Otus will be replacing Pearson Inform this year. In addition to being a student performance platform, it is also a learning management system, like Google Classroom.

In order to get it up and running, I met with teams last Wednesday to go through a quick activation process. IF you have students in PowerSchool and did not meet with me yet, I ask that you please log into PowerSchool, and click the 2 (maybe 3, if you get an error) buttons in order to activate OTUS.

Here is a link with screenshots. This only takes a minute, I promise! After logging into OTUS, you can just close the tab. If you have any questions, please contact me.

If you are using Google Classroom, check out Share to Classroom. This extension saves time by allowing teachers to instantly push webpages to any of their Google Classroom classes (similar to Hapara). You can get students on the same page (literally!) with just a few clicks. You can also use this extension to create assignments and announcements, or save webpages for future use.

You can now add images to answer choices when creating Google Forms! This is especially useful for primary teachers. For directions and samples by Alice Keeler, click here.

Part of our role as educators is to prepare our students to be safe, responsible, and successful. With the increase of technology in our society and in our classrooms, digital citizenship has become a necessary part of the curriculum. Through research, the TIC Digital Citizenship Committee identified seven major themes to frame this curriculum. Each theme is required to be covered at some point during the school year, but as a professional, you can choose how you teach this in your classroom.

In the documents linked below, you will find suggested lessons and additional resources that you can choose to use. Also included are suggested times to tie in these themes throughout the school day.

Click here to view the District 64 Digital Citizenship Curriculum (by Grade Level). Here is the curriculum organized by theme.