Google Drive Sharing Permissions Changing in January

You may have received this information in other communications. Sorry to be a broken record, but changing the sharing permissions from "anyone in BISD can view" to "private" is HUGE! I want to make sure that the change which will take place in January is on your radar and that you have the tools you need to adjust to the change. Click here to access a 1 minute video that shows you how to change sharing permissions. 

https://tinyurl.com/ve8room

Something to consider: You may want to review documents in your Drive that contain sensitive information and change those permissions to "private" instead of "anyone in BISD can view."

Getting the most out of IXL

Since we are still in our first few months of implementation of IXL, I truly appreciate our representative, Allison, for reaching out with tips to help us maximize our use of the program. One of her emails provided two tips. Check out the "Trouble Spots report to see what skills students are struggling with and the exact questions they’ve missed. This report even identifies students who could benefit from small-group instruction on the same topic. " She also reminded us that if we use the Continuous Diagnostic to assess student learning, "once students pinpoint their grade-level proficiency, they only need to answer a handful of diagnostic questions each week to give teachers reliable diagnostic data all year long." Do you have an IXL success to celebrate? Send me an email! I'd love to hear how you are using the tool to personalize instruction!

ESL Spotlight: Identifying and reclassifying  English Language Learners has changed as a result of recent legislation. Starting November 1, 2019, the LAS Links or pre-LAS Links test by Data Recognition Corporation is the only test approved by the state to identify a student who needs English as a Second Language services. As of November, reclassifying a student will look different, too. Please see the screenshot of the slide below for changes. You can access the 4-slide set here. Stay tuned for more information as we continue to unpack the recent legislative changes.

Mark Your Calendar: BISD Will Offer the 30-hour GT Foundation Courses in district the week of June 15, 2020.

Need to Organize Your Google Drive? Shift Z Will Be Your Friend!

If you are ready to clean up your Google Drive before next school year, you can make the process a little faster by using SHIFT Z. If you highlight the file by clicking on it once and then press SHIFT Z, the Drive organization menu will open. No more clicking, locating a file, and dragging. Happy organizing!

Align Your Questions to State Standards in Quizizz

Quizizz now allows you to align your questions to state standards. When the quiz is complete, you can generate a report to see how your students scored on the tagged standards. Quizizz just keeps getting better and better! Click HERE for more information.

Record Meetings with Google Meet

If you need to record a meeting or lecture, consider Google Meet. According to Google's Meet Help page, "You can record video meetings for other people to watch later if you are the meeting organizer or in the organizer's domain." The recordings are saved in Google Drive. Click here for step-by-step instructions.

Looking for Free/Low Cost Online Professional Development This Summer?

Check out Camp KQED Teach and choose your own learning path from blended, self-paced, or boot camp style courses.

Discovery Education, LIttle Things, Shared With Me

Student Accounts for Discovery Education

BISD subscribes to Discovery Education, which offers powerful content to engage students in inquiry and supports teachers in inspiring students. Content can be searched by TEK, subject, grade level, and format. And resources can be downloaded, shared in Google Classroom, or shared by link. Discovery Education also provides professional development resources. 

Students and teachers can create digital boards that contain text, images, and videos. Think posterboard project on steroids!  Discovery Education provides ideas for using their Board Builder as well as support for building, assigning, and sharing boards.

Student accounts have been created for BISD secondary students. See your campus librarian for login credentials. If you have not created your teacher account yet, see your campus librarian for your campus access code.  Need assistance getting started? Your campus librarian is ready to help!

It's the little things!

This week was filled with conversations that reminded me that it's the little things that matter in life.
Here are some technology-related little-thing highlights that brought big smiles to students and teachers this week.

• CTRL Z (Chromebook) or Command Z (Mac) is undo. (You mean I didn't lose that clip I just deleted in iMovie? Yippee!)

• Use two fingers on your mousepad to scroll up and down the screen on both Chromebooks & Macbooks. (I don't have to use that little gray scroll bar to move up and down the screen? Awesome!)

• Adjust the brightness on your screen on your Chromebook or Macbook using the keys in the screen shots below. (Wow! I can see the screen better!)

None of these are life-changers, but they sure do make working on the computer a little easier!

Shared With Me Folder Driving You Crazy?

Opening your Shared With Me folder in Google Drive can be a stressful experience! The "most-recent-shared-file-first" organization doesn't work for many of us.

Enter the "Add to Drive" option, which allows you to add the shared files to your Drive and organize them without losing the file's original properties.  If you were to "Make a Copy" and the file was later edited by the person who shared it with you, the copy would not change; however, if you add the file to your Drive and it is subsequently edited by other collaborators, you will see the changes when you access the file. 

The Teaching Forward blog offers some great tips and a short video to help you organize shared files in your Drive.

Dot Day, Feedly, Chromebook, Google Drive

Celebrate Dot Day 9/15/16

International Dot Day is next week. This year, help your students make their mark on the world by providing them with the opportunity to explore digital dots with a great project on scratch.mit.edu. Using only the arrow keys and space bar, even the youngest students can create a unique digital project. Middle and high school students can try their hands at some advanced coding by manipulating the code to create Picture Dots on Khan Academy. Or share the day with Peter Reynolds on Ready Set Draw-ish. Check out more ideas for Dot Day at Barrow Media Center's Expect the Miraculous blog. Dot Day offers great opportunities for our students to collaborate with students all over the world through Google Apps for Education or Skype. Let me know if I can help you and your students make their mark for Dot Day.

What's an easy way to follow several blogs?

Much of my continuing professional development comes from following blogs from educators all over the country. While many blogs offer you the opportunity to have their posts delivered to your email inbox, if your inbox is already an avalanche of emails, that option is less than ideal. The solution may be an rss feed reader.  A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I use Feedly on my computer and Newsify on my iPhone to manage the blogs I follow. I simply copy/paste the URL of the blog I follow into the search bar on Feedly, categorize the blog by topic (technology, library, etc.) and new posts are saved in one place. While Feedly has an iPhone app, I find that's it's faster for me to scroll through the posts on Newsify than it is using the Feedly app. But, to each his/her own! It's taken me a few attempts to find the rss feed reader that works for me, but I love that I get the information I want when I want it instead of having my inbox overloaded on somebody else's schedule. If you are an Android user, here is a comparison of RSS feed readers. Chrome also has an extension that might work for you. Although this comparison of RSS readers is a year old, it will give you an overview of the possibilities out there. If you are new to following blogs, choose one or two from experts in your field, and you'll get bite-sized doses of professional development all year long! Please let me know if you are currently blogging on educational topics so I can add you to my news feed!

Extended Display vs. Mirroring

There are times when you want the display on your Chromebook to be mirrored to your tv, but there may also be times when you want to display one tab on your Chromebook and another tab on your tv.  Richard Byrne of Free Technology for Teachers offers great tips for when/how to use extended display.

Making Drive files accessible offline

Don't forget that you can make your Drive, Docs, Slides, and Sheets files available offline by adjusting your Drive settings. Offline access can come in handy if we lose internet connectivity at school or if you don't have internet access at home. Your files will be updated when you have wi-fi access. Android, IOS, and computer directions can be accessed HERE. Or Groff's Quick Start guide is HERE. (Caution: your Drive may house a lot of data. Activate this setting when you are on free wi-fi.)

BISD Technology Tutorials

Many of the teachers who attended the August 12 technology training have already signed up for the Technology Integration Google Classroom (Code: hp3kg5v). However, for those employees who don't have access to Classroom or who haven't joined Classroom yet, here's the link to our Technology Tutorials page. It's a "living" document, and is frequently updated. Whether you want to learn more about Chrome, about Google Forms, or about a Web 2.0 tool for your classroom, the Technology Tutorial document is a good place to start.