Academic Technology at IMS
At Indian Mountain School technology is used to support learning, innovation, collaboration, and communication. The following list contains the basic tools available to faculty, staff, and students at IMS.
LMS - Learning Management System
A learning management system is cloud based software that provides a means for students and teachers to submit or review assignments, collaborate, and communicate.
Veracross
The Veracross LMS feature contains a gradebook, class webpage, assignment posting and submission, class discussion board, lesson planning, calendar, and alerts or posts.
Veracross LMS Training Resources
Google Classroom
We provide an integration between Veracross and Google Classroom where assignments and other items are synced from Google Classroom to Veracross. It is important that Assignment Types match in each service for this sync to occur and that assignments are manually marked as "Displayed" in Veracross after they are copied from Google Classroom.
Google Classroom can be an easier way to share files and build a system that allows for easy communication and collaboration in your classes.
Google Classroom Training Videos (skip to video 3)
Attendance and Reporting
Orah
Within Orah, teachers will be able to report and check attendance.
Email and Communication
Gmail
Gmail is the school's current choice for email communication. All faculty addresses follow the format firstname_lastname@indianmountain.org. For more help learning Gmail, please see the link below.
Gmail Contact Groups
To bulk email a portion of the IMS faculty or staff, the following group addresses are recognized by Gmail:
All School - all faculty and staff
All UC - all Upper Campus faculty and staff
All LC - all Lower Campus faculty and staff
Residential - all faculty and staff that work residentially at IMS
Veracross
Veracross's communication features integrates with your Gmail address. You are able to send communications to parents, teachers, and students from within Veracross. Some of those emails are tracked so that you can note when they were opened and read.
Zoom
Zoom is used for virtual meetings. Each teacher will have a unique Zoom ID, which can serve as their virtual meeting space. Zoom sessions can be recorded to the cloud. Zoom also can serve as a capable screen recorder for creation of asynchronous lessons.
Help Getting Started With and Setting Up Zoom
AI Tools
Gemini
Through the school's Google subscription, faculty, staff and students have an elevated version of Google's AI Chatbot, available at https://gemini.google.com. Information used, when signed into your IMS account, will not be used for training or be stored on Google's servers. For this reason, it should be the AI service used by students for assignments or other work.
Notebook LM
Powered by Google Gemini, Notebook LM provides a sandbox AI service. You can specify the resources, documents, files, web sites, etc. that the AI has access to. Using these resources Notebook can converse, create podcasts, slideshows, quizzes, flashcards, and more.
Productivity Suite
Google Drive
We are using Google services for our email and for intra-scholastic communications and collaboration. This is the service most faculty, administration, and staff use to house and edit their documents and presentations and to schedule meetings.
Click on the apps below for more information and training resources.
Google Tools
Gmail - Google's email app, used by the school.
Google Contacts - contact organization, auto-populated with indianmountain.org addresses and groups
Google Drive - cloud file storage
Docs - word processing, document creation, and sharing
Sheets - spreadsheets, schedules, etc.
Slides - presentation
Forms - polls, quizzes
Google Calendar - scheduling app
Google Classroom - LMS that integrates with Google tools **** Lower Campus only
Google also offers courses and training specific to educators using their products. You can access those here.
Office 365
In addition to Google tools, the school does subscribe to Microsoft for their online services. You are welcome to use the tools available at office.com including OneDrive cloud storage to fill-in gaps where Google does not meet your needs. Google Drive and related apps should be how you share information with students.
All Microsoft apps can be accessed via office.com.
Click on the apps below for more information and training resources.
Microsoft Tools
Word - word processing, document creation, and sharing
Excel - spreadsheet, formulas, data input and visualization
PowerPoint - presentation, slides, animations
Forms - polls, short assessments
OneDrive - cloud file storage
OneNote - notetaking, communication, collaboration
Teams - group work, collaboration, discussion
SharePoint - web display of resources for a team or groups
Stream - a place for uploading, viewing, and sharing videos
Other apps - Microsoft offers many other tools that can be accessed at office.com
Microsoft also offers free asynchronous courses for educators. Click here to access these.
Application Integration
Clever
Clever provides a portal from which students or parents can sign-in or connect directly to different online tools and apps. It simplifies sign-in processes by limiting the number of times a student will be required to log-in to different sites and online applications.
Single Sign-on
Clever provides SSO services to a number of apps, including Typing Tutor, IXL, and Edulastic.
Through Clever, students can log into Chromebooks or sign into accounts using QR codes.
Student and Parent Portal
From Clever, you can develop a page with easy to follow links to direct students to important educational tools. You can create a separate page for parents. Teachers can also request different apps to be added to their page, outside of those that are already employed by the school or can create links to tools that Clever does not support in SSO.
1:1 and Management Software
The school provides iPads and Chromebooks to support students at the Lower Campus and MacBooks to students in grades 5-9. These devices will be used for internet browsing, word processing, communication, and educational applications. The devices are intended to support student learning.
Apple Classroom
The Classroom app allows for local and remote management of school issued computers. It has the following features: browser control, screen view, web limiting, blank screen, and site push.
Apple Classroom Demonstration Video
Academic Support
IXL
IXL provides personalized learning, analytics, and data for math, social studies, English, science, and Spanish. It should be used where appropriate by instructors in these courses (excepting US Spanish).
Lexia
Lexia provides support for learners to improve their facility to read, write and speak. It is licensed primarily in the Lower Campus.
Typing Club
Typing Club helps students develop keyboarding skills. It is also licensed primarily for the Lower School.
Department Specific Tools
Within each department, there may be tools that work best for your students; for example, a site that has exercises for a subject not covered in IXL or an online tool built for your textbook.
If the same task can be accomplished using IXL, our LMS, or the suggested tools below, please use those. If not, we encourage the use of department or course specific apps to forward your lesson objectives.
Other Academic Tools
If you would like to purchase a tool to accomplish a separate task, please consult your department head before bringing the request to the Academic Tech Director If you intend to ask students to use a different tool from a category not listed here, such as mind mapping, advanced discussion boards, etc., please notify helpdesk@indianmountain.org. It is important that we research the privacy policy for all apps students use to ensure they are being protected when online.
Student Best Use
To create a more consistent student experience with technology, the following guidelines have been adopted for folder creation and file naming. These have been based on best practices adopted by higher education and secondary institutions.
Naming Guidelines
Please follow these simple rules when asking students to name and submit files:
- Keep names short but informative.
- Do not use spaces, hyphens, or other punctuation.
- Use capital letters to denote a new word, ex: HistoryOfBaseball.docx
- For different versions or drafts, use double-digit numbers or appropriate language appended to the end of the filename, ex: WaterCycleV02.ppt (2nd version) or WaterCycleFinal.ppt (Final Draft)
- Always type dates in reverse, YYYYMMDD or YYYYMM, ex: 20200704JournalEntry.docx (July 4, 2020)
- When submitting a file, prefix the file with your last name, ex: BarillaroAncientRomeFinal.docx
File Management
Please follow these guidelines when instructing students to save and organize their files.
- Students should create and name a folder in Google Drive for each academic class. They should name the folder the specific title of the class, so as to not confuse it with previous or future versions of the course - ex: "8thEnglish" but not "English."
- Students can create further nested folders within their class folder, but should not exceed a depth of three: ex "8thEnglish/Shakespeare/Tempest/" but not "8thEnglish/Shakespeare/Tempest/ActOne."
- When saving a file, students should save the file to their specific class folder. They should not have files filling their desktop screen.
Acceptable Use Policy
The school's AUP is contained in the student handbook. It is important that all students review and understand this policy. It is generally read through in advisory meetings via an activity assigned by the Dean of Students.
Help and Support
Knowledgebase
The school has created a thorough collection of links and support files to help with training and troubleshooting. As a first step, when a question related to technology arises, please visit this site.
Helpdesk
For help and support inquiries, please email helpdesk@indianmountain.org.
These inquiries should be limited to hardware issues on school devices or questions or problems with academic technology for work related tasks.