Dear Parents and Guardians:
Thank you for your patience, understanding and support as we have navigated our way through hybrid and synchronous learning. I am writing to provide you with information regarding existing technology resources at BC High and an update on new initiatives. As a reminder, resources for parents and students are available on the resource board in the Parent Tech Resources and Student Tech Resources tiles.
As Jesuit educators, we are guided and rooted in the teachings of St. Ignatius of Loyola, called to find God in all things and to engage our students in the changing global society in which they live. This applies to modern technologies that are reshaping our world and the lives or our students. We strive to thoughtfully and intentionally engage with technology in our classrooms and to contemplate and act on its impact on the lives of our students. To that end, BC High uses technology as a tool to fulfill our mission as a Jesuit, Catholic, college preparatory school, challenging students to become young men of integrity, educated in faith and for justice, committed to academic excellence and service to others. Through technology, students uncover new insights in our classical foundations and develop new ways of thinking.
Every tool, asset, and resource provided to our students is done with the goal of helping them to not only navigate our 21st century context, but to thrive and succeed in doing so. Whether they are gaining familiarity with Google Workspace apps that will be critical to their day-to-day lives throughout their professional careers, doing collegiate-level research with our digital library resources, or learning the importance of multi-factor authentication in their online security - we take great care in preparing our young men to lead at BC High, in Boston, and beyond.
AMDG,
Jennifer McLarnon P'19, '21
Chief Information Officer
Classrooms
Over the summer, in response to Covid-19 and subsequent social distance protocols, we upgraded seventy-nine classrooms with Zoom Room technology, including cameras and overhead microphones to accommodate synchronous learning for students on campus and those connected and learning from home. We also added overhead and document cameras to our science labs and fine arts classrooms. We are appreciative of the faculty and students for their help and patience during the implementation.
OneLogin
We have also added OneLogin - an identity and access management technology designed to secure and centralize our 3rd party applications including Google Workspace, Gmail, Office 365, Turnitin, Canvas, Zoom, JSTOR and ABC-CLIO.
It enables students easy and secure access to all of their BC High apps with one single login. Secured with multi-factor authentication, OneLogin protects student email and applications that store confidential or personally identifiable information. This technology allows IT to enforce strong password policies, reduces the number of passwords students need to remember and allows students to reset their own passwords.
Students need only authenticate with the OneLogin Protect app when logging in outside of BC High. They should set OneLogin as their browser's home page and leave the tab open to easily navigate from one app to the next. Students are also encouraged to download the OneLogin browser extension(s), to leverage OneLogin as a password manager to store other personal or school related logins.
We provide a range of suites and applications for students and faculty to leverage for teaching, learning and collaboration. Google and Microsoft are industry leaders and each offer word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, email, videoconferencing, messaging and note-taking software. Each solution provides cloud storage as well.
All students and faculty have access to Google Workspace. Google provides all students access to a suite of applications including Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Meet, Forms and Google Drive, with 15 GB of storage. Google is used by over 1 billion people throughout the world and is the leader in real time collaboration. Because it’s web-based, G Suite works in most browsers on any operating system.
BC High provides O365 for free, for every student. Each student can install Office on up to 5 PC’s or Macs, 5 tablets and 5 smartphones. Office 365 includes cloud-based industry leading productivity applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Microsoft Teams and OneDrive with 1TB of file storage. A working knowledge of Microsoft Office, particularly Excel is fundamental for most students and professionals today. Excel is entrenched in business and research processes worldwide; most businesses assume applicants for roles are proficient in Excel.
BC High uses Canvas, by Instructure as our Learning Management System (LMS). Canvas is an online learning platform that allows teachers and students to share content and interact in a course. Canvas is used by 100% of Ivy League schools, the majority of Jesuit secondary schools, colleges and universities and is used by more colleges, universities and K-12 schools across the US and Canada than any other learning management system.
It allows faculty to engage students, provide feedback and to maximize their digital pedagogy to improve student learning. Students use Canvas to access course content and assignments via the Canvas app or by logging into Canvas in any web browser. Canvas also has a Parent app that allows parents to view assignment descriptions, due dates, assignment grades and feedback, course grades, and to set grade alerts, and view course announcements. Canvas is an industry leader, offering hundreds of integrations with third party applications that provide faculty with creative outlets when designing and building course content and planning learning outcomes.
As you know, we have invested in Zoom for remote and hybrid learning. Zoom provides exceptional audio and video quality and clarity for remote classes, security and built-in collaboration tools. Zoom also integrates with Canvas and Outlook, offers session recording and transcriptions as well as closed captioning.
By adding JSTOR and ABC-CLIO, the leading scholarly journal databases to our OneLogin, dashboard, students have free access to a digital library of academic content at their fingertips. Content includes over 2 million primary sources, over 100,000 eBooks, access to over 2,600 academic journals, research reports, images, media and special collections.
Visit our Custom Apple Store
Please visit our custom Apple Store for free shipping and to receive a 10% discount: http://www.apple.com/edu/bchigh. We have added recommended items to the shopping bag. Specific items in the bag are encouraged, not required. Please remove items from the bag as you wish, by deleting them.
Secure Printing with PaperCut Print Release
Students have access to a number of multi-function printers. Student gain access to the printers by badging in with their personal HID sticker. When students print from their laptop or iPad, jobs are securely held until the student walks up, badges in and releases their job. Jobs that are not released in 24 hours, are deleted. Students can track the impact of their paper usage on the environment, including trees worth of paper used, energy used to produce the amount of paper used and the carbon emitted to produce the amount of paper used.
iPad Loaners
The IT department has a limited number of iPads that students can borrow while their device is being repaired or while waiting for a new or replacement iPad to be delivered. The IT department does not lend out iPads to students who forget their device at home. iPads can be borrowed from the IT department office in Cushing Hall, Monday-Friday, between the hours of 7:45 a.m. and 3:15 p.m. Students may only check out one iPad at a time and for a period of no longer than five school days. If the student loses or damages the iPad during the time that it is on loan from BC High IT, the student and/or family is responsible for the replacement cost of $375.00.
Students Graduating BC High in May
Graduating seniors will lose access to school email, Canvas, Microsoft, and any other BC High-administered accounts, on July 30 of the graduating year. Seniors should be sure to save any important data before that date.