Digital Teaching and Learning

Curriculum in itslearning

Weeks 11-20 will be applied to Plans in itslearning teacher courses between November 2-4. Dates will not be added to the weekly plans when they are applied to the courses.

Is Immersive Reader available for Test? I have students who need their tests read aloud.

No, Immersive Reader is currently available in Announcement, Note, and Assignment. However, teachers can use the rich content editor in itslearning to record audio of text. A teacher can record herself reading the test questions and answer choices to dictate (option for students, if they need it) the text within fields on a Test.

Teachers can record right within the text editor:

Once the teacher records, it looks like this for students:

How can students/parents quickly find missing or overdue task or assignments?

Students/parents can access the Tasks area of itslearning to find missing or overdue work. See this video tutorial: https://youtu.be/dj6njeiKBec.

504 Errors

Some teachers may see a 504 error when trying to do certain things in itslearning. itslearning is actively investigating this. To help this process, if you receive a 504 error, please screenshot it and email to instructionaltech@hcps.org.

Students in Grades K-12 have access to YouTube. By default, Restricted mode is set for YouTube when accessed and streamed on an HCPS student device.

• Videos that contain potentially mature content fall within YouTube’s Restricted mode guidelines.

• Restricted mode is set for any video that is also marked as age-restricted.
• When searching for video content to utilize with students, be sure to search YouTube in Restricted mode.

With the incorporation of YouTube videos being linked in itslearning, YouTube videos are automatically stripped from the comments and playlist view of videos. There is no need to take the extra step of putting a video into ViewPure. In addition, because of HCPS filtering, students using HCPS devices may be blocked from ViewPure videos.

For teachers experiencing problems connecting their HCPS laptop to the school’s Wi-Fi, restart the laptop every morning after arriving in your classroom. After using the laptop at home, and connected to your personal Wi-Fi, just closing the lid and not powering the unit off can cause problems reconnecting to the WiFi in your school building.

When it is time to change your password, the best practice/recommendation would be to change your password late in the day prior to leaving your building. This allows for external sites like Microsoft and itslearning, time to synchronize the passwords which can take several hours.

The Instructional Technology Team has developed a resource of updates and answers to frequently asked questions. The 2020-2021 Instructional Technology Updates and FAQ document will continue to be updated throughout the 2020-2021 school year.

Any questions related to the information in this newsletter may be directed to instructionaltech@hcps.org.