Check out this 90 second video to see how easy it is for teachers to differentiate assignments in Google Classroom. Assign different assignments to different students with the click of a button, and students only see the work assigned to them.
Transform Learning: the SAMR model
Sometimes when we talk about technology integration, we focus on the equipment, apps, and software rather than on learning. The SAMR model offers vocabulary for shifting the conversation from digital learning tools to learning outcomes. By designing learning experiences that allow our students to choose the right tool for the right task at the right time--be it crayon or book or app--we can transform learning.
Storytelling Emoji-Style
Here's a fun little site that I learned about while trolling Twitter for #TCEA. Whether you're teaching storytelling in Kinder or asking secondary students to select tone words, thisrandom emoji generator offers a quick, fun entry into a lesson. Start with a single emoji, press "and then" to add another, and the story takes off.
http://byrdseed.com/emoji/
Video Spotlight: Math Antics
Whether you are introducing a concept or reteaching a concept, the Math Antics channel on YouTube can be a good go-to resource for elementary math concepts: fractions, percents, geometry, mixed numbers, and arithmetic.
Boomerang for Gmailallows you to compose an email and schedule when it is sent. This 56-second video will help you get started.
Participate in Digital Learning Day on February 22
Digital Learning Day is an international event that showcases students and educators harnessing the power of digital devices, educational software, and mobile apps "to improve the learning experience in K-12 public schools."
You are invited to participate in Digital Learning Day. If you follow social media, the hashtag is #DLDay.
Need some ideas? Think about where you are in your lesson cycle, and click the image below.
We'd love to showcase digital learning in BISD. If you and your students use digital technology to learn next week, please fill out this super short form so we can tell our digital story!
Need more than your document camera to make class videos?
The Swivl is a robotic base for an iPad, smartphone, or camera that pairs with a remote control marker enabling it to swivel or track while recording video of a moving person.
Swivls are great to use to record a lesson, lab, or presentation. The robotic base takes the place of someone holding the video camera. If the remote is taken off the lanyard, it can be passed around a group.
The BMS Library has a Swivl that is available for check out.
If you're interested, this one-minute video gives a little more information.
Want to check one out from BMS? This two-minute video below shows the easy set up process. The Swivl app is available on theiTunes Storeand on the Google PlayStore.
Edivate Video Spotlight
In this week's video spotlight, fifth grade students apply multiple strategies to solve a problem by working collaboratively using their math journals and sharing their work with each other using Nearpod. Nearpod is an interactive learning platform that offers both free and paid subscriptions. Nearpod works on a variety of devices. Students enter a class code to join a teacher's class.
While this video features an elementary math class, the questioning strategies and digital technology apply to all levels of learning. You will need to login to Edivate after you click the link to the video.
(If you try Nearpod and like it, please email me. Looking for someone who's used it? Talk to Lori Bagwell at BMS or Ashley Chinderle at Alkek.)
The annual TCEA conference is happening this week in Austin. It's by far the BEST conference I've ever attended. 8,000 educators packed together in the Austin Convention Center seeking a common goal: how can we best serve our students?
I'm a little bummed about not attending this year, but thanks to Twitter, I'll be able to keep up with some of what's going on in Austin. Click HERE for 20 Twitter accounts that are worth following. (I'm using Tweetdeck to follow the hashtags #TCEA and #TCEA18).
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Digital Learning Spotlight
Sometimes we get so busy "doing" that we don't have time to stop and reflect on what's actually happening.
So this week, instead of offering more tech tips, I'd like to share some BISD stories of teachers leveraging digital technologies to transform learning and to increase collaboration on their campuses. These stories are just the tip of the iceberg! There's a lot of good stuff happening in BISD!
1. Several teachers are using their document cameras and Chromebooks to support learning. At BHS, Coach Dumont records tutorials for her high school math students, and Mrs. Barnet and Mrs.Scharnhorst are collaborating in a Science Lab classroom to record labs. These videos go a long way to support learning for students who are not in class or who have been assigned to AEP. At the elementary level, videos are great ways to show parents how to support their students at home. The tool webcamera.io works fabulously with our Chromebooks and document cameras, and the videos are easily linked in Google Classroom. Sphere Lite, which is available in the Chrome Web Store, also works well as does recording on a mobile device and uploading videos directly to the Google Drive app.
2. Mrs. Verstuyft is using her Curriculum Google Classroom to support teachers at BHS. She frequently posts articles, videos, and discussion questions to offer BHS teachers the opportunity to collaborate on ways to engage students in deeper thinking and to support TEKS and College and Career Readiness Skills across the curriculum. This week she showcased Flipgrid to introduce the agenda for the curriculum meeting. Google Classroom is a great collaboration tool for teams, departments, and even multi-campus groups.
3. Speaking of Flipgrid...Mrs. Simon at BMS used Flipgrid last week to offer her students the opportunity to reflect on a science lab. This week, the 8th graders in Ms. Bagwell's and Mrs. Lonsberry's classes are using Flipgrid to reflect on the life of a Civil War soldier. Grids can be moderated so videos don't show up in the class feed until the teacher approves them, and they're a quick way to offer students the opportunity to think more deeply and to reflect on their learning.
4. Thinking about flipping your classroom? Mrs. Holland at Alkek flipped her first grade classroom this week using videos for direct instruction in place of a direct teach. In her own words, "Because my kids were engaged in the lesson I was able to actively monitor my students, redirect and stop and offer additional support for those who needed it!"
Flipping a classroom is about more than using technology. It's about rethinking space and time with our students. This two-minute Edutopia video offers a great overview.
And this ASCD publication offers a good explanation of why/why not to flip.
5. Miss Frost at Hill Country Elementary recently set up a classroom for Epic Books. Her first graders are able to navigate to Epic on the Kindle, select a fiction or nonfiction ebook or audiobook, and read alone or with a friend. Emerging readers can access read-to-me books for support. Epic Books offers on-demand access to thousands of books to extend curriculum and to engage students in independent reading. Thanks for sharing how you are using digital technologies to transform learning. Keep those emails coming!
Kathy Schrock's Guide to Everything website has a great list of resources for using Chromebooks in the Classroom. (Schrock is a frequent conference presenter on educational technology resources.) Among the many resources is a Google Slide presentation on using Chromebooks in the elementary classroom to inspire and differentiate in language arts, math, science and social studies. Embedded in the slides are links to tutorials on teaching our youngest students to use Chromebooks and lots of great websites to enable our students to read, explore, create and learn.
Changes to Google Calendar
If you are a Google Calendar user, you may have noticed that your calendar looks a little different. Here's a quick three-minute overview to help you in navigating the new interface. If you are thinking about using Google Calendar in 2018, this video is a great place to start.
Blabberize
Looking for a fun way for your students to demonstrate learning? Blabberize may be just the tool. Students upload a picture, use the tools on the site to outline a mouth, and record sound. Imagine a sedimentary rock explaining its provenance, George Washington telling the story of Valley Forge, or a character in a story explaining his/her motivation for acting in a particular way. The possibilities are endless!
Edivate Video Spotlight
https://edivate.com/#resources/videos/7665
Ah. The end of January. The fourth six weeks. Our first full week of school since sometime in December. Need a little inspiration? Edivate is chock-full of videos that can give us that shot in the arm we need to keep ourselves and our students motivated. HERE is a video showing primary students solving math word problems. You will need to log in to Edivate to access the video. Teach elementary math? Google Drawings is a great way for students to demonstrate learning.
It's that time again! Students in grades K-12 are invited to use crayons, clay, graphic design, food, and more to bring to life what inspires them for the annual Google Doodle contest. The prizes are amazing: a $30,000 college scholarship, a $50,000 technology package for the student's school, and more. The contest closes March 2, 2018. Google provides teacher guides for Grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12. Share the contest with your students and let the doodling begin!
Epic Books
With 50 shiny, new Chromebooks on each elementary campus, it's a great time to check out Epic Books. (A great big thank you to the Alkek first grade teacher who put this great resource back on my radar!)
Epic provides over 25,000 free ebooks, learning videos, quizzes, and more for educators and librarians. Epic's tutorials provide videos to help teachers get started, log students in, build quizzes, maintain badges, avatars, and reading logs, etc.
Books can be searched by reader's age (0-12), lexile measure, AR level, and genre. Teachers can build collections or "favorite" a pre-built collection. Many books have a "read to me" feature.
Looking for non-fiction support for a unit you're teaching? Need some fresh books for tier time or stations in your classroom? Have a student who has read every shark book in your school library and is looking for more? Epic may have just what you are looking for!
The 86 second video below is geared toward parents (a paid version), but it gives a good overview of the site.
Digital Skills for Teachers
Wow! What a difference a year makes! Last January our campus technology integration time was spent learning Gmail, learning how to manage our professional lives using a Chromebook and Google Drive, and unlocking the potential of the new document cameras and tv's in our classrooms.
Fast forward twelve short months and student Google Classroom dashboards are filled with tiles for their classes. Teachers are filling those online classrooms with quality digital material, teacher-made tutorial videos, and links to interactive quizzes and content. Our students AND our teachers are engaging in 21st century digital skills.
As we move forward these next twelve months, take a few minutes to check out this graphic from Educational Technology and Mobile Learning to see how far you've come in the last twelve months and to set a goal to integrate a new tool or two in the months to come.
g(Math), which allowed teachers to create formulas and mathematical equations in documents has been retired and replaced with EquatIO, a Google extension that adds mathematical equations and more to a document. The free extension offers basic functionality with advanced features, like voice and handwriting recognition and integration with Google Forms, available on paid premium accounts.
EquatIO's developers, TextHelp, host a YouTube channel with tutorial videos. TextHelp also publishes ReadWrite, and tutorial videos for that extension are available on the same channel.
Richard Byrne of Free Technology for Teachers offers three alternatives to (g)Math here.
Kasey Bell's Shake Up Learning Downloads Now Available in One Place
Kasey Bell, a Google guru for sure, has been blogging at Shake Up Learning for years. She generously gives away her ebooks and cheat sheets, but accessing them in the past has involved a multi-step process. Now users can sign up for free membership to Shake Up Learning and download resources directly from her website. And she's got some good stuff!
The Guide to Google Drive Sharing
The Google Keep Cheat Sheet
The Google Cheat Sheets eBook
The Complete Guide to Google Certifications
How to Become a Google Certified Trainer
Google Certified Educator Level 1 Capacity Matrix
How to Pass the Google Certified Educator Exams
The Chrome App and Extension Database for Teachers & Students
The Educational Hashtag Database
and more to come
Read more HERE. Shake Up Learning is one of my go-to sites to grow in Google-ness.
Debating Whether to Use SeeSaw or Google Classroom?
Laura Moore, who blogs at Learn Moore Stuff and works as an instructional technology specialist in San Antonio, compared the features of SeeSaw and Google Classroom. If you are trying to decide which online platform to use, click HERE to access Laura Moore's full post. Your access to devices and the age of your students may be the biggest deciding factors in making the choice.
Last fall Google released Team Drive to G-Suite for Education. Many of you have already started using Team Drives, but if the Team Drive isn't on your radar already, watch this short video of the amazing features.
Team Drives are effiecient repositories for departments, grade levels, coaches, curriculum leads, office staff, campuses counselors, librarians, administrators, etc. If someone were to leave the district or move to another campus/grade level/department, staff can easily be added or removed from the Team Drive without moving the files.
The only thing that I have found that I don't like about Team Drives is that I can't drag/drop an entire folder to the Team Drive yet, which makes moving files time consuming. However, I think that in the long run, the ease of adding/deleting collaborators is going to make moving the files worth the effort.
If you want help getting started with Team Drives, please ask me about them when I'm on campuses this month.
BMS: January 11
BHS: January 17
AES: January 18
HCE: January 24
Destiny Collections to Improve Research Skills
The line between librarian and tech integration coordinator blurs quite often... and I love it when that happens!
If you've ever taken students to the computer lab to conduct research, you know that their first (and sometimes only) search tool is Google, and they'll often pick the first search result for their information. Retraining them to look for vetted resources can be a struggle. Using Follett Destiny Collections makes retraining students easy because we educators can give them a starting point.
The district libraries use Follett Destiny to manage our libraries, and Collections is part of the library's catalog. In collaborating with two teachers at BMS this week, we added books from the library, websites, database resources and ebooks, and even Google Documents to a Poetry Collection for English and and an Elements Collection for science classes.
The curated list gives younger students a starting point of vetted resources, many of which have citation tools already built in. The link to the Collection can be shared in Google Classroom, making sharing collections incredibly easy.
To access the collections, students and teachers will need to log into Destiny. See your campus librarian for login credentials. Each campus will handle Collections policies a little differently. If you are interested in beginning to build a Collection, contact your campus librarian.
Using Collections is new in BISD, so the librarians are on the same learning curve as teachers in using it for the first time. Consider trying Collections out.
Seasonal Wallpapers for Your Chromebook
Warning: Continue reading only if you, like me, get a little too excited about opening a new package of colored markers and starting a new planner every year. This tip is frivolous fun.
Thanks to one of the awesome BHS teachers, I've had a blast adding a seasonal wallpaper to my Chromebook.
Navigate to Smashing Magazines' wallpaper page. Click on the current month's featured article. Scroll down the page until you find an image you like. Download it. I used the 1024x768 size to completely fill the screen on my Chromebook.
Then open your Chrome settings, scroll down to Appearance and open the wallpaper app. Click on the + and add your image. It will be in your FILES folder under DOWNLOADS.
Add a fresh image/calendar each month to set the tone for the season.
