9-4-20 IVA MS and HS Weekly Update

Dear IVA Middle and High School Families:

We hope this message finds you and your family health, safe and enjoying our Labor Day weekend.  We wanted to provide our weekly update newsletter.  We are trying out a new format SMORE and we hope you like it: IVA MS and HS Weekly Update. 

We have a few other important items:

1. Zoom: We know it was a challenge for many this week to find and access the Zoom link and live teaching.  We apologize and are working to streamline this.  First, on the CANVAS homepage for each course you will see a button that says “Zoom”.  We are about 80% complete with creating these one click ZOOM button in each homepage and we will be at 100% by the Monday, September 14^th.  
   1. In order to ensure that our online classrooms are secure, we have moved to an authentication process.  Here are some resources to help with that new step.

• Zoom Access Directions:
  • Students should take the time to watch the Student Video to learn how to sign into their Zoom account prior to accessing teacher links

• Student Tutorials:
  • Zoom: Student Login
  • Zoom: Students Accessing a Meeting (Chromebook)
  • Navigating Zoom for Parents and Students
  • Signing in With a Device Other Than Chromebook

2. Community Internet Outages: Over the next several weeks, internet and power providers in our area have warned of potential outages. Southern California Edison has alerted communities to possible rolling blackouts as a result of high temperatures. Cox Communications has shared that they are doing significant upgrades in a large number of Irvine communities that may result in brief outages in the coming weeks for residential customers.  

We understand that this may occur and please try to do the following:

• • Encourage students to wait a few moments, then try to connect again. Most residential internet outages related to the upgrades will last only a few moments.
  • Please email your teacher(s) when you are able to reconnect and let them know that you had an outage
  • Our teachers will work with your student to re-engage in the classroom instruction

3. Attendance Reporting: To report an absence, please call 949-936-7400 and follow the prompts to leave a message regarding an absence.  Students should also work with their teacher(s) to make up learning that was missed.  Our automated attendance call system is now working and you can also follow the information in that automated call to report an excused absence.

Thank you for your continued patience, understanding, and grace.  We wish you a wonderful long weekend