Happy November!
It is easy to say that this has been a school year unlike anything any of us has ever experienced. I would like to first start off by saying thank you to all staff and students for being patient as the IT and Instructional Technology staff has worked to find a solution to the ongoing Google SSO issue.
For those that are unfamiliar with the overall issue, the district began experiencing a major issue with student access to most of our instructional resources. This issue prevented students from accessing their education content by utilizing the Google Single Sign on button that allows users to sign into various platforms simply by clicking on a button. It was also preventing students from accessing other systems that required students to sign in with a username and password. Overall, it was a major headache for both students and staff and made learning much more difficult.
After a multiple months long investigation that was equivalent to finding a grain of sand in a landfill, the IT department was able to determine the cause of our woes and has been working with Google on a fix. We have temporarily disabled the program that was causing the glitch and all systems should be running smoothly now with no issues being reported.
What We Are Up To
The Instructional Tech Department has been hard at work at testing and making sure that all of our instructional resource systems are functioning properly with the new fix for the Google SSO issues we have previously experienced. We are also working on building out our new department page on the new district website systems. This is going to be a crucial part of our support structure for staff throughout the district as we will be using the website to post new information, tips and tricks, as well as scheduling appointments.
Due to the current COVID-19 restrictions, we have been unable to be out and in the buildings as much as we would like to be. Rest assured that as soon as we are able, we will be scheduling times to hang out in each of your buildings to provide instructional support with our technology related resources.
As a reminder, Deanna and I are here to help support you all with Instructional Technology. The past months, we have been serving in more of a Tech Support role due to the pandemic and how we have been forced to shift more towards remote learning. However, depending on how things progress, we will begin transitioning back into our primary role of providing you all swift, high quality instructional support. As a result, we will be redirecting folks to fill out work orders for requests that are more related to the IT department rather than the Instructional side of things.
Future Focused
One of the focal points in our department is to always be Future Focused in regards to the technologies and resources that are being used with our students. With that being said, Deanna and I are continually looking at how we can best prepare our staff and students for the future and how we can best support our district in providing that same future focused education to our students. If you are looking for ideas or have any questions about how you can best integrate various technologies or how you can begin to truly utilize blended learning with your students, please do not hesitate to get in touch with Deanna or me via the Contact Us tab on our department website. We are more than happy to set up a Google Meet or (if permitted) an in person meeting to discuss tips and tricks and even help to develop lesson plans that incorporate the various Blended Learning techniques and SAMR levels of tech integration.
As always, we are always happy to help and provide you with the skills and training necessary to thrive in this 21st century educational world!
~ The Instructional Tech Department
