Tech Weekly News Update

Checking you PS should be on your daily checklist. As of today, 548/572 (96%) of CISD parents have opted into receiving phone text messages, and up from last week, 202/572 (35%) have downloaded the PS App and are receiving push notifications. Remember to use your MICROSOFT (not Google) to single sign on. Shout out to those of you that have shared some of your parent messaging experiences. So far, Lynda Gatliff is leading the district with 14 posts!

After several days of experimenting, we believe that we have solved some issues with classes not showing up. Please let us know if you do not see a gradebook rostered class that you teach. Newly created classes have to be made visible by us, teachers that teach at multiple campuses have to be manually added to the missing campus, and we found that a co-teacher can be added when classes are shared, so both teachers can post/message parents of classes they share with other teachers. You can actually add co-teachers and para/assistants yourself. Click on the 3 dots and choose Manage Staff/Room Parents. Next, you can add SPED teachers or paras as an assistant/other, and that will enable them to post and view you class communication. Click the button below the image to learn more.

Several groups have been created by admin at the district level to include parents/students from more than one campus. The Celeste Junior FFA is one example of a district group where the ag teachers need to communicate with junior high and elementary students. They would not be able to see these students from another campus without this group. You can create groups for tutoring, after school clubs, etc. for students or teacher groups that sponsor UIL, etc.

Checkout the CISD website event's calendar! It is your all-in-one calendar to find out what is going on in the district. All the campus calendars feed into it! Be sure to check you campus PS calendar for upcoming events, and you have your own classroom calendar as well!

We successfully invited a test high school student to StudentSquare, and we will be sending the invites out to all high school students and eventually the 7th and 8th graders. Once the students are registered, you will be able to 2-way message/post high school students for classroom and extra-curricular events.

Have you noticed issues with accessing the App store from your Newline Board? Apparently, the App store did not like the new update! We have a ticket in to resolve this. We will keep you updated. In the meantime, you can work around this by using a Chromebook/laptop and USB-C cable to display your computer on your board. Let is know if you need a Chromebook.

If your students have completed NWEA Map testing, Exact Path will create a learning path based on the Map test results. We will focus on that topic next time. Sorry for the length of this newsletter, but good news, we will skip next week unless there is breaking tech news. Otherwise, enjoy your long Labor Day weekend, and be the 5th person to reply to the PS survey below to win a nice gift that you spend over the holiday!