Springing into April

 Springing into April 

Spring has shown itself in an usual fashion this year and bringing in, what one hopes, is the winds of change. It's hard to believe it, but our year is almost complete and there is a light at the end of the tunnel, along with it the blossoming of new life and the promise of a fresh start next year. Next year this blog will look a bit different as change is ever occurring and important for growth! Look for a survey at the end of this Tech Tuesday to give your opinions and to help create a platform that is supportive to your needs for next school year. This survey will also be emailed out to campuses. I want to know what you desire in your tech growth and it's presentation to make this content most useful and beneficial to you!

Google G Suite Applications and Fun!

⏲Here is a countdown timer created by Alice Keeler to use in your classroom.

Google Slides 5 Minute Count Down

🙋Here is a short video from Alice Keeler on how to utilize the student selector application in Google Classroom to ensure you are not always calling on the same student everytime and can be great for checking attendance as well! 

YouTube: Use the Student Picker

💡Idea!💡

Are you using feedback to students through private comments in Google Classroom? If so you may be frustrated that the only way students gain this feedback is through email, and we all know our students are so good at checking their email! Right! Here is a solution to this problem...make your morning warm-up activity involve having your students check their email. This will not only help students receive the important feedback you took time to write, but will also help develop a habit of checking emails!

Jamboard Video Series from Matt Miller

Want to know more about the hottest application from Google? Check out this video series from Matt Miller. Why use Jamboard? It is an application that allows you to do numerous activities with one tool, sort of like Google Slide. If you want to really become invested in Jamboard I have included the link to register for his course! 

Video 1

 

Video 2

Video 3

Video 4

Learn more about Jamboard with Matt Miller

🎉Google Updates:

• Citation creator in Google Docs
• Save progress in Google Forms

Tech Tuesday Survey

TCEA Explosion

After spending all week at TCEA virtual, I have acquired some really cool tools to implement within classrooms for numerous purposes. Some of these tools, extensions, and applications I instantly thought, "Where have you been all of my tech life!?" and I am certain you will find at least 1 that you can feel the same about too! I thought this week I would share these out with the many ideas that were shared among participants. 

EquatIO extension for Google : 

Awesome Math extension that offers ease of writing math equations digitally. EquatIO also can use speech to text for students to read math equations to and will ignore non-math words. This extension can be used will all G-suite products! 

Jamboard:

This application will allow you to create an interactive space for students to collaborate, share work, and create. Many features are similar to Google Slides, but my personal favorite is the ability for students to add post-it notes to add thoughts or ideas. Essential you can use it like Padlet, but it's free and works with our G-Suite features! Free is good! 

Here is a link to the official Google Edu information page with some cool lesson ideas:

https://edu.google.com/teacher-center/products/jamboard/?modal_active=none

Here is the presentation link to what I attended with even more ways to use Jamboard in your classrooms (in person or virtually):

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1biH2W3vGvgWL5AwVBWYt2AuuzsP-aExN3S2dLeBGOMk/edit?usp=sharing

TextGiraffe:

Want cool fonts to jazz up your presentations and handouts? Check out this free platform to create amazing headers! Super easy to use and easy to apply within documents and slide presentations or even websites! Simply go to TextGiraffe , choose a cool font (the hard part), then type in your heading or phrase, download and save, apply as a picture within the document of your choice....yes, that's it! Here are a few of my favorites:

Slides, Slides, Slides (The kind that won't burn your bum in summer!)

In case you have the desire to make your slide presentations more attractive or eye catching there are several places you can visit to cut your work down by downloading fun slide themes and backgrounds. Don't forget to share these with your students as well, they deserve the ability to hype of their slideshows and add their creativity as well! 

SlidesMania has a ton of FREE and fun slide themes for you and your students to use. 

Slides Carnival is another site that has plenty of downloads to add pizzazz to your Google Slide presentations.

 Bitmoji Classroom Fun

Since the pandemic's cause of distance and virtual learning the newest and biggest teaching rage has been to use Bitmoji to create engaging and interactive classrooms. In this Tech Tuesday we will share with you how to's and resources to create your own Bitmoji virtual classroom fun! 

Creating your Bitmoji Avatar

IF you don't already have a bitmoji avatar you will need to sign up through SnapChat and start your designing process. Follow the link below or install the app on your phone. 

Bitmoji Beginnings

I have an Avatar...Now What?

Many of you already have an avatar and may have learned how to add it in on your website, as your profile on Twitter and other social media platforms, and maybe even in your assignments to students. Now let's learn how to create the digital classroom, a landing page for student assignments, or even a daily check in page for your virtual learners.

Google Slides is one of the easiest and most effective way to design a virtual classroom or landing page. The flexibility and ease of adding images and manipulating them is more conducive through Google Slides than Google Docs. You can also create multiple linked slides to expand beyond the basic front.

WARNING: Once you get started this could take a while depending on your personality and the depth of the creativity you possess. You can always go back and improve later. Get your basic done first! Don't feel like you need to be Pinterest ready at first.

Step1: Open a new Google Slide and name appropriately

Step2: Find a fitting background for your slide

https://otus.com/free-bitmoji-classroom-templates/

https://www.erintegration.com/2020/05/16/bitmoji-classroom-scenes-virtual-classroom-backgrounds/

https://www.lucidpress.com/pages/templates/education/classroom-background

Other places to find free backgrounds include teachers pay teachers and 

Step3: Add your Bitmoji Avatar to welcome your students

Step4: Add other elements and images that can be linked to assignments, outside resources, Google Forms, etc. 

Found an image you love but it has a background? Not to worry! I love using https://www.remove.bg/ to make my images background free.

Here are some more links to visual directions on creating you Bitmoji virtual classroom:

https://www.kapwing.com/resources/bitmoji-virtual-classroom-template/

Bitmoji Kinder and SeeSaw ready

Ideas for Use

Virtual Gallery : This gallery was created for 5th grade students as a way to link resources for an upcoming research project

Virtual Book Fair: This virtual book fair was created to help connect our virtual students and parents to this year's physical book fair. Since parents could not come in to shop with their students this help provide access to see some of the titles offered. 

Virtual Library: Alkek's Virtual library helps keep all of our students connected 

Classroom Assignment Slides

Copyright - It's the Law

 Copyright - It's the Law

Oh Copyright, oh Copyright how you can complicate things. As educators we have an obligation to teach our students about fair use and plagiarism laws while encouraging them to abide by them when creating their own unique work. However, we often times find some of the laws with large gray areas leaving uncertainty and doubt even as adults. Educators also find themselves in challenging situations that often times cause human error or noncompliance. Despite our honorable career choice we must not forget that does not make us protected or above the Copyright laws. In this issue we hope to help alleviate some of the pressing questions and provide more information on this topic. 

Links for Quick Reference Guides:

Quick Guide for Teachers and Students

Fair Use Guidelines

Copyright Checklist

Richard Byrne has posted several blog pieces on Copyright, Creative Commons links, and numerous ways to help student acquire copyright free media for projects. Check out these Specific postings to aid yourself and your students when creating presentations and projects.

"A Guide to Finding Media for Classroom Projects"

"An Extensive Guide to Copyright and Fair Use"

"Three Lessons to Learn from the $9.2M Copyright Ruling Against Houston ISD"

Electronic Frontier Foundation has lesson plans and a full curriculum for teaching students about Copyright and Fair Use.

Copyright Information to Share with Students

 Curation: Not Just for Libraries Anymore

As educators we are continuously finding exciting new ways to present content or amazing apps that we could implement within our curriculum, but how many times have you lost the note page you wrote it down on? Here are some applications just for curation that you can use to keep yourself organize or implement them within your classroom to create a central location for sharing. 

Padlet

Padlet is a great way to create a collection in one location. Padlet and all of its many functions are free for educators to use, one silver lining to the Pandemic occurrence. Educators can use Padlet to make walls, timelines, grids, shelves, backchannels, and maps. You can create a Padlet board to store shared resources with your students while you are studying a particular topic. Use it to create a backchannel discussion board for book clubs or classroom reading assignments. In history class create a collaborative timeline as you study a particular error, and in art class create a collection of virtual galleries or collections of pieces by artistic movement. 

Wakelet

Wakelet is a completely free platform that has endless possibilities for curation of resources. Consider it a way more advance notes page where you can house all of those links to cool and interesting applications you are hoping to one day implement. Richard Byrne has a wonderful blog posting that is dedicated to helping educators learn more about this platform and how to effectively use it as an educational tool from a whiteboard to an art gallery and everything in between. Also check into the Waklet community, making connections with interest groups outside of your building walls can help to inspire innovative learning ideas! 

Webinar for more information : https://youtu.be/X1tKx7OD6uQ

Symbaloo

Symbaloo is one of my personal favorites to place bookmarked links to various sites for my students. This platform allows for a fun way to present and organize your resources either for yourself or for your students. You can create numerous boards for various purposes and either embed them onto your webpage or provide accessible links within your Google Classroom for your students to access. Despite Symbaloo's longevity of existence it still proves to be an amazing curation tool! 

Feedly

If you are like me you like to keep up your PLN through various blogs and news feeds is daunting and sometimes causes more tabs to be open than needed on your computer. Using Feedly can create automation of RSS feeds where you can catch up on all of your favorites in one place and limits the number of bookmarks needed. Not to mention an easy way to catch up when you have time without trying to remember all of those site addresses! 

Kasey Bell's blog "16 Curation Tools for Teachers and Students" provides even more links to other tools that can be used in amazing ways to enhance productivity, PLNs, and your curriculum! Some of these tools are super familiar and easily overlooked at being used for education, while others may provide some new ideas. 

Google Slide: So Much More Than a Presentation Tool

 

Google Slides: So Much More Than a Presentation Tool!

Google Slides has become a teacher's best friend for creating presentation of information to their students, but did you know this is just the beginning of the endless possibilities that Google Slides has to offer? This week we are going to look deeper into Google Slides and hopefully help you find some alternative ways to use this program for yourself, your productivity, and for your students.

Teacher Uses:

First Slide: 

Follow along as Alice Keeler shows you how to quickly collect students responses when using Google Slides.

Reuse GC: 

Use this template created by Alice Keeler to be able to push your slides to individual students, to reuse multiple Google Classroom assignments at once, and to export your Google Classroom assignments in list form

Automated Hyperlinked Table of Contents:

Use this template from Alice Keeler to quickly create a table of contents for you Google Slides presentation. This is also a great one to share with students too!

Google Slides: The Swiss Army Knife of G Suite

Here is a Google Slides presentation filled with 25 ways that Kasey Bell will help you quickly master Google Slides for more than just your everyday presentations! 

Bitmoji Classrooms:

If you haven't jumped on the Bitmoji virtual classroom craze here is an easy tutorial video to get you started on creating your own!

Need some more inspiration: Check out these groups that have gone Bitmoji wild!

Facebook Groups: Bitmoji Craze for Educators

        Bitmoji Classrooms and Digital Learning Materials for Distance Learners

        Bitmoji lounge for Educators

Articles: School Library Journal

                PBS

Make a Drag and Drop Activity:

Watch this tutorial to learn how to create a drag and drop activity to replace the boring worksheets! 

Student Uses:

Google Slides 101:

Here is a video crash course on how students can use the multiple features of Google Slides. Use this one if you need to quickly teach your students how to use Google Slides so they can begin creating innovative assignment responses!

Here is a video for Elementary Students:

Social Media Google Slides Templates:

Students love to use social media to express themselves and to communicate. Why not use some of these Google Slides templates from Matt Miller to have students create responses to reading assignments, history projects, or create playlists from YouTube that help better inform others of a research topic?

Social Media Slides Templates

Activities for Classroom Use:

Click here to check out Matt Miller's suggested uses for student activities using Google Slides. No matter what content or subject area you teach there is something for every class to use to take lesson responses to a new level! 

 

Classrooms Connect

As our digital age grows and our classrooms are now being connected outside of our school buildings, there are several platforms teachers can use to manage presentation of materials along with collection of assignments. Today's Tech blog will focus on Google Classroom in hopes to provide you with some tips, tricks, and insights that you may or may not be aware of.

Google Classroom Skills

Thanks to Kasey Bell and her expertise when it comes to Googleness! Here is an info graphic and link to some of her top recommended skills when it comes to implementing Google Classroom. Shake Up Learning

Did you know you can:

• assign assignments to multiple classrooms at one time
• add videos to assignments
• reuse past assignments in new classes 
• assign modified assignments to individual students 
• use Jamboard to create digital whiteboards for students to show work
• run originality reports to check for plagiarism  
• take attendance 

Kahoot and Google Classroom

Teachers who use Kahoot know that gamifying curriculum is a great way to keep students engaged and learning. Kahoot also allows remote students to interact with students in the classroom through challenges and games. Here is how to incorporate and assign a Kahoot in your Google Classroom from Matt Miller.

Applications that Integrate with Google Classroom 

Here is an extensive list of applications that integrate well with Google Classroom, making the boundaries of your curriculum and remote teaching seem endless! 

TCEA also has some amazing Google Classroom add-ons to make your productivity and student access easier! 

Google Classroom Clean up 

Every once in a while it is good practice to clean up your Google classrooms, especially at the end of the year. Here is how to do just that.

Email etiquette for students

As we begin our journey with communicating with our students through email and other written methods outside of our Zoom and Google Meets platforms, now might be a good time for a mini lesson for students on how to write an appropriate email to someone. It is important for them and us to remember that email is very different than texting. 

Remember if you ever need any technology integration ideas or assistance in a certain program you can always email:

Lisa Gherman - Alkek Librarian lgherman@banderaisd2.net

Brittany Timmons - Instructional Coach btimmons@banderaisd2.net

Stephanie Jones - Advanced Academics sjones@banderaisd2.net