Weekly Lessons Learned 9/23/22

Welcome to the Technology Design Team Weekly Lessons Learned! This is a recurring feature on Friday afternoons where the Technology Design Team will share top of mind resources and learning. Each week, we will post a few key things we hope you may find useful. We look forward to sharing our learning with you.

Some of the content may be specific to the realities of Austin ISD though, we hope, much will be useful to viewers worldwide. The Weekly Lessons Learned Archive contains a list of topics from and links to previous updates.

Why is student X not in my IXL, HMH, BrainPop, Studies Weekly, etc?

• We have discovered several students who are not properly scheduled in Frontline. We have seen several students who are only scheduled in Homeroom. 
• Digital resources are rostered off the scheduled core courses in Frontline. 
• Please verify a student is fully scheduled. If not, reach out to whomever manages Frontline on your campus to get students’ schedules completed so they may get access to all of the appropriate applications and services.
• Rosters for external tools are usually updated 24-48 hours after schedules are updated in Frontline.

When I launch HMH from the portal, it says I don’t have access.

There are two tiles for HMH which can be confusing. You want to launch the tile with the big “Ed” on it (see below).

Why are some of my grades missing from the BLEND gradebook?

• When you open the gradebook, it defaults to viewing the current grading period. If an assignment/quiz does not have a due date, it goes into a grading period called “no due date”. You will find the assignment by filtering to that grading period.
  The videos linked below demonstrate filtering in the BLEND gradebook.
• Filter by grading period
• Full video on gradebook filtering
• If you need to find grades for a student who has been concluded from your course, this silent screencast demonstrates showing concluded students.

My student’s BLEND dashboard looks different. How can we change it back to the view with all the course tiles?

• BLEND allows users to change the dashboard view for different purposes. In Austin ISD, our BLEND dashboards default to Card View and users may change to one of three views.
  The links below outline the use of each view.
• How do I use the to-do list for all my courses in the List View Dashboard as a student? 
• How do I view my favorite courses in the Card View Dashboard as a student? 
• How do I view global activity for all my courses in the Recent Activity Dashboard as a student? 
• This video demonstrates changing the dashboard view.

Does a parent need to create their own portal account or can I add them as an observer for their student(s)?

Good question! When parents create their parent portal account, they can get associated with their student(s) and are automatically assigned as Observers in their students’ BLEND classes. If a parent has not set up their portal account, they will not yet exist in BLEND.
So, YES, a parent needs to create the parent portal account to be automatically added as an observer for their students in BLEND.

The Technology Design Team would love to hear from you!

Please reach out to your Technology Design Specialist if you would like a thought partner or support on your blended learning implementation.
Our team has been restructured for the 22-23 school year.

View a list of the current members of the Technology Design Team and the campuses each supports.

If you have a technical support issue (device repair or setup, access to systems, etc), please create a ServiceNow ticket to have a technician address your concern.