August 27, 2019

Patience

Sometimes I think I have a whole lot in common with my one-year old grandson. When I want something, I want it NOW! And I imagine if you are teaching grades 1-8, you're kinda feeling that way, too, right now. IXL, Reading Plus, Read 360 & HMH Integration, Class Link. So many awesome tools, and none of them are fully off the ground yet. 

Then I look at the calendar. We're seven days into the school year, and we've got some amazing stuff going on. Teachers are discussing learning targets in PLC's, pulling out Sandy Snow's yellow sheets to discuss effective formative assessments, and digging into figuring out how to use Eduphoria in new ways. That's big stuff. Important stuff. 

By December, we're going to be able to look at the tools in our toolbox and the data that they elicit to have some powerful conversations about student growth, budget, and purchasing decisions for 2020-2021.

To keep you in the loop, here's where we are with our instructional technology purchases at grades 1-8. 

• The initial IXL training yesterday afternoon showcased some amazing features that will allow 1-8 teachers to differentiate instruction to address Tier 1, 2, and 3 needs for reading and math, track data, and engage students in their own data tracking. While our 3-8 students are uploaded, they are not attached to teachers. I have a call scheduled today to get our grade 1 & 2 students uploaded and get all of our kids attached to teachers. My goal is for us to be rocking for next week, if not sooner. I'll keep campus admin posted on the progress. Sonya will be back Oct 23 to work with the "data" person from each grade level/dept. That person will need a 1/2 day morning sub. Training will be at HCE. Confirm attendance with your campus administrator.
• Renaissance & HMH Integration: RenLearn will need to take our site down for 3 days to do the HMH integration. Your campus admin will advice me today their preference for dates to do that. 
• Reading Plus training for HCE and AES will be the week of September 9. Check with your administrator for details.
• Classlink: Technology has pushed Classlink to the elementary groups. When a student powers up a Chromebook, he/she will be given a choice to sign in with Google or with a quick card. When he/she chooses quick card, the camera is activated, and the student can hold the qr code on the quick card in front of the camera. Right now, Google is the only site connected. You can go to launchpad.classlink.com/bandera  and sign in with Google to begin to explore Classlink. If you click on edit, you can add new apps. I will send out a form next week to begin to collect information about apps that each grade level/department would like added to the students' Classlink dashboard. 

For Our English Language Learners

1. Did you know that the Google Translate extension in the Chrome Web Store will translate webpages into a student's native language? 
2. TEA and ESC 1 have put together a great "toolkit" of strategies for ELL's. It's along the lines of Sandy Snow's yellow sheet. Check it out HERE.

Digital Learning

Brush Ninja is one of my fav drawing tools for all grade levels. It's an oldie but goodie tool that allows students to demonstrate learning.

Extending Your Professional Learning Network

Looking for some some daily doses of PD from blogs, podcasts, or the Twitterverse?

Catlin Tucker @Catlin_Tucker

Kasey Bell/Shake Up Learning @ShakeUpLearning

Matt Miller/Ditch That Textbook @jmattmiller 

Google Teacher Tribe (podcast)

Brush Ninja, Practice Records, Update to Team Drive, Google Slides Remote

Brush Ninja

A big Bulldog thank you to Lisa Gherman at AES for sharing Brush Ninja in the AES Teach with Tech Classroom! Your students can create animated .gifs on Chromebooks, PCs, or iPads. Save the animated images to your device. Embed the .gifs in Google Slides; combine with Screencastify to provide voiceovers.  Imagine students illustrating their understanding of chemical reactions, character traits, historical events, or mathematical equations. The possibilities are endless.

Help Students Keep Track of Information

Snaps to Toni Batto at BMS and BHS for harnessing the power of G-Suite to help her students keep track of their practice information, to reduce paper clutter, and to teach her students twenty-first century record keeping skills!

Ms. Batto shared a spreadsheet with her students to record their practice information daily. At the end of the week, she offers them a Google Form to transcribe the information from their individual spreadsheets and submit to her so that she has all her student practice information in one place. Students can access the Sheet and the Form at school or at home on any device. If the students are using a personal device, they may need to download the free Sheets app to edit the sheet. 

Google Form completed once a week

Google Sheet for daily record keeping
Personal note: I love that the students (and their parents) see daily what practice entails.

Helpful hints from Ms. Batto:

• Freeze rows that you don't want students to manipulate. That feature is under the VIEW tab in Sheets.
• Use the section feature in Forms to help the students transcribe their data accurately.

Team Drive Update

If you use Google Team Drive, you will notice some updates in the near future. When the update rolls out to us, the roles in Team Drive will be different. Below is a summary from the G-Suite Blog. Read more HERE.


The existing roles for Team Drives memberships will get new names:

• “Full access” will now be known as “Manager.” 
• “Edit access” will now be “Contributor.” 
• “Comment access” will now be “Commenter.” 
• “View access” will now be “Viewer.” 
• There will also be a new role, “Content manager.” See below for more details. 

Run a Google Slide Presentation from Your Phone!

Diana Benner of TCEA is a rockstar! Over the summer, she shared on the TCEA TechNotes blog that the Google Slides Remote extension allows you to run your Slides presentation from your phone. 

Acquire the extension from the Chrome Web Store.

When you open your Slides presentation, click on Present with Remote.

On your phone, bookmark the page s.limhenry.xyz. You will be asked to enter a code. Hover over the bottom of your presentation and click on Show ID. That is the number you will put into your phone to enable the remote.

No Chromebit? No problem! Move freely around the room running the presentation from your phone.

Important: If you are presenting from a computer that you do not normally use, you may need to install the extension on that computer's Chrome browser so that you see the "Present with Remote" option when you open your presentation.