Mark your calendars for Google’s Education on Air conference, hosted May 8 and 9. You can check out a number of keynote speakers and a diverse range of sessions for learners of all levels. The Google Apps suite is a versatile, feature-rich productivity, creativity, and collaboration suite, that all of our students and teachers can utilize. Please consider taking some time to learn more about how Google Apps can ignite teaching and learning in your classroom!
If you participate in any of the sessions, email me and let me know what you’ve learned! And you will then be awarded with a Google Education on Air digital badge! 🙂
What’s a badge, you ask?! Haven’t joined Credly yet? What are you waiting for? Display what you’ve learned and the ideas you’ve applied to teaching and learning this year? Celebrated you!
It’s the perfect time to have your students compose and share their creative writing! Storybird is one way to support students’ literary creations. With Storybird, students can build poetry, longform, or chapter book creations. Sets of stunning illustrations will inspire students to include creative details in their writing. I can help you set up your classroom accounts and show you how to manage student projects. Learn more about how Storybird is celebrating Poetry Month! There’s even a #dailylark challenge so your students can participate in the literary fun!
Digital citizenship lessons in grades 1-6 have begun this spring during computer lab special. It is always exciting for me to spend time with students and learn about the ways they’re using digital technologies to create, communicate, and collaborate in their personal lives. Through these lessons emerge important conversations that focus on safe and appropriate use of technology, respecting the rights of others, and crafting a digital reputation of which we can be proud! Our lesson materials are from Common Sense Media. You can see the full scope of the lessons they offer here. Remember, while it’s nice to offer these lessons in isolation to give students more direct instruction in these topics, it’s up to us as the adults in their lives to model and talk about respectful, empowering online behavior whenever we use technology with our students to support their learning!
Googly Goodness
Many of you were interested in learning more about Google Classroom to use as a platform for sharing digital resources with students during rotational learning classes next year. Click here to access resources where you can learn more about the features of Google Classroom and how it can support your work with students. Please email me to arrange a time when I can meet with you and/or your team to show you what this tool can to!
Looking for a quick start guide for Google Forms? Look no further!
Well, I thought Spring had arrived, but… maybe not…
If you’re snowed in tomorrow (bah!) looking for something fun to do, why not read this latest edition of Tech Tidbits and check out some of the resources within? Enjoy!
Next Friday, March 13, is Digital Learning Day, a day each year where we celebrate the ways technology can enhance teaching and learning and provide students with agency and voice in the classroom.
We’d love if you could share your digital learning activities on the official DLD website by completing this form! I’d also love to highlight the work you and your students are doing on this blog, so email me with the details/summary of activities and I’ll spread the word!
Perhaps your students will be blogging next week, or using Plickers or Socrative or Kahoot! for formative assessment in the classroom, or are creating digital stories using Storybird or sharing their learning via Google Slides or PowerPoint. Maybe they’re engaged in literature circle discussions via Wikispaces or connecting with one another in Edmodo or Google Classroom! Maybe they’re trying some activities from the ConnectED Are your students reading their favorite stories online via Raz Kids or BookFlix. No matter what the activity, there is surely something worth sharing with your school community on Digital Learning Day!
Pete & C was held this week and there were a number of great resources shared for all content areas and educators. I attempted to compile some of the highlights of sessions offered to share with you. Peruse the resources below and/or check out the main session listings for additional topics and resources. Let me know how I can help you plan to incorporate some of these ideas into your classes!
Principal Brad Gustafson shared this exciting activity board for the month of February to celebrate “I Love to Read Month,” and I wanted to pass it along to you with the hope that you could plan to complete one or more of the activities on the board! The activities were proposed by various teachers and admin from Brad’s PLN. They incorporate a number of different technologies and can help enhance students’ literacy experiences!Do not be intimidated by the tools listed- if you are interested in one of the literacy activities, please contact me to plan for how we can engage students with the tasks in your classrooms. We can plan for alternate digital tools if the ones listed are unavailable or unfamiliar to you. Make it about the literacy learning, not about the tech component! This is not just for language arts teachers!! As Brad says,
We are striving to facilitate student-centered connections between authors, educators, and classrooms.
Please email me if you’d like to complete an activity (or two or three!) with your students! I will keep a master board and check off completed Elanco activities. Here’s hoping we can call Bingo!
It’s a new year, and we’re settling back into the swing of things, so why not try just one new thing, one new way to incorporate instructional technology into teaching and learning in your classroom? Challenge yourself!
Think about your professional growth goals, and how your goal statements are incorporating the district’s Spartan Digital Competencies. Which areas are you most in need? How can we support you in your professional learning?
Want some ideas? Read the ideas shared below, then contact me to set up a time to meet and discuss and/or for me to assist you and your students in your classrooms!
Help students share what they’ve learned!
Edublogs can be used not only as a blog space for writing, but as a digital portfolio space. Students can share projects they’ve completed, can summarize key ideas and main takeaways from content area lessons, and more. With the ability to embed multimedia into posts, the possibilities are limitless! Students can then view peers’ projects, and you can even connect with other classrooms to promote cross-school collaboration. Your students will be thrilled with the feedback received by an authentic audience!
Write inspiring digital stories!
Using digital storytelling tools, students can share their writing using both their own illustrations (Little Bird Tales) or with gorgeous artwork in the Storybird galleries. I can help you set up accounts for students and intro you and your students to the applications. They’re both easy to use, perfect for even our youngest writers!
Teachers can create classes in Discovery Education and assign students Discovery Education content and assignments. One of students’ favorite creation tools is BoardBuilder – where they can combine multimedia and text to share what they’ve learned about topics. Students can search through the quality videos, images, and articles in Discovery Education and add that content to their boards. Here is our Discovery Education resources page to help you learn more.
Earn and claim your badges!
Elanco is using Credly to acknowledge the efforts of our staff members who challenge themselves to incorporate instructional technology into teaching and learning practices. Be sure to read more about Credly and how you can earn and proudly display your badges! Grab some today!
Starting in the next two weeks, students in grades 1-6 will participate in the Hour of Code activities offered through code.org and Tynker. Students will be introduced to the tutorials during their computer lab special times and complete activities throughout the remainder of the year. You can try out the activities yourself by visiting learn.code.org! The Frozen-inspired activity is especially engaging! There are natural connections to mathematics and science curricular concepts throughout all of the Hour of Code activities.
Students will be eager to continue working on their programming activities and many are really motivated by the challenges of creating with computer programming languages. Please encourage your students to continue working on coding activities during their free choice time in the classroom if possible. You can also emphasize the importance of computer science skills and the reasons why we’re working to develop even our youngest students as critical, computational thinkers. Here are other resources from Code.org to use to inspire your students.
Please email Lyn ASAP with the names of any students in your homeroom that did not return the parent permission form to have an Hour of Code account created for them. They will simply engage with the activities without logging in or saving their progress.
