Good Morning!
Wow! That Google Hangout was quite an experience! This new communication platform will take us all some getting used to, but I hope your kids enjoyed it. Understandably, they had many questions, and my main objective was to simply reconnect with them and answer their questions. Several things moving forward and starting tomorrow:
1. I am changing the procedure for how kids join the daily morning meeting, however the meeting will always start at 9:30 a.m. I told kids this this morning, but now here it is in writing:
- They should go to the Google Classroom folder called Homeroom Rm 14.
- Read the morning message.
- Open the link in the message for meet.google.com, and type the “nickname” (this is an access code) that I provide in the morning message. This will provide one-time-only access to the day’s meeting.
- I will repeat this procedure every day, and there will be a different nickname every day.
- Once they type the nickname, they can join the meeting.
- I WILL NO LONGER PROVIDE A MEETING INVITATION THROUGH THEIR BPS SCHOOL EMAIL.
2. Google Hangout is an imperfect platform for our purposes. There were some glitches today for kids, but mostly we got through it. Last night around 8:00 p.m., teachers received an email from the district’s technology specialist with a suggestion for parents.
- Hangout will work best if your child is on a laptop or Chromebook.
- The screen view will be greatly enhanced if you download a Chrome extension onto your laptop. I did this last night, and I was able to see all the kids on my screen at the same time. Here is a link to the Chrome extension. Once there, just click on Add to Chrome (takes five seconds!). This is not a requirement, but it does enhance the Hangout experience.
3. NO WORK HAS BEEN ASSIGNED FOR STUDENTS TO COMPLETE TODAY. However, I did already post the Choice Board of work for tomorrow in the Homeroom Rm 14 Google Classroom folder. I talked about it in the meeting this morning and showed kids a paper version of it, but I don’t expect them to use it today … unless they’d like to!
4. The Choice Board has no times on it. I am leaving it to you to decide what works best for your family as far as when your child completes the work.
Please, please, please feel free to give me feedback on how this is all working for your child and for you. I will see your child again tomorrow morning!
All my best,
Mrs. Jaffe
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