirements to get by. 

When I am planning, I am thinking of those kids. 

While I believe my content is fascinating on its own, (who doesn't love DNA?) I am realistic in knowing that not everything I teach is going to spark passion in my students. And though I am not a fan of bells and whistles just because they're loud, there is something to be said for mixing things up a little bit.

Think of your own experiences with learning. Do you always want to be lectured to? Do you always want to learn from reading and annotating text? Do you want to be staring at a screen all day?

Of course not. We know from brain research that novelty helps us learn. (http://brainworldmagazine.com/the-importance-of-novelty/)

When I am planning I am conscious of both novelty and options for students. The Universal Design for Learning guidelines  give a wonderful framework for offering options in the classroom, thereby eliminating barriers for students who may have difficulty learning. After all, no two brains are exactly alike so it makes sense that we should offer options and keep mixing it up in our classrooms.

One of the great benefits of a learning managements system like Schoology is that it allows teachers to seamlessly embed media into class materials. Having those audio, video, and internet files at the ready will help our kids have some control over their own learning because they can pause, re-watch/listen, and they get to decide how many times they interact with that media.

Media can be embedded into assignments, questions in assessments, class updates, calendar events, and more. If you have a lot of media to share, consider creating a media album. Instructions are below. 

Ready to get started with embedding media into your Schoology class? 

Here's how:

Add media to an assignment

1. Open a class

2. Click Add Materials and Add Assignment

3. Click the Insert Content icon- it looks like a box with an arrow pointing into it-

4. From here you can choose content from one of the apps such as YouTube, Vimeo, or Google Drive, or you can add Image/Media files from your computer or the internet. There is no limit to the number of files you can add, but you do need to add them one at a time.

Why should you embed media instead of just posting a link? For one thing, it will look like this:

The students can open and view the media directly in the Schoology environment, there is no need to open another tab. It is a clean and uncluttered way to direct your students to the media. Think of how much instructional time gets lost when we are fumbling and trying to get our kids all on the same video. That will be a thing of the past when you embed your media.

Still reading? You must be waiting to read about media albums.

If you have many photos, videos, or audio files to share, a media album is a great way to organize in Schoology. Here is what you need to know.







1. Open a course and go to Add Materials.
2. Click on Add Media Album.
3. Title your album and give a short description.
4. Click on Attach Files to upload from your computer
5. When you click the gear, you can add captions, rotate, tag people, and re-order your files.
For more information about how to create media albums, check out the Schoology support page: Click here

Ready to practice? Feel free to come to a lunch and learn, make an appointment, or just stop me in the halls. I'm happy to show you more.

Lockdown Browser in Schoology 4/24

Test Security & the LockDown Browser in Schoology

@joe_edtech/@LisaBerghoff

Guest Post By Howard Citron, Phsyics Teacher and Instructional Tech Coach at DHS

In the blog post below, Howard explains that using the LockDown browser feature in Schoology, you can prevent students from opening new tabs or windows on their Chromebooks and enhance your online test security.

Assignments, discussions and grade books, OH MY! As I venture down the yellow brick road and continue meeting all of these fascinating Schoology features, I’ve decided to start giving assessments through Schoology. My favorite part assessments in Schoology? The LockDown Browser, of course!

Have you wondered, how too can I use Schoology to give assessments without my students being able to access the internet for answers? That is the question we are here to answer.

We present to you the “LockDown Browser” embedded within Schoology! The LockDown Browser allows for you to create and give your students digital assessments with varying question types without the students being able to access the internet. This is a similar feature to using Hapara to lock out student browsing capabilities or the “Click to test” function through Mastery Manager without students having to log out of their Chromebooks.

First, you’ll want to activate the LockDown Browser in the lefthand side of your Schoology “Courses” page

Once the LockDown Browser has been activated FOR EACH CLASS, you have the ability to add it to any of your Schoology given assessments. Students will only have the ability to access webpages that you allow during assessments when LockDown is active.

To create an assessment using the LockDown Browser you will create an assessment (Test/Quiz) via “Gradebook” or “Add Materials.”

Upon creation of the assessment, you may set it up to either make the grades available without a key, with a key or not make the grades available once they have submitted the assessment.

Once you have created an assessment (Test/Quiz) within Schoology, you will have the following options presented to you for that assessment:

1. Allowing the students into the exam only 
2. Allowing the students into specified web sites 
3. Allow iPad assessments 
4. Allowing calculator function 
5. Enable Printing

When the students log-in to the take the Schoology created assessment, they will be prompted to enter the LockDown Browser.

The LockDown Browser is an excellent tool that allows our students to enter into a testing mode without logging out of their system and provides the instructor the piece of mind to know that their students cannot access the internet while being assessed.

The accompanying data collection is also an incredible benefit of Schoology that we will discuss in a future blog.

Adding And Accessing Resources In Schoology

@LisaBerghoff/@Joe_EdTech

One question that comes up frequently when introducing teachers to Schoology is whether or not their materials will disappear after the school year has ended. Teachers eager to get started also want to know that the materials they create today will be there for them in August. 

The good news is that Resources is cloud based storage within the Schoology environment.  Not sure what cloud computing is? Watch this 2 1/2 minute video to learn more. 

Understanding Resources  

Welcome to the resources tab! This is one of the most important features for organizing your materials within the Schoology environment. As you become more familiar and comfortable with Schoology, you will most likely be creating assignments and activities within Schoology. The resource center is where you can access your personal resource library, a public, world-wide library, as well as groups of resources housed in groups, the school, or the district. 

You access the resource center by either clicking on the resources tab on the top navigation bar on the home screen or, if you are in a group, it will also be located on the left navigation bar. 

My Resources is your digital filing cabinet where you can save all of your courses and materials. You can also create materials within the My Resources section. Anything you save in this section can be copied and transferred to any course. Once it is copied, you can adapt it to fit the needs of that specific class and it will not change the original copy. In other words, what you have in My Resources is used like a template. 

A Collection is like a container for courses, files, folders, and resources that you may want to use in Schoology. Think of it as a master folder that can be used for organization. You can create a collection for an entire course, a semester, or an entire year. 

The Home Collection is automatically created for you. Everything that you create and save  in the Schoology resource center will be added to your Home Collection. If you want to share resources with others, you can create other collections. 

Want to add a collection?  Here are the steps:

1. Click on the Resources tab on the top navigation bar.

2. Go to Personal 

3. Click on the icon that looks like a filing cabinet with a little green plus sign, that is the Add Collection icon.

4. Give your new collection a title

5. Click Create to finish

There is a little triangle next to the Add Collection icon that allows you to reorder, import, or export resources. You can also rename and delete collections.  As you can see from the screenshot, I moved the Resources for 2018-2019 collection to the top of this list.

Learning Objectives Collection allows you to generate custom learning objectives and share them with members of your group. You may want to set up a course team group and share learning objectives so everyone has them available. In Schoology, you can align assignments and assessments to your learning objectives. You can also create custom rubrics that connect to your objectives.

More information about learning objectives can be found on the Schoology Support Page. 

Downloads is another collection that is automatically created for you. This is where you will find any resources that you downloaded from Public Resources. By clicking on the gear next to the resource, you can add it to a course, copy it to another collection, move it to another collection, or delete it altogether.

Public Resources from the resources center is where educators from all over the world have made their materials available for free. There is a lot there so to make it easier, you can filter and search by resource type, grade level, subject, file format, or rating.

The Public Resources tab within Personal Resources shows everything that you have added to personal resources. If you are glad that others have shared, please consider sharing your materials as well. Together, we are much better than in isolation.

Group Resources will show everything that is shared within a particular group. You may belong to course team, department, building level, district level, and/or public groups. They will all show up in this tab. Again, these resources can be copied to another collection, or added to a course by clicking on the little gear to the right of the resource. 

Resource Apps is the last tab you will see as you go down the left navigation within resources. This allows you to integrate third-party content such as Google Drive, YouTube, or DropBox,  directly into Schoology without needing to open additional tabs. If it's your first time adding apps, you will click Install Apps. Choose which apps you want to install and click Install. 

Adding materials in Resources is very similar to adding to a course. Just click on the Add resources icon and choose the resource you want to add.

Templates can be added to any course or course folder. Once added, you can adjust the material without any impact on your template. You can  also adjust the template without any impact on your material. 

Since Resources saves as templates, it works differently from GoogleDocs, which sync and update live. Therefore, they serve two different purposes. Go ahead and start playing around with Resources. This is a great place to start as you think about preparing for next year, especially while we're still in school.

Have questions or want some help working with Resources? Contact your instructional technology supports in your school today.

April 11 - Workload Planning

The Power of Knowing - Workload Planning in Schoology

@joe_edtech/
@LisaBerghoff

While we may be starting slowly with Schoology next year, it is important to know that when we are ultimately all in and using it to the fullest, there are some really amazing things we can do with an all-school LMS. One of the coolest features in Schoology is called "Workload Planning," and it can tell you when your students have major assignments or tests in their other classes.

In your course, one of the options along the left side of the page is the "Workload Planning" button:

When you open Workload Planning, you can see a weekly calendar (for any week of the semester) with a snapshot of how many major assignments your students have due in other classes for that week. 

Using the drop-down at the top of the page, you can filter your results for the number of assignments due per day. So, if you are planning a due date for a major project of your own, you can take a quick glance at the students in your class and schedule your due dates with their other classes and projects in mind.

Workload Planning will allow you to see an aggregate total for your class, or let you look at individual student schedules. If you click on the information in the calendar displayed, you can actually see what classes the projects are and for which classes.

Here's a short video on Workload Planning via Digital Learning Specialist Paul Beckerman:

Have a fantastic start to 4th Quarter!