Technology Update #89

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Issue 89

Welcome to Issue #89 of the Technology Update! This week’s newsletter highlights the use of Freeform for historical figures’ profiles, introduces a new Safari feature in iPadOS 18, and provides an update on the recent AirPlay issues. Lastly, we have our monthly PowerSchool tip!

Featured Lesson Idea


In both ELA and Social Studies, students often need to have an understanding of various cultures and important figures. For example, in Wit and Wisdom, 6th graders study mythology and need to create a hero that displays the traits found in the ancient myths.

Freeform (the built-in digital whiteboarding app) can be a powerful tool to empower students to show deep understanding!

In Freeform, students can create a profile where they record interesting facts, rationale on why they were significant, and even identify symbols that represent their ideas and beliefs. Since Freeform is a collaborative tool, students can even work together to create their profiles!

Check out an example from the Apple Learning Community at the link below, or reach out to Matt and Bridget – we’re happy to collaborate with you!

Apple Learning Community: https://education.apple.com/resource/250013289

iPadOS 18 Tip of the Week


Have you ever come across a webpage that is overloaded with distracting ads? Do you want to clean up a web page for saving as a PDF to share with students? Is there an ad you want removed?

New in iPadOS 18 (and macOS Sequoia!), is the ability to remove distracting items in Safari!

  1. From the Smart Search field in Safari, tap the Page Menu button, then tap Hide Distracting Items.
  2. Tap to select the item that you want to hide. Safari shows a border around the selected item.
  3. Tap anywhere within the item to hide it. You can tap to hide additional items as well.
  4. Tap Done in the Smart Search field to confirm your changes. Or tap Cancel.

Learn even more (including how to SHOW items that you’ve hidden) at apple.com

AirPlay Update

As you likely experienced, AirPlay has had some… issues over the past month or so. Here is a quick recap as to what happened, what we did to try and mitigate the problem, and an update on how it’s working now.

What Happened
On September 16th, Apple launched tvOS 18.0. This update contain bug fixes and performance improvements. Our AppleTV devices updated automatically.

As districts across the country quickly found out, there was a bug in tvOS 18 that only affected 4th Generation AppleTVs. This bug caused the AppleTV to drop network connections to both the internet AND to/from devices that were trying to AirPlay to them. This is why it might have taken 2-3 times to connect a device up, or the connection dropped randomly while using it.

What We Did
As soon as we started seeing problems, we opened up a ticket with Apple. We also reached out to other school districts and confirmed with them that they were seeing the same issues (they were).

In working with Apple, we identified a few things we could do to help mitigate (but not eliminate) the bug. We also worked closely with Apple to gather evidence and help them identify the root problem and test out a permanent fix to the issue.

Deploying the Fix
On October 28th, Apple released tvOS 18.1. This software release contained the bug fix that stops the AppleTV from dropping connections. We immediately deployed it to all our Apple TVs.

Hopefully, your experience in using AirPlay has improved over the last couple of weeks. If you’re still having issues, the first step is to make sure all your devices (iPad, Mac) are updated to iPadOS 18.1 and macOS Sierra 15.1, respectively. If you are still having issues after that, please submit a help desk ticket, and a tech team member will reach out to you.

PowerSchool Corner

Copy Assignments in PowerSchool
As a lead teacher or co-teacher, you have the ability to copy one, some, or all of the PowerTeacher Pro Assignments in a selected term and class to other terms and classes using the Copy Assignments feature. Note* -If a locked icon appears at the top of the assignment column, the reporting term or class is locked. You will not be able to copy an assignment to a locked term or class.

To copy assignments:

  1. Go to the Assignments or Scoresheet pages, Click the Gear icon to the left of the Term menu
  2. Click Copy Assignments
  3. Under From class, open the Term menu and select the applicable Term
  4. Under From Class, open the Class menu and select the class from which you want to copy the assignments.
  5. Under To Class, select the Term menu, and select the applicable Term
  6. Under To Class, open the Class menu and select the class to which you want to copy the assignments
  7. Under Copy Options, open the Due Dates menu and choose whether you want to use the existing, relational, or custom due dates.
  8. Under “Choose Assignments,” check the box to the left of the Category heading to select all assignments, or check individual boxes to choose a smaller selection.
  9. To complete the process, click Copy Assignments

Closing

As always, if you ever have any technology integration-related questions, please let us know. We are happy to work with you to design lessons, develop workflows, and even come into your classes and work with you and your students.

Thanks!

Published by Matt Lee