(0:03 - 8:21) All righty, hi, welcome. Thank you all so much for joining us today. Welcome to Unlocking Connections Family Sharing and Translation Tools in Wixie.
Today we're going to be exploring both of these powerful features that help strengthen the connection between school and home and also support every learner along the way. So we're going to start by looking at family sharing and then we're going to dive into their translation tools. So here's what we're going to be covering today.
As I mentioned, we're going to start with a quick overview of what family sharing is and how it helps you connect with families. Then we're going to dig into how you can get started with it, how you can use it in your classroom for celebrating student work, and also the work that you create as well. Next we'll dive into the translation tools in Wixie, how to set it up, and then how to use it.
So pretty straightforward day for us today, so we'll just keep moving right along. So we know that families, that when families are engaged, students thrive. Research constantly shows that family involvement leads to better academic outcomes and performance and so much more.
But beyond that and the data, it's really about students knowing their work is seen and celebrated not just by their teachers but by their family members and guardians as well. That's why tools like family sharing and translation in Wixie really matter. They make it easiest for families to stay connected and involved no matter where they are or what language they speak.
So what family sharing is. Family sharing in Wixie is a super simple way that you can easily share student work with with families and keep them in the loop so you can celebrate all the wonderful things that students are creating. Just one click from the teacher side, you can share an email that has whatever the student created that day, a wonderful story, ebook, comic, video, voice recording, any sort of thing that they create.
And there's no need for the parent to log in or have a portal or anything like that. Wixie will automatically send the parents who opt in an email and they can easily just click it to have a look and listen to what their child created. It's an easy win for communication and makes it possible for families to engage even if they can't physically be in your classroom.
So let's walk through how to get started with family sharing. It is super easy. There's a couple of different ways that you can enable it but one of the ways that you can get started is with printables that you can send home for families to opt in.
So what you're going to do is you're going to hit the home button and then go down to the student tab on the left hand side. And then you're going to see this nice printable button at the bottom left. So go ahead and click that.
You're going to choose family communication invite invitations. So what this is is a printable page for each student in your class. So each student is going to have a unique QR code and so the parents will scan that, add their first name, last name in their email and then hit enter and this will allow them to opt in to receive emails from their child or their child's teacher.
They will never receive any like promotional emails from Wixie. The only thing they will ever receive is just like I mentioned those emails sharing projects from their child or their child's teacher is the only emails that they will see. But it's very important that they opt in so that they can be a part of the fun.
So it's a really easy way to do it and a great way to you know build that home to school bridge by just sending these home like at back to school time or when you're getting everything set up at the beginning of the school year. So the other way that you can do it as well and get families connected is by inviting them via email to opt in to receive notifications. So what you're going to do for that is go to your profile image and click settings.
On the left hand side you're going to see an option for families so go ahead and click that. If you teach multiple classes use the pull down menu to select the class that you want to start adding emails to. And then what you're going to do is you're just going to hit the plus button to manually put the type in their email address.
There we go. That way you can invite you know mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, their guardians, any sort of people that are involved in this child's life who would like to be notified of the child's work. And then you just click save.
Important step here is you're going to want to make sure that you hit that invite button so that the the parents receive the notification via email and then they can just click the button to opt in and I'll show you what that email looks like momentarily. Another thing I just want to point out too is depending on how your district's data is populated into Wixie like for instance if you use clever or class link some of this information the email addresses for their and their parents names might already be populated in in here and if that is the case all you have to do is just click the email class invites and it's going to send every single person on this list an email to be invited. And if you're ever wondering too like did they get an invitation? Are they connected? Again just go to the families button under settings you can see it's purple and it means they were invited but they have not accepted that connection request yet.
And then green obviously they're connected and they can receive those email notifications when you send out student projects or their child sends them home a project. If you ever need to disconnect anyone or remove them all you have to do is just hit the three dots next to their email and you can say delete or if you need to give them a little bit of a nudge like hey you haven't accepted the email like maybe it got lost you know if you have lots of emails in your inbox you can invite them again so they can receive that notification and ultimately opt in to receive all the amazing things that are happening in their classroom in your classroom. So just a really fun and easy way.
So let's hop back into the slide deck real quick and I'll show you what that email looks like that parents receive. So this is what that email looks like. It's pretty straightforward just letting them know that their child is using Wixie and not with their permission their teacher and the child can send them emails.
So all they have to do is just hit that sign me up button and they'll be good to go so that they can view the projects. When projects are sent to them they're view only so that families can't edit the work they just really get to celebrate it. So it's really fun that way.
This is and when oops excuse me jumped ahead and when a teacher does send a project home this is what it's going to look like. They'll get a nice little email like this and a button at the bottom where they can click to view it. So we'll go ahead and click that so you can see this and so they can come in here and have a look and listen.
My daughter created this over the weekend so we thought it would be fun to share. She's just a little guy. All right we're coming back in here.
So how do you go about sharing projects? Super simple. You can share individual student work. You can share multiple student projects at once and you can even share things that you create as well.
So we're going to start with sharing individual work. So I'm going to head back to the student tab tab excuse me students and we're going to look at all the projects for Brooke created and then we're going to find the one that we want to send home. So we're going to do five on top and all you have to do is click the share button and choose family and then that's going to send their parent, guardian, grandma, grandpa, whoever has opted in to receive those notifications an email so that they can check it and have a look and listen for what their child created that day.
(8:22 - 9:28) And what's really nice too is that if you ever want to send multiple projects home all you have to do is just click the select project button and select however many you want to send and then click the project wizard button email families and then they're going to get an email well they will get an email for each of those projects. So the parents were ever curious like what was my student up to this week super easy way just to send them the whole week's worth of work. Again they'll get an individual email for each project but still they're going to love it they're going to love seeing what their child created.
So another one is you have a whole say you have a whole class that completed a project and you want to send those home to parents. So there's two ways you can do that where you can do it here in the student tab but also in the assignments tab as well as long as you assign the activity. So we're going to start here in the students tab so what we're going to do is use the show menu to pull down and change it to project name.
(9:29 - 14:41) We're going to do down by the bay search for it and then you're going to say all students you're going to select all and then you're going to use a project wizard button and email families and this is going to send every parent who has opted in a copy of only their child's work. You can so you can send I don't know right now I did four but if you have a whole class 25 30 students you could send that many emails in like two seconds. So it makes it really easy to be able to celebrate the work that they're doing.
Another way that you can do it as I mentioned as in the assignment tab so we're going to head there real quick. So we're going to go home and then assignments I'm going to left hand side choose that and then again if you're working with multiple classes you're just going to use that pull down menu and select the class you want to work with. Maybe it was assigned by someone else so just search for that whatever filter you may need to share the project you want to share.
We're going to open it up and then we're just going to select all the projects project wizard button and email families. So it's just such an easy and quick way to celebrate their to celebrate their work with their families have their families really see the effort that they're doing in your class and and have them stay connected. So we're going to head back home back in here.
As I mentioned earlier you're not just limited to sending just student work as well. So you can actually send things that you have created as well. So say you create an announcement a reminder invitations a weekly calendar to keep parents in the loop for whatever you're doing.
School news you have your kids do a roundup of what's happening in your classroom or around the school. There's just such easy way that you can send them. For example my daughter is in preschool and they have water day every Friday.
So every Thursday I get an email reminder and you could do that same thing here in Wixie. So you just open up the project that you want to share or the reminder just you want to send home to parents and you're just going to go to the more button the three light dots and you're going to select share. You're going to choose the families option choose the class you want to send it to and then next it's going to pull all of those emails for any parent that has opted in to receive the notifications from you and then you can write a short little message like don't forget to put on sunscreen and then send.
And so it's easy just like that you can keep every parent in the loop and so it's really kind of a nice way just to open up that communication keep them in the loop and so they know what's exactly happening in your classroom and they can feel part of that fun like they're having. So Wixie even has a whole folder of pre-made templates to help you get started. All of these are customizable so you can easily change them to your liking but you'll just head to the announcements once as you can see for back to school there's invitations to let them know.
There's also some really fun meet the teachers that you can do so you can add a picture of yourself some of your favorites information about you and your contact information and then easily use family sharing to send that home to them. So here's just an example of like a meet the teacher that you could do and easily send home to the families. So again just going up to the three more button choosing share and clicking the families button choosing a class and then writing a message.
Very easy way just to share a little bit about you and then also show off to your kids that you have some great Wixie skills as well. So we're going to move right along as we're going to get now into the translation. So translation is just a new feature in Wixie that ensures language isn't a barrier to the celebration that we're creating in Wixie and for families and the translation tool is not just for parents it's also very student-centered and built to support learners in the moment.
So here we go. So when with a click students can translate instructions they can translate text objects as a paint on the page and you can even translate a whole project if you're using family sharing or if you're sharing a link to it. So that means that students who are new to English can better understand tasks and expectations and families can have a read and listen to their child's work in their home language.
So it's just a simple shift that makes a big difference in access inclusion and celebration. So how do we set it up? Let's move right along. So an important an important step to this especially if you're working with you know younger students is just making sure translation tools are enabled for them and to do that you're just going to go up to your profile image again and choose settings.
(14:42 - 18:00) You're going to choose your class. So say you have a class of of Spanish speakers all you can do you can go over and click the gear and then translation. It's always going to default to allow translation so if you ever need to turn it off for any reason you can you have that option absolutely but you're just going to go translate to and then there's over 50 languages in here.
So we're just going to say Spanish and this is going to set this language up for the entire class so you don't have to go one by one. So that's just one way that you can do that but if you have a lot of different languages in your class and a lot of different you know backgrounds and that sort of things one way that you can do that is you're going to click the student option on the left and you're going to choose the class you want to start with. Again it's always going to default to allow translation but you'll just come in here and click translate to you'll select change and then pick a language pick a language for them and again there's over 50 in here so that they everyone can feel seen and heard and then once that student logs into their account they'll see that change take place.
So and students can always select their own language too or make a change to it if perhaps that's something they need to do and so what that looks like is let me get there for you right here what they'll do is they'll follow those same steps as you they'll go up to their profile image and select settings and you'll see here they have that option to translate to and they can choose a language as well. So for those older students you can absolutely have them do it on their own or even the littles with you direct them but there's always that option in there for them as well if that's something that needs to if that's something you would like to do. So setting up the translation is really important for students because once it's set students can easily translate and instructions on the page with just one click.
When they open a new assignment up right underneath the instructions there's a little translate button and then you can see those drive one horse two cows and so forth and then over here is in their home language their native language that they speak and they can just use that little toggle to go back and forth and allow them just to kind of better understand what's expected of them and give them more independence to start creating right away. So in addition to being able to translate instructions you can also translate the text on the page in a text object and so that's a really fun one too and I can show you how you do that you just going to click the text option button and I'll add a page here. My daughter told me this story earlier this week and I thought it was really funny you make it nice and big and what you're going to do is you're just going to hit the text option button on the bottom left you're going to choose translate and so it's going to translate to whatever language you have selected for yourself.
(18:02 - 20:50) And what's really cool about this and really powerful is that if the student edits the translated text say they're writing something new and they're in Spanish and then they go and translate it back to English Wixie will include those changes so they can literally go back and forth in with the two different languages using that translate option so it's really fun and you can even use the speak button to hear the translated text as well so all you have to do is click that button yeah they can have a look you can read it and also listen to it as well so it makes it really nice an option for those little guys or for any student in your class really but what's really cool is that you can translate an entire project so this is really cool especially when you couple it with a family sharing so you can send that parent they could the child or you as a teacher could send the parent the send it home via family sharing and so when they open it up there's this nice translation button at the top the first time they click it they're going to choose the language that they want to view the project in but once they click it they can see it in their native language and it's going to it's going to change all of the text on the page so again they can read it and they can also listen to the text as well read back to them but what's really cool about that being able to translate the entire project is this means you can simply create you can create your own newsletters updates announcements without having to manually translate every single one all you have to do is just create that here in Wixie you know using one of the wonderful stationary templates or newsletter templates and or design one of your own and then use family sharing to send it to all connected parents and they just simply have to click that translate button button making it really easy for them to understand it and read it in their native language so it's really great way to keep them informed and also included in what's happening in your classroom okay well thank you all so much for joining me today I really appreciate your time and joining me for this walkthrough of the family sharing tools in Wixie and also the translation and I look forward to hearing all from you and I hope you all have a wonderful school year thank you
