Examguard Teacher Guide

SY10-11 K12912 Toolset Teacher Guide 7

The Online School (OLS)

High School Teacher Guide

SY10-11

Introduction 3

Logging In 3

Announcements and K-Mail Notification 3

ClassConnect Sessions (Elluminate) 3

Classrooms 4

Quick Links 4

Student Lists and Information 5

Students Menu Lists 5

The Curriculum Menu and Accessing Online Courses 5

K-Mail 5

Using K-Mail 6

You’ll notice that there is no “Trash” or “Delete” items. This is because K-Mail can never be deleted. This is important because it creates a permanent record of communications. 6

K-Mail Merge 6

Notes 6

Community 6

Help Menu 7

The OLS Quick Tour and the What’s New in the OLS are great resources to visit after this training when you need a quick refresher on the tools and functionality of the platform. 7

Search 7

My Account, New Log In and Log Out 7

Questions 7

Introduction

The Online School (OLS) provides 7 major functions:

· School and k12 announcements

· Access to K-mail - a safe internal messaging tool

· Notes about students and communication

· Attendance, login, contact and class connect alerts

· Access to your classrooms in the LMS

· Student lists and information

· Quick Links to valuable resources

Logging In

Log into the OLS by clicking on the OLS Login link found on the K12 website or your school’s website. Enter the username and password provided to you by K12.

Announcements and K-Mail Notification

When you log in, you’ll notice announcements and K-Mail notifications on the left-hand side.

K-Mail is similar to email, however it is internal to the K12 system. Messages cannot be sent to outside email addresses, nor can outside email make it into the K-Mail system. Clicking this notification will take you to your K-Mail so you can read and respond to it.

School and K12 announcements also appear here – clicking “Read More” allows you to see the entire announcement.

ClassConnect Sessions (Elluminate)

The top part of the center frame of the OLS landing page features Alerts. High School teachers receive alerts about several things.

A Missing Attendance alert indicates that the parents or guardians of students in your Homeroom (if you are a Homeroom Teacher) have failed to enter attendance for their students on a school day.

A Log In alert indicates when students in your Homeroom have failed to log into the OLS for a preset number of days.

A Contact alert indicates that you have failed to enter a Note about a student describing your recent contact with the student over the last 30 days.

A ClassConnect alert reminds you of upcoming Elluminate sessions you have scheduled for your students to attend. You can actually schedule Elluminate sessions directly within the OLS.

Special Program Student alerts indicates your students who are enrolled in special programs, such as Special Education, Title I, etc.

Clicking “See List” provides you with the list of students comprising the number to the left of the alert. Clicking “Send K-Mail” launches a K-Mail merge to the students where each student receives his or her own copy of a mass message you send to those on the list. From the List view, you can send K-mail to the student or Mentor only or add a note about the student.

Classrooms

At the bottom center of the home page you will find a list of classrooms in which you are listed as a teacher. The name of each classroom becomes a menu when clicked, allowing you to access information about each classroom in turn. From the lists provided here, you can deep dive into specific student information and send K-mails to students and their Learning Coaches. At this time, the classroom tool provides limited information to high school teachers.

Quick Links

Quick links are provided at the right side of the OLS and provide you access to tools you’ll use all of the time, such as TotalView School and Scantron, as well as valuable resources such as the Teacher Help Desk and the Big Think.

Student Lists and Information

Across the top of the OLS screen are several menus. The Students tab allows you to see lists of your classrooms, all of your students or students filtered by classroom, subject, course, grade or school.

This is also where you go to schedule your ClassConnect sessions for different course sections and to access the legacy platform, TotalView.

Students Menu Lists

Clicking on the name of any student from a list accessed from the Students menu provides you with in-depth information about that student. Hovering over the question mark under the Contact Info column will provide you immediate access to the contact information for that student and their parent/guardian or mentor.

The Curriculum Menu and Accessing Online Courses

The Curriculum Menu permits you access to your online courses in the Learning Management System (LMS). Just choose the course, then choose “Go to Course”. Your asynchronous LMS classroom will open in a new window.

Also included on this menu are grades K-8 reference courses. These reference courses are read-only and are intended for use by teachers who require ideas and content to meet the needs of lower-performing students.

Feel free to click on a course to see how it displays on the screen, or to briefly explore a Reference course.

K-Mail

K-Mail is the safe and secure internal messaging system for K12 school staff and families. It allows teachers to contact students and parents/guardians (also known as Mentors) directly.

You cannot receive e-mail in your K-Mail account, so there is no spam. You cannot send a K-Mail to an email account either, so the privacy of the messages remains intact. No email addresses are required - all you need to know to send a K-Mail message is the recipient’s name.

K-Mail messages you receive appear in your Inbox and can be Archived to keep them out of sight and mind. Messages you’ve sent are stored in your Outbox and those you started but have not yet sent are saved under Drafts.

Using K-Mail

Clicking any of the K-Mail options opens the K-Mail application in a new window. Here you will find the same views listed in the OLS – the Inbox, Outbox, Archive and Drafts.

Under the Actions menu, you’ll find links that allow you to create a New K-Mail or a New K-Mail Merge. By default, a K-Mail message only goes to a single person. Choose this option to send a message to a single recipient.

You’ll notice that there is no “Trash” or “Delete” items. This is because K-Mail can never be deleted. This is important because it creates a permanent record of communications.

K-Mail Merge

A K-Mail Merge allows you to send the same message to several recipients while using keywords to personalize the message. When you select K-Mail Merge, you’ll notice a link that says View User Guide in the window that opens. Click that link to learn exactly how this works and how you can use Keywords to personalize a K-Mail merge to several recipients.

Notes

You’ll notice additional items – Under Actions, there is a New Note/Log choice. There is also a View of Notes. Notes are not K-Mail messages, however they are created very similarly.

Notes are entries about students and logs about meetings/conversations with students and families that you can save for later reference. Notes are not visible to students and their families. They are visible to other staff at your school.

Community

The Community menu provides you access to the Teacher Support area of thebigthinK12, Announcements, the Family Directory and the K12 Store.

thebigthinK12 is a social networking site for students, parents, students, teachers and administrators. However there is a special section set aside as a library of best practices, important documents and other support materials of help to teachers.

The Family Directory is a tool that allows k12 families to find others doing school like they do. Participation and listing their information in the Directory is optional.

Help Menu

The Help menu features an Online Help on how to use the OLS, a direct link to the Teacher Help Desk – a live Elluminate room available from 10 am to 6 pm EST, Monday through Thursdays during the school year.

The Teacher Training link will bring you to the K12training.com website where training for teachers and other school staff is delivered.

Clicking Contact K12 Support will connect you to the main K12 help desk. This resource is really designed for K12 Families. Teacher support is delivered by the K12 Teacher Effectiveness group.

Clicking Feedback allows users to provide feedback of any sort directly to K12.

The Student Online Help is self-explanatory. The LC Online Help is geared towards the parents or guardians – known as Mentors in the High School programs.

The OLS Quick Tour and the What’s New in the OLS are great resources to visit after this training when you need a quick refresher on the tools and functionality of the platform.

The Search function in the upper-right area of the screen allows you to quickly locate information about any student or Mentor in your school. Just enter the first and/or last name and hit the Search button.

My Account, New Log In and Log Out

When your students need counseling on career or college, professional school counselors at your school can use the Family Connection tool provided by Naviance. Counselors can use this tool to help students to discover their interests and talents and find the right colleges and post-graduation options to set them on a great career path.

Questions

If you have any questions regarding this document or training, feel free to submit a teacher help ticket to .