Author: Tim Leister

Make-a-Movie with BrainPop

Tim Leister Creation, Resources, Tech Tidbits 0 Comment

Hey edugeek Moby!

Brain POP via Compfight

Just announced: “the launch of Make-a-Movie, the newest addition to our suite of creation tools. Make-a-Movie empowers teachers and students to make their own BrainPOP-style movies, building scenes with images from our library or their own drawings. Moviemakers can then record narration, manipulate backgrounds, add cool transitions, and begin with a letter the way BrainPOP movies do.” – from BrainPop.com

Visit the Get Started with Make-a-Movie educators page for a preview with step-by-step guides and screencasts.

Also visit the BrainPop Blog to explore the December recap of the new games and movies that are now available at BrainPOP. For more information about how to utilize BrainPop, visit the Elanco Elem. Instructional Tech Info 2016-17 document.

 

 

Football by the Numbers

Tim Leister Resources, Tech Tidbits , , , 0 Comment

Super Bowl XLIX Joe Parks via Compfight

It’s Super Bowl week. Here’s a fun and interactive way to have students experiment with STEM concepts, such as angle and velocity. A fun way for students in grades 3-8 to play with the science of football.

“EA SPORTS, Madden NFL, the NFL Players Association and Discovery Education are proud to introduce EA SPORTS Madden NFL: Football by the Numbers, an engaging… educational program designed to harness students’ love for football to engage them in key math and science concepts.” — http://footballbythenumbers.discoveryeducation.com/

In the football interactive, students are “presented with on-the-field scenarios and challenges faced by the NFL’s best players and coaches, it’s your (students’) job to make the informed, real-time decisions necessary to win the game! Design strategies for running the most effective play by using your math and science knowledge, and then it’s up to you to make the call.”

Click here to Launch the Interactive.

Students first set the angle and velocity, then…. get to see if the quarterback completes the pass.

 

Farewell & Thank You!

Tim Leister Uncategorized 0 Comment

Farewell & Thank You!

As you may have heard, I’ve resigned from my position as instructional technology coach in Elanco in early January. In addition to spending time at home with my kiddos, I hope to develop my educational consulting endeavors.

Thank you so much to all of you who have included me in your classrooms and project design work and who have attended any of the Wired Wednesdays or other professional development sessions I’ve offered. It’s been such a pleasure working with all of you and your students!

I will miss everyone at Elanco and wish you continued success and happiness. Continue challenging yourselves, and don’t be afraid to take risks with technology! You can’t break it! If it’s going to help students collaborate, communicate, and create in meaningful ways, give it a try! Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you ever need anything! Email me anytime at hiltelemtech@gmail.com.

I’ll look to the #elancosd hashtag and your blogs to check out the innovative and exciting learning happening in your classrooms!

— Lyn Hilt

Elanco Gateway for Teachers

Tim Leister Tech Tidbits , 0 Comment

pages-on-mobileJust as the Elanco Elementary Students have had a district links homepage for the past school year, now a similar page is also available for teachers using the Elanco Gateway pages. All of the important links that have been placed on the teacher symbaloo page for the past several years are also posted on the new Elanco Teacher Gateway. Each elementary building has their own teacher site:

The page has been designed to have a quick links row at the top for those most frequently used sites. A ‘content’ section follows with district and educational resources, then a ‘district resources’ section with many of the district office employment links. Teachers may want to consider making this new website their homepage on their district computer.

The Elanco Elem Teacher Links Symbaloo will begin to be phased out after the 2016-17 school year.

The are a number of reasons for creating a new teacher links page using the Elanco Gateway, including:

  1. The page loads much faster,
  2. The page is less likely to be down (The Symbaloo website has been experiencing more and more stability problems as of late),
  3. The page has no advertisements,
  4. The page is much more mobile friendly by better scaling to a variety of screen sizes (see image). Teachers may want to bookmark the site on their mobile phones for quick references to district links,.

A big thanks to Lindsay Sessions in the tech department for all her hard work creating all of the tiles on the pages. If you have any suggestions, notice any incorrect links, or need tiles added, edited, or deleted, please submit a tech work order, or contact Tim Leister.

Kiddle – A Search Engine for Kids

Tim Leister Digital Citizenship, Google Apps , 0 Comment

kiddleEven the best school district Internet content filters will sometimes allow inappropriate content in the search results for teachers and students. Kiddle is a new customized search that uses the Google search engine, created just for young kids. Using Kiddle will allow students to still utilize the search power of Google without receiving some of the unnecessary information that comes along with their search results.

Below, you’ll read the benefits of using Kiddle with young students as described on the Kiddle About Page.

1) Safe search: sites appearing in Kiddle search results satisfy family friendly requirements, as we filter sites with explicit or deceptive content. 
2) Kids-oriented results: the boxes below illustrate how Kiddle returns results for each query (in the order shown):

  • Safe sites and pages written specifically for kids. Handpicked and checked by Kiddle editors. Typically, results 1-3.
  • Safe, trusted sites that are not written specifically for kids, but have content written in a simple way, easy for kids to understand. Handpicked and checked by Kiddle editors. Typically, results 4-7.
  • Safe, famous sites that are written for adults, providing expert content, but are harder for kids to understand. Filtered by Google safe search. Typically, results 8 onwards.

3) Big thumbnails: most Kiddle search results are illustrated with big thumbnails, which makes it easier to scan the results…..
4) Large Arial font in Kiddle search results provides better readability for kids.
5) Privacy: we don’t collect any personally identifiable information, and our logs are deleted every 24 hours. Please read our full privacy statement here.

To make Kiddle easily accessible for students, an icon has been added on the new Elanco student gateway homepages (here’s Blue Ball Elem) with the Google Search icon. googlesearch

This free resources might be one to share with parents as well. Keep in mind that as with any search engine, there is no 100% guarantee that all search results yielded are child-friendly. Continue to be vigilant about assigning meaningful online work for your students and supervising their activity.

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