How To Not Invite the Entire District to Join you on LinkedIn.

Some people have been mentioning receiving multiple email invitations from fellow employees to join them on LinkdIn. There have been a lot of questions and concerns about these emails. When you receive an invitation to connect with someone via LinkedIn, please check to see who the invitation was sent to. 

If it was not sent directly to your email address, do not click the connection. 

There are two mistakes that can happen when creating a LinkedIn account.  Well, I suppose there are more, but these are the two most common for our district users. Read on as I explain how they happen and how to prevent them.

When creating a LinkedIn account, or updating your profile, the website often recommends ‘people you may know.’  Look twice at the screen and the items that are selected before clicking the Continue button.  It may have suggested hundreds of people and will have them selected by default. If you click continue it will invite them all.  It should give you a spot to click “Skip this step”.  If you would like to connect with some of the people it suggested, uncheck the Select All box and manually select the ones you choose.

Frequently, it also asks if you would like to connect to your email address book.  If you say yes, or if you have inadvertently connected it in the past, it may select all the contacts from your address book.  This can be a large number of people, for instance, every person in your address book, which could include parents and students. It should give you a spot to click “Skip this step”.  

The biggest problem with this second step is that you may have a lot of group email addresses in your contact list, such as watercooler@chipfalls.org or the building all_staff email addresses. It will send an invitation to all those groups.  This means if I am a member of several groups in your contact list, I will get several invitations.

If that is not frustrating enough, it gets even messier.  If I click through the invitation that was sent to one of the group messages, for example, an invite sent to Watercooler, it will try to log in to or create an account for that email address. That means if I click on an invitation that went to watercooler@chipfalls.org and don’t realize it, LinkedIn will think my email address is watercooler@chipfalls.org. As soon as people start connecting with this new account it will send updates to the group email address, which means all notices would be sent to everyone in the watercooler email group.

In summary, when setting up a LinkedIn account, please take your time and read each screen carefully before you click Continue.

Upcoming Google After Hours Classes

It has been a snowy week in western Wisconsin. We have had to cancel 4 Google After Hours classes due to weather conditions! Please keep checking the staff development link on the staff portal for updates. Some sessions with high interest are being rescheduled. If you have questions about the course content a session will cover, please email your tech coaches. Next week, we will be offering the following sessions:

2/25/14 - Uploading Your H: Drive to Google Drive (Basic) @ Hillcrest

Although CFAUSD employees still have access to H:/ drives and I:/ drives, there is limited space available to store documents. Your district Google account gives you 30 times the space allotted on your H:/ drive. Come learn about the benefits of cloud storage, tips about Google Drive and begin uploading the documents from your H:/ drive to your Google drive to give you more space and 24/7 access to your files. 

2/26/14 - Google Drive, Docs and Sharing (Basic) @ Hillcrest

This will be an overview of Google Drive, creating documents, sharing and collaborating. Participants should be able to log in to Google Drive prior to attending.  

2/26/14 - Collecting Student Work and Organizing Your Google Drive @ Chi Hi Room 137

Organizing your Google Drive can be a daunting task. Students share documents with you and your Drive can become overwhelming. Attend this session to learn ideas for alternative ways for students to electronically hand in their work, ways to organize student work in your drive, and other tips about electronic document management. Working knowledge of Google Docs and Drive is required for this session. 

2/27/14 - Google Projects and Project-Based Learning @ Parkview

Throughout our district and especially in our 1:1 program at the high school, innovative teachers are using Google Apps for Education to allow students to create fun, meaningful learning projects based on standards and curricular content. This session will give you an overview of some of those projects as well as providing discussion time for brainstorming ideas. Follow-up Technology Coaching will be available upon request to assist you with implementation.

Calendar Reminders and Notifications

You can change the way that Google Notifies you of calendar invitations, changes to invitations, responses from other guests, etc. Please see below for a tutorial. Be sure to click save when you are finished.

Digital Cornell Notes Template

Many teachers in Chippewa Falls are using Cornell Notes as a way to help students organize information for note-taking. I created a Google Docs template for use with Cornell Notes in Google Drive.

Students and teachers can use this template for digital note-taking*. Simply create a Google document, click File->New->From Template and find Cornell Notes in the Chippewa Falls Area Unified School District Templates tab near the top of the page.

This will create a copy of the template so that it can be modified and renamed with an appropriate file name, such as Chapter 1 Social Studies Notes right in Google Docs/Drive. This document can be shared or collaborated on with the same capabilities of other Google documents.

If you have any questions, please contact your Technology Coaches at x2216.

*Please note that it is not currently possible to utilize Google Docs with tables on them in Google Drive on the iPad. If you have specific questions regarding students using the iPads to utilize Cornell Notes, contact Sarah Radcliffe at x2216.

Google After Hours Update

So far, about 75 of our teachers, administrators, and other staff have attending training through our Google After Hours sessions. Many people have even attended multiple trainings. This is amazing considering we have only completed 6 of over 30 offerings this semester. If you haven't had a chance to attend, you can sign up using the staff development portal. The teachers who have attended so far have given very positive feedback on the experience. Remember, follow-up coaching sessions to help with technology integration within your curriculum are also available. See below for details.

Number of Google After Hours sessions offered so far: 6

Number of staff members who have attended training: 75

Sessions offered so far:

Uploading Your H: Drive to Google Drive

Maximizing Your Google Calendar and G-Mail

Using Google Forms for Formative Assessments

Google Sites for Teachers and Students

Google Drive, Docs and Sharing Basics

Feedback:

• 100% of respondents reported that the instructors were knowledgable about the topic covered.
• 100% of respondents reported that the topic was relevant to the needs of their classroom.
• 93% of respondents reported that they will be able to use the information in their classroom (some attendees don’t have classes)

Upcoming sessions:

• Google Sites for Teachers and Students (2/12/14, HS room 137)
• Uploading your H:/ Drive to Google Drive (2/17/14, PV LMC)
• Maximizing Your Google Calendar and Gmail (2/17/14, MS Lab 410)
• Google Drive, Docs and Sharing (2/19/14, HS room 137)
• Using Google Forms for Formative Assessment (2/19/14, PV LMC)

For more information about follow-up coaching sessions, contact Sarah Radcliffe (x2216) or Cara Schueller (x2587)