November 12

Something Helpful, Something Fun and Something to Explore

Something Helpful: Jamboard Integration with Google Meet- You can now open up a Jamboard right from Google Meet AND the Jamboard is automatically shared with your students. Sweet! (Thanks to Sean Scattergood for sharing)

Here is a video that shows you how! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=735gTBjz1JY

(If you haven’t explored some of the more recent Meet improvements, check out Wendy Drokes Tips and Tricks document or her Screencast on Meet Host features) Meet has really upped their game with the latest improvements.

Something Fun: Who doesn’t like confetti? Especially if you don’t have to clean it up. Try the Confetti Cannon extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/confetti-cannon/dminbokeajnkkikeiepfhlgijfjjmdkf

It makes a confetti explosion on your desktop. You can use it in class when you want to celebrate a success or just get people’s attention, use it on a Screencastify video for some added fun, or when you share your screen with a Meet/Zoom session.

Here’s a video I made with it: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16w0_untcqhL4h3VxIWuKUu4RYbdQF11C/view It couldn’t get much easier.

Something to Explore: Classroom Q: https://classroomq.com/  creates a digital Queue of kids who need help from the teacher. I could see this working in class (they all have devices now) or virtually during help sessions. Here’s a video with more info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z9sFXgV9Rg  Another one recommended by Gianne Curry is Deck.toys- learning adventures for students: https://deck.toys/  Here’s a how-to video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6saWcEv0U94  I haven’t

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November 29

Hour of Code Resources 2018

Whether or not you are planning activities for Computer Science Week next week, you might want to check out some new resources from our friends at Code.org and CSFirst.

An exciting new Hour of Code activity is the Dance Party challenge https://hourofcode.com/danceparty. I love that this activity will appeal to a new audience of coders, dancers and musicians,- there are lots of good songs and the latest dance moves (yes, flossing is there!) to choose from. (You’ll want headphones for this one!)

They have added a 4th Minecraft activity: Minecraft Voyage Aquatic: https://studio.code.org/s/aquatic/stage/1/puzzle/1 which will keep your Minecraft lovers challenged.

Remember that you can use the grade level filters at the top of the page  on https://code.org/learn  to sift through the ever growing selection of coding activities.

CS First has launched a new Scratch based activity called  “An Unusual Discovery”. The video tutorials really walk you through the activities and give you a solid foundation in how to code with Scratch: https://csfirst.withgoogle.com/c/cs-first/en/an-unusual-discovery/an-unusual-discovery/an-unusual-discovery.html You may want to explore the resources on their teacher page first: https://csfirst.withgoogle.com/s/en/discovery-teachers

Remember that the Computer Science Symbaloo has a bunch of resources that you can use: https://www.symbaloo.com/mix/computerscience-maker

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November 27

Tool Worth Trying: Google Slides Closed Captioning

Google Slides just announced a new feature that may just be a game changer for our hard of hearing students. Now when teachers or trainers are in presentation mode using Slides, they can turn on “Captions” but clicking the CC button on the presentation toolbar.  After that is enabled, the presenter’s laptop microphone will pick up his/her voice and provide live captioning at the bottom of the screen. I tried it out, and it is surprisingly accurate.

Here is a short video showing this tool in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BstFsFNIT9M

 

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May 6

Website Worth Sharing: OpenEd

open ed logoIf you are looking to provide online lessons, resources, and assessments for your students, you might want to investigate https://www.opened.io/

This “mostly free” website contains thousands of K-12 Common Core aligned teaching materials and assessments. Once you create a free account, you can add your students, assign materials and view the results. This is a great way to differentiate instruction.

opened ss

Even if you don’t want to create a classroom and assign resources, just browsing for resources by Common Core standard can be useful. They have curated and catalogued resources from a variety of websites that you can use for your instruction. Here is a result from one of my searches.

While they do have a premium option that contains test banks from Pearson and Houghton-Mifflin, the free, teacher created resource are still very valuable.

To learn more, watch this introductory video:

 

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April 16

Website Worth Sharing: SweetSearch

sweetspotGoogle is great, but sometimes the sheer volume of results can be distracting or overwhelming, especially for our students. The folks at “Finding Dulcinea” knew that and developed SweetSearch http://www.sweetsearch.com/  an educational Search Engine that filters out all of the other “Stuff” and just gives educational results that have been screened for classroom use by teachers and librarians.

They have also collected an abundance of Social Studies content and put it all in one place: http://www.sweetsearch.com/socialstudies In your spare time you might want to check out the 101 Best Websites for Social Studies: http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/education/2010/march/101-Great-Sites-for-Social-Studies.html

If you focus on bibliographies, they have a page for that too: http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/education/2010/march/101-Great-Sites-for-Social-Studies.html

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December 16

Website Worth Sharing: PowerMyLearning

pmlAs you are looking for activities to support the Common Core standards, you may want to check out the Power My Learning website: http://powermylearning.org  It’s kind of a “one stop shopping” site of online activities. You can search by grade level and subject. The Math and Language Arts sections are aligned to the CCSS. The activities that it brings up are from some of our favorite sites: Scholastic, eLearning for Kids, BBC, Math Playground, etc. You can create playlists and activities if you like, but you can also just launch an activity (many are SMARTboard friendly). The site allows you to create a classroom so that students can enroll with your unique classroom code. This way you can assign activities and monitor student work.

I think this one will definitely be worth the 2 minutes it would take to create an account.

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February 22

Website Worth Sharing: Jeopardy Labs

I know many of you utilize Powerpoint Jeopardy games for content review. You might also be interested in the Jeopardy Labs website:

http://jeopardylabs.com/

Why use this when you’re happy with the Powerpoint versions?

  1. Online access-If you create a Jeopardy game here, students can access it through a weblink. This would be a nice study tool (put the link on your eBoard or in the Skyward message center.) You can also share your work with colleagues this way.
  2. No need to reinvent the wheel-Use the “Start Browsing” option to search for pre-made Jeopardy games. You might find that someone else has already created something you could use. These are games other teachers have created so you will find some incomplete and not-so-great examples. Keep searching, there are some good ones out there.
  3. Flexibility: You can choose the number of teams that will be playing and keep track of points at the bottom of the page. Just click on the plus sign to add points.
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November 3

Website Worth Sharing: Testmoz

Teachers:

http://www.testmoz.com/ makes creating online quizzes pretty painless. You can choose from 4 types of questions and once you’re done putting in the questions it generates a weblink that you can share with your students. (If you have an eBoard, you can publish it there.) You have the option of creating a passcode that students can use to take the quiz. That way random folks can’t take it. There are several options regarding how the results are displayed after the student takes the quiz. I think this would be a great way to create a study guide for upcoming quizzes. It could also be used for extra credit or even as an assignment. You can login to the site with your admin password to see who took your quiz and how they performed.

They warn you to bookmark your quiz link and that’s a good idea. It’s the only way to get your quiz results or get back in to edit your quiz.

I created a sample 5 question quiz using all of the question types so you can see what it looks like from a student’s viewpoint. Go to testmoz.com/2067 and use the passcode “kelso” to give it a try.

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December 11

A Gift for your Students

Engage Me

Our students are craving engagement, and yet if we look into the classrooms at many schools we will see bored, unengaged students. Is technology the only tool that will engage students? No. Debates, cooperative projects, hands-on explorations, problem solving, and relevant tasks all engage students. Does technology engage students? Absolutely, if used correctly for relevant purposes. As a gift to your students, set a New Year’s resolution to try one new technology tool. Maybe you could try a web 2.0 tool, or Microsoft Office programs, or just experimenting with your document camera. Consider it an “engagement” present for your students.

The picture above was created using PicLit. In just a few minutes your students can create a poem using one of their picture selections. Users can select from a bank of words, or in the freestyle mode, choose their own. If you create a teacher account and let them all create PicLits on your account, then you can share their pictures using your laptop and projector. They can also e-mail the picture link to friends at home. This would be a great starter tool if you want to experiment with publishing on the web. I found it particularly “engaging”!

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