A Food Face-lift

With a new school year comes some recent changes in the cafeteria. This year, the Fresh Market Cafe has started selling hummus and veggie wraps. You can either buy a wrap or choose from one of the three new boxes: a yogurt box, a protein box, or a hummus box, according to Mrs. Lisa Shaw, head of the Hoover High School cafeteria.

“These boxes are complete meals, which means you can just grab it and go,” she said. “You can grab fruits and veggies, too.” A fan favorite also make a comeback — the cafeteria decided to bring back their famous homemade pizzas every day in Victor’s Pizzeria.

“We had a lot of requests from students to bring this back,” she said. “If there is something that the students want, I will do my best to bring that.” Although there have already been so many new additions to the cafeteria, there will be even more additions coming after winter break.

“We will have coffees, and look for seasonal flavorings,” Shaw said. “We will have lemonade, which you can add flavoring to as well. We are going to have iced tea and hot chocolate. Fresh-ground coffee brands are coming. Well start selling smoothies. Watch for a whole new face-lift after Christmas break.”

Not only does the cafeteria want to hear what the students request, they also want to accommodate those with dietary restrictions.

“I’m hoping with these changes that we can meet the needs of peoples’ special diets,” Shaw said. “If you have a special dietary need, see [me] in the kitchen. I am more than happy to help you. I’m hoping these changes bring more smiles to the cafeteria.”

Question: No more Quizlet?

As most people have heard, the rumors are confirmed: Quizlet has been blocked. There were some inappropriate ads on the site; as a result, the school administration blocked the site, according to NCCS Director of Technology Mrs. Kim Nidy.

“We are bound by law to filter out and not allow anything inappropriate on our network, so we had no choice but to block it since the company refused to address the problem and monitor their ads more closely,” she said.

Students needing help finding online study tools can use Study Stack and Knowt. Study Stack allows students to create flashcards and play fun games to help study, just like Quizlet. Knowt, on the other hand, allows students to not only create flashcards but also provides pre-made study sets for any AP class. The district is also exploring alternatives.

“I believe that some schools are looking at Blooket as a replacement,” Nidy said.

Although Blooket is not entirely like Quizlet, it is a good site for creating test reviews on. Blooket is very similar to Kahoot and to Quizzizz. If students are not fans of any of the alternative options described above, they could always go back to old-school paper flash cards.

Communication is Key

This year, NCCS decided to communicate with students and parents in a new way. Instead of using Remind, like in previous years, it is now using ParentSquare and StudentSquare, although the Schoology platform is also in use for communicative purposes.

“Our enterprise agreement with Remind was due to expire, so we started to look at alternative options because Remind was rather limited in how it is used,” Nidy said.

After searching for the right app to use, it was important to consider how easy the app is to use and which is most popular.

“Having one system that does multiple things is very helpful as we look for ways to streamline and make things easier and more inter-operable,” she said. “So far, I have heard positive feedback from everyone, including teachers, parents, and students. It always takes a little while to adjust to a new system, but I believe this one is very user-friendly.”

ParentSquare and StudentSquare allow everyone to communicate with each other all within one app, instead of having to use multiple.

“We were able to replace Remind, MyConferenceTime for parent/teacher conferences, Blackboard for all-calls, and eSchoolView which was our previous website provider,” Nidy said. “Now, everything is managed within one system and the features are better than what we had previously with the other separate systems. Having one system that does multiple things is very helpful as we look for ways to streamline and make things easier and more inter-operable.”

One aspect of the new platform is particularly beneficial.

“One of the specific new features we gain has to do with translation for our English-learner population, because ParentSquare offers two-way translation in over 100 languages that automatically translate messages from the sender to the recipient in their preferred language,” Nidy said.

Hopefully, with the new school year, ParentSquare and StudentSquare will benefit everyone and make communicating with others easier than ever before.