Tech Bytes - February

Hey, Guys! I have so much to share with you this month! I'm excited to share some grant and growth opportunities as well as some tools to use in your classroom. Let's get started!

Static Flickr Image

Be In the Know

Association of American Educators Classroom Grants (K12) - These classroom grants of $500 or less can be used for a variety of projects and materials, including but not limited to books, software, calculators, math manipulatives, art supplies, audio-visual equipment, and lab materials. Funds must be used within one year of the application deadline. Application deadline is March 1. You can find more information here.

Carton 2 Garden Contest (PK12) This contest rewards preK-12 schools that creatively repurpose at least 100 milk or juice cartons for their gardens. Schools don't need an existing garden to apply. There are 14 award packages and the Grand Prize is $5,000. Deadline to apply is April 16. You can find more information here.  

Want to go to ISTE in Chicago this summer? There are two Award opportunities that can help get you there! Check out ISTE Outstanding Young Educator Award and ISTE's Kay L. Bitter Vision Award for details. 

Penn State Interdisciplinary Materials Research Experience for Teachers K12 - Teachers selected to participate in this six-week program will receive hands-on nanoscience and technology experience through research, with applications to bio-engineering, chemistry, electronics, materials science, optics, optoelectronics, physics, and life sciences. Teachers will engage in a week's worth of seminars, demonstrations, workshops, and activities geared towards connecting state-of-the-art research with K-12 education. Teachers will earn a $6000 stipend ($5000 for pre-service teachers). Housing is provided if needed, and reasonable travel expenses will be covered. At the end of the summer, RET fellows will present their projects at a scientific mini-symposium to their research collaborators, peer teachers, and undergraduates. Interested? Check out details here. Deadline is April 15. 

iPad App

Adobe Spark provides an easy way to make video stories in minutes. The good news is they recently announced students under 13 can now use this tool and sign in will be a single sign in with Google. And for more good news, it is also available for use on Chromebooks, so iPads are not needed.

Cool Tools Corner

With so many of you 1:1 with Chromebooks, I want to share a few tools that you can explore for using with your students.

Classroomscreen is an awesome one-stop shop for many tools that teachers and students can use, tools such as random name selector, timers, noise meter work symbols, and more.  Click on the menu in the upper left to see Tips and Tricks and other options. Students can use the site to self-monitor group work. 

Nearpod & Interactive Reading Lessons - This past week one of the large state technology conferences was held in Florida - FETC. One of the presenters did a session on using Nearpod with reading. (By the way, Nearpod is also available as an iPad app.) She uses this tool from Kinders all the way to adults. I truly recommend taking the time to read her post and give this a try in the classroom. 

You know I love Book Creator and I have blogged about the Chromebook app for it. There is a similar tool for young learners called WriteReader that allows students to publish books with their spelling (no underlines for incorrect spelling) while providing a space for the adult to write the correct spelling. This makes it totally collaborative between teachers and their students. Students can use embedded images, upload images, and use the camera on the Chromebook and record their voice. Completed books can be shared online, saved as PDF, and/or printed. 

And last, but not least! I've told you about Flipgrid too. Well...Starting February 12, there is an opportunity to follow along with a marine biologist during a two-week exploration of diving with sharks. AMAZING! And, wait for it....there is a hyperdoc that goes with it!!!! Can you tell I am over the top excited about this one? Check this link for more information. 

Tech Bytes - January

This month's blog post is going to take a little different format and flavor from the previous Tech Bytes.

Our county has a fabulous, highly-esteemed program called Pinnacle Leaders Program. The program was begun to identify, nurture and develop teacher technology leaders. Pinnacle leaders are role models for the county, their schools, and colleagues.

Recently, our latest cohort group was tasked with sharing a "favorite thing." Their work includes all components of Tech Bytes from Be in the Know to Cool iPad apps. So without further ado, here are Pinnacle 22's Favorite Things (and my tech byte for January!).

Tech Bytes - December

It's December, and to borrow a line from Silver Bells, "in the air there's a feeling of" excitement. In the midst of the wonder of the season, try out these ideas for technology integration.

Be In the Know:

Seesaw released Activities earlier this year. Just a couple of weeks ago, they added the ability for teachers to share their created activities with each other. Here is an example I made for understanding characters and one for a word sort. A fellow educator shared a fabulous creation of templates that can be utilized for the activities. And educators are sharing links to their creations that can be added and edited from your Seesaw Activity library. I hope you take advantage of this ability to layer student thinking over their Seesaw submissions. If you want to learn more, please ask your ITF, we will be happy to assist.

iPad App: 

Scratch Jr for iPad - We are ending the Hour of Code week today, but my hopes are that our students continue to code. I was fortunate this week to be in classrooms where students were coding. I had the privilege of introducing a class of second graders to Scratch Jr. This app allows students to snap together programming blocks to make their characters move and talk. While programming, they are solving problems, designing projects, and expressing themselves creatively. They are using math and language skills in a meaningful context allowing them to not only learn to code but "code to learn."

Our lesson this week was on understanding characters in the story by knowing what the character thinks and feels throughout. So what better way to show understanding than to recreate the story's beginning, middle, and end through coded characters. Check out this lesson for the details. 

Cool Tools Corner:

Escape Rooms are a great way to have some fun with friends and family. Perhaps you are thinking about participating in one over the holiday break. You can bring that excitement into your classroom tied to your curriculum. BreakoutEDU has physical kits with locks for boxes or you can do a digital breakout using Google Forms. You can create digital breakouts that use Google Apps to create and share a series of critical thinking puzzles to open the virtual locks in the Google Form.  The ITFs have created some for the district and will be happy to help you create one specific for your standards.

If you want to give it a try before Christmas break, check out these options for elementary students. K-2 would need help and hints, but 3-5 could probably solve collaboratively. For K-2, perhaps you could do the breakout as a class activity. You are only allowed 30 minutes to solve the clues.

Finding Frosty

Save Christmas

Elf Panic

Merry Christmas!

Tech Bytes - November

Welcome to the busy holiday season and time spent with family and friends. As you are gearing up to head out for Thanksgiving, ponder these technology integration ideas. How can you integrate them into your upcoming units and standards?

Be In the Know:

Image from Pixabay

Emojis and Educators...Oh What Fun!

Students and teachers alike love Emojis right? So why not incorporate them into your content? For example, did you know that you can insert emojis into Google Docs? Yes! From the Menu bar, choose Insert > Special Characters. Then click the drop-down and choose Emoji. If you are having your students publish writing in Docs, let them use emoji's to enhance their story. They can even draw their own Emoji (I'm thinking character, self-portrait...). Eric Curtis has published a blog post on 5 Emoji Learning Activities complete with screenshots and directions.

My latest find that I LOVE is using emoji's to help organize files and folders in Google Drive. Did you know that you could use special symbols to group and organize your Drive? Well, thanks to an extension called Emoji For Google Chrome, you can organize with Emojis! Check out information on how that works here.

Share any ideas you have or have found on using Emojis in the classroom.

iPad App: 

Notes App for iPad - The native notes app will do so much more than just keep a list for you. Notes provides a way to include photos, videos, drawings and text all in one place. Of course, it saves to your camera roll, providing an opportunity to upload into another app to continue creation and learning. With iOS 11, you can even scan a document in Notes. The Document Scanner automatically senses it is a document, cropping the edges and removing tilts or glare.

Cool Tools Corner:

20 Questions is a favorite of children, parents, and teachers alike. It's a sneaky way to get some critical thinking skills past the students! 😉 Google is using its Artifical Intelligence interface to bring the game to you today called Mystery Animal. You can play this game on the Chromebook. Check out the video below for more information. Have fun guessing the animal!

A Little Something Extra:

Looking for templates to use with Chromebooks? Then check out these two sites for a jackpot of resources!   Technotes Blog   and    Engaging Students Google Resources

Happy Thanksgiving!

Tech Bytes - October

Can you believe that October is almost over? It's time for this month's Tech Bytes and the wonderful things in the world of technology integration. 

Be In The Know:

Are you ready to teach untethered from the front of the room and make the shift to "guide on the ride?" Many teachers in our district have fallen in love with annotate.net. Annotate has a free feature that allows you to use your mobile device as an interactive whiteboard while presenting to your computer's attached presentation device. It even has built-in formative assessment tools that you can add to your lesson.

You can create notebook presentations with the software or import content you have in your Google Drive. Check this document for more information and instructions if you are interested. 

Note: At this time, GCS does not use the downloaded version of Annotate Client. 

iPad App:

 iOS 11 brings some new features for ease of classroom use. First, you no longer need a separate app to scan QR codes, open the camera app on the device and scan away. Tap the notification to open the site for the QR code.

The new dock will now hold up to 13 apps. App icons will appear in the dock as you open them. This feature makes it easy for our young learners to find the most used apps. 

Cool Tools Corner:

I have long been a huge fan of the Book Creator app for the iPad. It is the. best. paid. app. for education ever! I always felt sorry for classes that didn't have iPads to take advantage of this tool. Why do I love it so much? It is an easy tool to create multi-media books that can be shared with others. Imagine your students' creations containing images, text, sound files, and videos. Yes, all that is possible with Book Creator. So, this past summer when they announced they would be bringing to Book Creator to the web, I got all goose-bumpy with excitement. I am excited to share that the web version is just as wonderful as the app. You can create a library and invite your students to share. Together, you can create 40 books for free. If you want to know more, let your ITF know. In the meantime, here are instructions for creating a book. Enjoy! 

STEM Resources for the Elementary Classroom

Today, I want to share with you guys some resources that are freebies for STEM in your classroom.

CalAcademy's Science Video Vault - I know some of you are looking for additional video resources to use with your students. Take a moment to check out CalAcademy's Science Video Vault for hundreds of short videos. The site provides a search feature as well as the opportunity to drill down for grade level appropriate resources. While there, check out their Ideas for Using Video in the Classroom. 


NASA Knows! Elementary students are curious about the world around them, including space. If you are looking for informational texts and if your students have questions about airplanes, astronauts, rockets, planets, technology, and more, check out NASA Knows. You will find sections for  Grades K-4, 5-8, 9-12, and Higher Ed.




Water Cycle Resources:
For the past week or so, I've been in 5th-grade classrooms in our districts helping students with a water cycle project. The Story of Water in Dryville: The story takes students to the desert to start a new town and shows them how water plays a part every step of the way, from finding an initial water source to getting water to homes, creating a system for wastewater, and meeting additional needs as the town grows up. This would be a great PBL intro to rebuild an area devastated by a natural disaster. Also available as a downloadable script for a class play, students could recreate the story with a miniature green screen and Doink Green Screen App.

Legos:
Last year I was fortunate to visit a Lego School in South Carolina. Who doesn't love Legos? (Ok, maybe parents that moment they step on them with bare feet.) You don't have to be a Lego School to tap into the learning possibilities. Check out Lessons with Legos to find lesson plans for using Lego bricks and other Lego educational materials. Maybe the lessons will spark an idea that you could use to write a proposal for funding through Donor's Choose.

Reader's Workshop & Technology Integration ... Yes It is Possible

You don't need me to point out that literacy is changing. Don't get me wrong, this digital girl still prefers to read books....that are, well, ... actual books. And my idea of reading is not to read to take a test. (Can I get an amen?) To quote The Book Whisperer (Donalyn Miller), "The only thing kids need to be doing during reading workshop is reading books, talking about books, and writing about books." And, oh, the ways technology can help kids do all three.

Reading Books:

First, let's have a balance of reading printed text and digital text. And let's examine the need to always have students read digital text just for research purposes. A terrific digital resource for elementary students is Epic Books. Did I mention it is free for elementary teachers and media specialists? Epic

offers thousands of high-quality children's books and even allows teachers to create a collection for students to read (think digital book box).

So by balance, I'm not just talking about reading printed and digital text, but let them respond to the text both digitally and with print. If they are reading a digital text, let them respond by writing their thinking, their stop and jots. If they are reading a printed text, let them respond digitally, perhaps a #booksnap. And yes, elementary students can do this, we just wouldn't use Snapchat.

Since digital reading requires a different set of skills than reading print, (clarity of words on a screen, hyperlinks, extraneous material on screen, etc) teachers have to model and teach students during mini-lessons how to successfully read digital text.

Talking About Books:

Turn and talk is prevalent in reader's workshop, we ask students to share their thinking about their reading, the action of the story, information about characters, and more. As a teacher, it is impossible to hear each child every single day. Let's harness the power of technology to get students talking about books. Have you tried Flipgrid yet? It's a digital discussion platform easy enough for Pre-K students, but also robust enough for adults. Give it a try with book talks and see what happens.  Build a community that talks about books, recommends books, and gives students an audience for their work. You will be amazed and surprised at the possibilities. Plus it gives you a chance to hear from your students more and adjust instruction to meet their needs.

Writing About Books:

Ever notice how popular Goodreads is? Ever notice how unpopular the reading log is? I have an idea...Let's use a digital tool such as Seesaw to transform the reading log. Students can use Seesaw to take a photo of their book cover, annotate on it, add an audio recording of their personal response, and even upload book trailers from other apps into a "Goodreads" folder. Students can comment and have conversations as they write and talk about the books within Seesaw.

Every tool I mentioned will work on iPads and Chromebooks. Every tool I mentioned is free. If you want help implementing any of these ideas or want to talk about ideas that have sparked in your head, please contact your ITF. We will be happy to help!

Tech Bytes September 2017

Happy Friday! I'm excited about the items in this post. I hope you find a tool that you want to try with your class. 

Be In The Know:

You may have noticed an additional extension that was pushed to you and your students called Share to Classroom. The extension supports your digital environment by allowing you to push websites to your students easily. The website will open on student devices as soon as you push. The extension also allows you to create an assignment, make an announcement, or ask a question in your Google Classroom right from the site. 

Watch this quick video from Google Guru to see how it works. By the way, you can also send them a visual to switch gears or stop working on the device.  

iPad App:

Camera app - Ever consider this is a powerful tool in the hands of our learners?

It's pivotal when doing app-smashing and it's a life skill. Imagine teaching our students how to be really good at taking photos. I found this course on iTunes, (lots of free cool courses) that you could use as a springboard for ideas to help students learn to be photographers. The course is called One Best Photo. Use the idea and think of your content to mesh the two. By the way, soon, iTunes courses will be found within the Podcast app on the device. 

Cool Tools Corner:

This news made my day, and I hope it will make yours as well. You have probably heard of Storyjumper. It's a great site that allows your students to publish stories easily. The site has tons of props, scenes, and characters that students can use as they publish or even upload their own images. Now, Storyjumper uses single sign on with our Google accounts. Yay, no extra user names and passwords to remember. 

As always, with anything mentioned in this post, if you want to give these things a try, let your ITF know and we will be happy to help!

Tech Bytes - August 2017

August is coming to an end and school is underway. So excited to walk through my schools and see the excitement of the new year on everyone's face.

Thought I would share a few pieces of information to keep in mind for the new school year.

Be In The Know:

Effective July 1, 2017, technology credits are being replaced with Digital Learning Competencies. If you renew on or after June 30, 2019,  you will need 2 DLC CEUs.

Digital Learning Competencies are broken into four focus areas. Check out this document that unpacks those areas for teachers. If you are an administrator, check this document designed for you to view the unpacking for the five focus standards.

DLC credit requires identified goals and objectives that are designed to improve teacher practice and drive student learning within teachers’ classrooms.

DLC PD should:

• Align standards & DLC competencies
• Be blended with content area & best practices
• Continue through integration and/or application within the practice
• 
  Be demonstrated by evidence-based learning (from submitted artifacts such as teacher/student portfolios, classroom walkthroughs, etc.) showing teacher mastery
• Positively impact student learning

Be on the lookout for things happening during the year at your school that you can participate in to start earning those credits.

iPad App of the Month:

Looking for an easy way to have your students showcase their learning via videos? Then check out a new favorite iPad app called Clips. Allows you to make videos with text and effects. Easy Peasy! Let me know if you want it pushed to your student iPads. Don't forget, we could plan and co-teach together. ;-)

Cool Tools Corner:

Cool Tools Corner:

Check out Flipgrid. This hot tech tool will allow you and your students to create a community of learners via video discussions. Easy for students as young as Pre-K. Great way to incorporate Making Thinking Visible strategies into your lessons. Let me know if you want help introducing to your students.

Flipgrid - Great tool for Making Thinking Visible! I’ll be happy to help get you started.

Another Blog Post about SAMR

Yes, I know what else can be written about SAMR? I just returned from a road trip vacation, which was awesome, thanks for asking. ;-) Anyway, I started thinking of how things have changed when traveling from back in the day, you know the day of paper foldout maps for each state you travel. We have come a long way!

Lisa Johnson, AKA TechChef, wrote a post on S.A.S.S.Y. SAMR in which she included four awesome questions to help guide educators in transforming instruction. So to give you an idea of real world SAMR application, I'm going to share the technology we used on our trip and let you think about how they relate to the four questions. Ready?


Does the technology/tool allow for collaboration (e.g. within a school, district, state, nation, globe, experts, PLN)?
Does the technology/tool allow for publishing to an authentic audience and archival?
Is the technology/tool student-driven?

Does the technology/tool allow for feedback and formative assessment?

Waze - GPS Navigation, Maps & Social Traffic

I highly recommend this app. It is real time routing based on a community of drivers providing real-time traffic and road info. Through the collaboration, we knew traffic jams, road hazards, cars on the side of the road, etc. so we could re-route if necessary. Easy to report what you see as you travel too. 



You have to eat while traveling, so let's use collaboration to find the best places to eat and even top things to do in that area. Enter the next two apps:
Yelp & Trip Advisor. 

With Yelp, you can filter the search results, so you can find things within in the neighborhood you are in at the moment and what is open. And it's easy to leave your reviews as well to help travelers that come behind you. 

With Trip Advisor, you can find hotels, restaurants, and things to do in the community. And it's easy to leave your reviews as well to help travelers that come behind you.



And last, but not least is Gas Buddy. 
Again, by crowdsourcing information collaboratively we can find out gas prices at stations close by for the best price. 

So notice how all these integrate into a trip? And how all were based on collaboration? Notice the tools are user driven, providing the information we need when we need it in an authentic way?

That is seamless technology use and that is what I love to see happening in classrooms. Talk to your ITF about tools that can help you make this happen for your students. 

Tools to Help Struggling Readers

I'm a reader. I can devour fiction books in hours and nonfiction texts in a day or two at the most. My friends are amazed by my reading abilities. I'm fortunate, a love of reading was instilled early and I have never struggled with reading difficulties.

Some of our students, however, do struggle and the wonder of books are lost because of that struggle. We are a G Suite for Education district, so teachers are always looking for ways to help their readers while using Chromebooks and Google accounts. Below are a few options that may be worth checking out. Let me know what you think and if you have others to add to the list.

Reading:

Newsela

Fluency tutor

Books that grow - paid subscription

Wonderopolis

Epic Books

Closed captioning on Discovery Education Videos

Closed captioning on YouTube Videos

Text to Speech extensions:

Speakit

Announcify - reads aloud websites

Read & Write for Google (free teacher premium account)

Simplify text on screen

Read & Write for Google

Beeline Reader - adds text gradient to help students with tracking

Open Dyslexic Font

Reading Ruler

Audio Books

Librivox - public domain classics read aloud

OverDrive - must have an associated public library card

iPad Accessibility

Scanner & Translator App

I recently had a teacher asking for resources to scaffold instruction for students who are having difficulty reading. She was using an iPad app called Scanner & Translator which allowed any text to be digitized and then read aloud. It's a free app, but the drawback was it would start back at the beginning of the text when students really were needing to be able to select where to start.

So I immediately begin to think about the built-in functionality of iPads for accessibility. There is a plethora of accessibility features and one is called Voice Over. As long as the documents are true PDFs and not just a photo, the iPad will read the text. And yes, you can tap where you want it to read!
My thoughts are to encourage sharing of the PDFs with students through Google Classroom or Google Drive. Students then can open that PDF in iBooks and use Voice Over to read aloud.

I found this great resource online to show how to access it and how it works. It does change the normal touch features of an iPad, but I'm sure students can handle the changes.

Formative Assessments - Checking for Student Understanding

As teachers help their students grow in understanding and learning, they "take a pulse" during lessons to make sure students are understanding and grasping the concepts. The idea, of course, is to  make sure that once students reach the end of a unit of study or the end of a school year, they will show mastery of the content. In the past, teachers would verbally ask the students and most would nod their heads. Oftentimes, when teachers probe deeper they would find the students really didn't understand and would adjust teaching accordingly.

In classrooms of today, teachers have a plethora of devices (whether BYOD environment or 1:1) for students to use to show understanding. There are many choices for teachers as well from Socrative, Nearpod, Kahoot, Quizizz, and goFormative. Even for classrooms without devices, teachers can use their tablet or phone and Plickers.

I met with teachers this week to show them two of the above-mentioned tools: Plickers & Quizziz.

Plickers is super easy to use provided the teacher has a tablet or smartphone available. Go to the site, create your account and add your students. Next, print the cards. The cards can be used for multiple classes, so for those of you in secondary, you can use this tool as well. You can verbally ask questions or embed them in your presentation. When you are ready to ask the question, simply open the app on your device, select the question, and choose scan. You will see the student's name pop-up on your screen and their answer choice will be recorded as you use the camera to scan the cards. Plickers work for multiple choice and true-false questions. You will need to teach your students how to hold the card and not to turn the cards while you are scanning, otherwise their answer will be changed.

Quizizz is one of my all time favorites. Why you ask? Well, if you ever played Kahoot, you know how much fun that is and how it engages students. Students even love to create quizzes for their classmates. Quizizz is similar except, wait for it...the questions display on the student devices! You don't have to project the quiz and this allows students to work through questions in a different order than their peers and at their own pace. Points are still awarded for speed and correct answers. Students also will see memes after each answer. You can search many of the public quizzes or create your own. You also have the choice to duplicate a public quiz and edit to suit the content you are assessing. Quizizz also provides the option to let the students complete the quiz as homework. You select the date and time the homework quiz needs to be completed. And finally, Quizizz is customizable as you can see from this image.

 

Take these tools for a test run with your students and let me know what you think. My presentation is below.

Check out these cool links! (weekly)

• App Recommendations for Mobile Devices

  Find apps by learning activity or device.

  tags: apps ipad edtech Chromebook AppFinder Chrome

• 17 iPad Apps For Elementary School Shared Carts | A Listly List

  tags: ipad apps ipadintheclassroom

• Primary - SchoolScience.co.uk

  Science resources

  tags: science

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Check out these cool links! (weekly)

• Brain Based Learning | Brain Based Experts | Brain Based Learning Forum, Articles from Jensen Learning Certified Experts

  Free articles

  tags: brain_research brain_based_learning brain

• Shake Up Learning Blog - Shake Up Learning

  "By “branching,” I am referring to the option in Google forms to, “go to page based on answer.” You may or may not have noticed this little check box when creating a Google form. This little box can make a big difference, and can offer ways to use Google forms to differentiate for students."

  tags: GAFE googleapps differentiation differentiatedinstruction

• Dragon Quest! A Google Slides Interactive Story - Apps User Group

  "build an interactive “Choose Your Own Adventure” story where each slide offers choices that lead to different parts of the story"

  tags: GAFE googleapps digital storytelling

• Blended Learning | Christensen Institute

  Blended Learning resource center

  tags: blended learning blended learning education blended-learning blendedlearning blended_learning online_learning technology integration

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Check out these cool links! (weekly)

• Gaston - External Channel

  • 11/20/2015

• Group Maker: Automatically Make Groups with Google Sheets | Teacher Tech

  tags: integration GAFE web2.0 technology integration googleapps groupmaker

• Kelly Fitzgerald ~ EdTech Nut: 15 Integration Ideas for Teaching with Maps

  Learn map skills 21st century style

  tags: integration GAFE web2.0 technology integration googleapps maps

• Kelly Fitzgerald ~ EdTech Nut: 20 Integration Ideas for Math Problem Solving

  No more worksheets. Math ideas using technology.

  tags: integration GAFE web2.0 technology integration googleapps math

• Kelly Fitzgerald ~ EdTech Nut: 16 Edtech Integration Ideas for the Science Class

  Digital ideas for student devices before/during/after science experiements

  tags: integration science GAFE makerspaces web2.0 technology integration googleapps

• Kelly Fitzgerald ~ EdTech Nut: 18 EdTech Integration Ideas for the Language Arts Classroom

  Writing ideas using digital resources

  tags: language arts technology integration web2.0 gafe

• Maker Education - About Maker Education

  Resources for maker spaces and beyond.

  tags: makerspaces makered maker education MakerSpace CardboardChallenge

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.