TechBytes

• September 1 - October 3: STEMscopes Beginning of Year Assessment
• September 4-25: Amira Progress Monitoring
• September 16: Secondary Grading Window Opens
• September 25: Secondary Grading Window Closes/Grades Due

All PUSD Staff Members have a free Canva for Education account!

Are you interested in learning more about using Canva to create lessons, posters, newsletters and more? Do you want to learn about how you can use Canva with your students? Check out the Teacher Resource Center!

Check out these resources being highlighted during the month of September:

Shape content for any classroom or learning purpose, with activities that help students analyze, evaluate, and create. Spark learning that lasts – for every student. Empower students to think big, explore boldly, and create freely.

When plugging in the student headphones distributed to sites for use with Amira, you may need to check that the headphones are properly connected. To do this, tap on the control box on the Chromebook and then on the sound button. Be sure that the connections are set to the headphones and not to the internal speaker.

Due to the way our applications work, it is important that students restart their Chromebooks daily. This means holding down the power button to turn off the device completely, then turning on the device and signing in with your username/password. Closing the Chromebook lid is not the same as restarting the device!

Once course changes have been made to a class as a whole or with student enrollments, it can take 24-72 hours for these changes to be reflected in all academic applications. We ask for your patience as all of our systems sync.

If you or your students still don't have access to specific applications and it has been more than 72 hours since changes were made in Aeries, please submit a ticket so we can look into any possible issues.

The new Chromebook carts installed in K-3 classrooms have a safety feature called Smart Agile Charging where the upper and lower racks will not charge at the same time. A digital cycle timer rotates charging to each shelf every 10 minutes, ensuring a safe charge.

The new Lenovo Chromebooks have Camera Covers for privacy. If you notice the camera is not showing anything (when trying to scan a student's QR code, for example), please be sure the camera cover is not on. See pictures for more help.

Please be aware that the Help Desk is receiving a high number of calls. They are doing their best to help everyone needing support as quickly as possible, but we appreciate your patience during this busy time of year.

If your account was recently activated, please note that it can take 24-48 hours for all systems to sync, and longer in the event that your Aeries account also needs to be created.

If you are a new staff member in need of a device, please submit a Help Desk ticket with your request. The Help Desk team will verify eligibility and reach out to you with next steps.

There are currently longer than usual wait times for device checkouts. We appreciate your patience while waiting for a device.

You can export from Explain Everything to share content with others or to archive your work as a fully editable project file for future editing or local storage. To share with others, export to a PDF to preserve stable formatting for viewing on any device.