There are a few things that you or your district IT administrator will need to do to get your school technology ready for the Summit Learning platform. We recommend starting on these action items as early as possible.
- Get Google Apps for Education or Office 365 accounts
- Get devices for your students
- Verify that your school's internet has sufficient bandwidth
- Modify school web filters to accommodate the Summit Learning Platform
- Add the Summit Learning domain to your Allow List
- Connect your Student Information System with Clever
Get Google Apps for Education or Office 365 Accounts
Before you can add teachers to the Summit Learning Platform, you will need to set up Google Apps for Education or Office 356 teacher and student accounts.
Google Apps: Create Google Accounts by following the instructions here. You can find additional information on how to get started with Google Apps for Education here.
Office 365: Create Office 365 accounts by following the instructions here.
Get devices for your students
Every Summit Learning student needs their own computer with a keyboard. Students must access the Summit Learning Platform via Chrome as the primary browser.
Technology is a key tool that Summit Learning Program teachers use to facilitate learning opportunities for students. Because of this, your environment needs to be 1:1 to prevent students from being disrupted by their learning goals. Keyboards are also essential to allow students to engage in their projects in an unhindered way. Some students may already have computers at home, but others may not. It’s imperative for all students to have access to computers at school and at home.
Required Technology:
- Chrome Browser: The Summit Learning Platform is tested on Chrome exclusively and we, therefore, recommend all schools access the platform via Chrome as the primary browser. You can download Chrome here.
Recommended Technology:
- Overall Experience: All students have a device that works well at all times.
- Device: Chromebooks are 3 years old or newer; Windows, Mac, or Linux laptops are 4 years old or newer; Windows tablets have a full keyboard and a 10" screen. Extra devices are purchased up front to serve as replacements and loaners.
- Operating System: Laptops are running one of these operating systems (or higher): ChromeOS (41), Windows 7, MacOS 10, Ubuntu 14.
- Printing (optional): Every student can print to a printer from his/her device.
Verify that your school's internet has sufficient bandwidth
Each classroom participating in the Summit Learning Program must have sufficient bandwidth to support a classroom of students using the Summit Learning Platform at the same time.
A wireless environment can easily be overwhelmed once many students log on at once to stream a video. Ensuring that your site has both the wireless density, coverage, and capacity to accommodate your school site is crucial to a successful learning environment.
Recommended Technology:
- Overall Experience: All participating teachers and students are able to stream video and audio at the same with no slowness/buffering.
- Internet Speed: The connection out to the Internet is a fiber optic connection with speeds allowing for at least 1.5mbps/student.
- Wireless Equipment: There is one access point per classroom broadcasting the WiFi signal. Equipment is designed for enterprise use rather than home use.
- Networking Infrastructure: The connection out to the Internet passes through a 10GB backbone built with enterprise-level equipment (switches, firewall, router) and updated Cat 5e cabling.
Modify school web filters to accommodate the Summit Learning Platform
Web filters at schools need to be adjusted so that students can access the range of vetted sites that the Summit Learning Platform uses, including Youtube, etc.
Before a student is able to access all of our vetted resources, your school might need to adjust the web filters at your schools’ network. If web filters are unable to be adjusted to include access to sites such as YouTube, then we suggest you forward the Allow List to your IT department and request that these individual links be unblocked.
Note: During the summer months (until mid to late August), the Base Curriculum is being updated frequently to include new educational resources. We recommend that school IT teams download the Allow List bi-weekly during this time to ensure that all links are accessible to students. We will also email you if the curriculum changes significantly to remind you to download the Allow List again.
Recommended Domain Allow Listing:
In addition to the specific Allow List URLs, we also recommend that, if it corresponds with your school IT policy, you add common resources to your Allow List that we use and frequently link out to. This will allow your students to explore these resources beyond those resources already selected and included in our Base Curriculum and empower your teachers to add additional resources from these sites to their curriculum.
- Britannica School (https://school.eb.com/) Starting in the 2019-2020 school year, Summit Learning is providing access to the educational library Britannica School, from Britannica Digital Learning, to all learners on the Summit Learning Platform, free of charge. Britannica School resources are multimedia and designed for educational use, and many articles are provided at multiple reading levels. Britannica School resources are available at multiple reading levels, adjustable by the student.
Add the Summit Learning domain to your Allow List
For schools using Google:
- Go to admin.google.com/yourschool
- Click on Gsuite
- Click on Gsuite Drive and Docs
- Click on Sharing Settings
- You can edit Sharing Settings for each group in your organization by clicking on the group name in the left-hand column.
- Make sure that you select WHITELISTED DOMAINS.
- Checking “Allow users in <your school> to receive files from users outside of whitelisted domains.”, will allow students to receive files from any domain.
- You need to make sure these settings apply to each sub-group of students (like class of 2020); it's not enough to select the top-level student group.
- Click Save.
If you would like to specifically add to your Allow List (i.e., allow documents from) the Summit domain:
- Go to admin.google.com/yourschool
- Click on Domains (link)
- Click on Whitelisted External Domains
- Add "summitlearning.org" and "lpinfra.net" ("lp" stands for "learning platform")Important Note: These changes can take up to 24 hours to propagate.
For schools using One Drive:
- Go to the Azure portal to approve applications
- Approve this Application from the Azure portal: bc7ec3b8-af1a-44cf-9325-3acb5f85081a ("Summit Learning Program").
***If this does not work, a district administrator can copy the below link and change " {domain-name}" to their domain. Then they will need to click on the updated link, which will prompt them to approve the Summit Learning Program for the district.
https://login.microsoftonline.com/{domain-name}/adminconsent?client_id=bc7ec3b8-af1a-44cf-9325-3acb5f85081a
For example, if the domain name is "summitlearning.org", the updated link will be
https://login.microsoftonline.com/summitlearning.org/adminconsent?client_id=bc7ec3b8-af1a-44cf-9325-3acb5f85081a
After approving, a teacher will need to log in. If the teacher sees "Please set up your OneDrive” even though they’ve already set up their OneDrive, they'll need to click on the button to be redirected to the platform.
Connect your Student Information System with Clever
Clever is a software tool that the Summit Learning Platform uses to securely transmit student data from student information services that schools already use. Clever keeps educational applications rostered and up-to-date. We think it’s the best tool available because it is secure, easy to set-up and use, and free for schools.
In order to get students set up in the Summit Learning Platform, you’ll want to sync your Student Information System. The person who signs-up and begins the process will need to have an administrative level account with your SIS system. This process can take a few weeks, so please plan accordingly.
Visit the Clever website to learn more and get the process started. Here is Clever's Setup Guide.
Note: you only need to complete Step 1 in the Setup Guide before summer training.