AristotleK12 Software: All Things A-Z

Aristotle is the new software that we are using to monitor student computers and filter student access. (It is the software that replaced NetSupport.) This page is designed to help Aristotle users learn and utilize the software quickly.

Getting Started

You find Aristotle access in "WCCC Bookmarks." Login using your @mywccc.org credentials.

Creating Classes

• Teachers at Main Campus and Atrium have their classes automatically rostered using ProgressBook data. Students and course codes automatically appear for the teacher of record. Co-teachers can be manually added to classes. (See the next section for directions.)

• Teachers at Satellite Campuses create classes manually and roster them with devices, not students. This means a teacher doesn't necessarily have to create more than one class since students will just log in and out of the same devices all day. The logging in process on the device is what illustrates who is on what device. (Teachers control how students are identified in course settings. Se the "Class Roster" section below for more.)

Course Considerations

When you're enhancing your classes, there are things you should consider in a class's overall functionality. I've highlighted below what I consider to be the most important or essential considerations. All course considerations are found in the "Gear" on the bottom right corner of the course card.

General Settings Options (Gear Icon):

• Allow Students to "Join" Classes (aka "Open Enrollment")

• Implement a "Default Outline" to Begin all Classes (Outlines are a set of rules, filters, limitations or allowances. (There's more on that in the "Classroom Filtering" section below.)

• Enable students to receive your message in their preferred language by toggling on "Message Translation."

Class Roster (Book Icon):

• Roster Manually By Device (Satellites)

• Determine the asset tag for students at satellite locations

Co-Teachers (Two People Icon):

• Primary teachers may add up to five co-teachers to every class.

Schedule (Calendar Icon):

• Schedules are a handy thing to add to automatically rostered courses because the will seamlessly begin and end during a typical day.

Emails (Envelope Icon):

• "Email Attendance"

  • Send an emailed report that contains a list of all users that were in your class.

• "Detailed Activity Report"

  • Send an emailed report that contains detailed activity for each user during your class period. This requires you to setup a "Class Schedule."

  • Reports are based on normal class hours that you establish in that function.

Notifications (Flag Icon):

• "Chat Notifications"

  • Receive notifications when students send messages (to YOU).

  • Aristotle doesn't allow students to chat one another.

• "Students Joining/ Leaving Notifications"

  • Receive notifications when students enter the class and leave the class.

Notes (Paper Icon):

• Notes pertaining to a class can be saved here.

Seating Chart (Chair Icon):

• Creating a seating chart is an excellent way to enhance its student oversight functionality. There are three class view types in Aristotle

  • List View- Order by how students are originally rostered

  • Grid View- Order by standard seating chart you establish.

  • Canvas View- order similar to grid view but you can enlarge frequent "problematic" students

Classroom Management

One of the most common beginner mistakes is that teachers forget to "start a session."

Please understand that you will NOT have the ability to see what students have been up to unless you start a session. You can do this by:

• Setting up your classes to start automatically. (See the "Course Consideration" section above.)

• Manually starting a session (See the Scribe below.)

Class Control Toolbar Functions:

• Open Tab

  • Send a site to students

• Heads Up

  • Freeze student computer functions so you have attention

• Send a Message

  • Send a message to one or multiple students.

• Test Mode

  • Create testing parameters.

• Apply Outline

  • Create sets of rules that can be applied to classes when and how you want.

Classroom Filtering- Class View

These are the tabs on the top right of the screen from left to right.

Activity:

• Shows student activity in a ticker feed.

• Shows student activity in live time.

• Teacher can "Block" or "Close."

Tab:

• Shows a list of currently open tabs.

• Teacher can "Open" a page, "Block" a page or "Close" a page for all students.

• To drill down to individual students, click the down arrow to see the itemized students on each tab. (Here you can close or block one or a few students.)

• A blue bubble indicates the number of students with the tab open.

• At the top you can push a URL to all students.

Outlines:

• These control what students can or cannot use during a given class or portion of class.

• They can be customized for certain classes. Here are a few ways people use Outlines:.

  • Some teachers like things locked down on a typical independent work day & prefer a less filtered approach on "make-up" days.

  • Some topics that were previously flagged or filtered, but are essential to learning, can be enabled or pushed. Teachers can prevent road blocks by using outlines.

• Worth Noting:

  • If you decide to "Close Open Tabs," it is possible it will shut everything off and could result in students losing work they had partially completed in another class. If you use this feature, it's best to warn students that they should try to save or finish work in advance.

  • All students need to be logged into their Chromebooks prior to starting the Outline. The students who sign in after will not be affected by the outline.

    • Fix #1: A work around for this is “extending” the class session. Aristotle essentially circles back and grabs all “newly arrived" students.

    • Fix #2: Auto starting the class with the outline.

Classroom Filtering- Student View

These are the tabs on the top right of the screen from left to right.

Tabs:

• Shows the active tab at the top;

• Shows all open tabs below the active tab.

• The "all tabs" are typically the ones teachers need to check if they suspect a student is quickly toggling between tabs to be sneaky.

Chat:

• This is how you can send the student a private message.

• Messages will only be translated if the student has selected an alternative preferred language in settings.

Filtering:

• This is where certain cites can be blocked or allowed.

Activity:

• This gives a running feed of what the student has been doing and they sites he has been using over time.

• The links are all clickable for investigation purposes.

• This also shows at what time the student enters or leaves the class.

Classroom Instruction

Lectures:

• Lectures are when teachers push their screen to the student screen.

  • When the lecture is "pushed" to the students, their screen will go gray. They'll get a pop up telling them that their teacher is pushing a lecture to them. They will have to click a small red button that says okay.

• Students may ask Questions during a lecture.

  • It's a great way to ask a discreet question. All students have to do is click the hand, type the question and then send.

  • Questions land on the teacher's lecture dashboard.

  • Teachers can respond to only the student or all students.

  • It will populate a public question bank (if respond all is chosen) on the top right of the screen during the course of the lecture.

Conference:

• This is a "forced breakout room" of select students.

• They incorporate two-way communication.

Features Coming Soon:

• Annotating Student Screens

• AI Assistant to Answer Questions

• Information Bank of How to Utilize Aristotle