NEW FOR 2020!!!!

LineWize will be used to help manage student use of devices in the classroom. Teachers in all grades K-6 can begin using LineWiz as soon as school begins. 

In order to use LineWize:

• Click on the LineWize gateway tile 
• Teachers will log in using the Google Sign On Button using district username and password.
• Once teachers have their learners join their Google Classrooms LineWize will automatically sync their Google Classrooms rosters.

Click Here to learn how to use LineWize 

PlayPosit Academy

New for this year, PlayPosit announced their brand new, self-paced PlayPosit training course, PlayPosit Academy.

It’s finally here and ready for Eastern Lancaster County School District instructors and staff to use! PlayPosit Academy will teach instructors the basics of Playposit in PlayPosit. Click on the link above to learn more.

As was previously announced for Elanco, YouTube is now restricted for students to only those videos that have been previously approved by Elanco Teachers and Administrators. Teachers continue to have unrestricted access to YouTube and can approve videos and channels for everyone signed in to our Elanco organizational account. YouTube Channels are for individuals or business to post large number of videos for their organization. As a teacher, you can also create your own channel for videos that you create or those that you want to bookmark.  Therefore, you can create and approve your own teacher channel so those videos are available to your students under the new restrictions.

Directions on how to approve YouTube videos for students to watch: (from GSuite Support)

1. Sign in to YouTube with your Elanco Google account.
2. Enter what you’re searching for and then filter the results by videos or channels.
3. Click the video or channel that you want to approve. See images below.
4. Choose one or both of these options:
   • Below the video player, click Approve to approve the video for everyone.
   • At the top of the channel page, click Approve to approve the channel for everyone.
5. Note: Approving videos and channels does not affect what videos are found in YouTube searches or recommendations (for example, the home page or related videos).

For the rest of the school year, our district will be piloting an online video editor called WeVideo. WeVideo comes with many of the same tools as Windows MovieMaker but with more features and capabilities. WeVideo is completely web-based and allows users to collaboratively work on a video project. 

Perhaps one of the most exciting features is the ability to have learners green screening using their Chromebooks right in the classroom using WeVideo’s “Color Keying” feature.

Make sure you check out the videos below to learn more about WeVideo and what it has to offer.

What is WeVideo?

How to Edit your Timeline:

How to use the Storyboard Editing Mode:

How to green/blue screen in your classroom with WeVideo:

• To help you get started, WeVideo has their latest Getting Started Guide to WeVideo for Education guide available to us.  Also, the WeVideo Education Resource Hub has many great ideas for projects and lesson plans.

Getting Started

We are very interested in teacher and student feedback of the program. If the feedback of the pilot is positive, there is a good possibility of purchasing a subscription to the program for our district for the next school year and beyond.

If you are interested in setting up a teacher and/or student accounts for your classroom, please contact Tim Leister at the secondary campus or Adam Geiman at the Elementary schools. Either of us can quickly create a project group for your class and send you a custom join link to be sent to all of your students to set up their accounts.

Google Earth – Carmen San Diego is Back

Where in the World is Carmen San Diego? If you have this song stuck in your head now and are recalling childhood memories of solving clues, learning about geography, cultures while trying to catch the elusive globe traveling criminal then have no fear she is back. Google is launching a new caper in Google Earth called “The Crown Jewels Caper”.

Video Writing Prompts by John Spencer   

Looking for ways to spice up writing in your classroom? Looking for resources to help your learners with writing? Make sure you check out John Spencer’s Video Writing Prompts website. Here you will find short videos giving descriptive and imaginative ready-to-go writing prompts on 9 genres as well as a link to his YouTube Channel.  

 PlayPosit

PlayPosit is an interactive video platform that easily allows teachers to transform passive video and audio into interactive experiences. Learners will experience personalized learning pathways when participating in PlayPosit bulbs. Research has shown that interactive video is three times as effective as standard video; learners explore, analyze and apply concepts at their own pace in a flipped or blended setting. Learners receive live feedback to increase long-term retention, which triples learning efficacy over standard video. Teachers gain immediate, easily-digestible data on learner performance to effectively remediate concepts and maximize instruction time. Susan Germer and Ben Levy created PlayPosit in their classrooms with their students making every aspect of this platform built to engage students and make teachers’ lives easier and more effective.

Here is a step-by-step guide for accessing PlayPosit and building fantastic bulbs:

• Getting Started Using PlayPosit
• Finding, Copying, & Assigning Premade Bulbs
• Bulb Building Video Tutorials
• How to auto-enroll students (for K-6 Teachers not using Canvas)
• Assigning Learner Made Bulbs.
• Learner Made Bulbs for Projects
• Preview of PlayPosit 3.0

Mrs. Blankley’s Language Arts class participated in the 2018 Global Read Aloud. They read the book A Boy Called Bat by Elanco K. Arnold. Mrs. Blankley’s class teamed up with a third-grade classroom from Manitoba, Canada each week via Flipgrid to discuss the chapters that were read that week. Mrs. Blankley decided to use the VR Google Expedition Kit to take her students to Manitoba, Canada so her students would have a better understanding of where the class was from. It was amazing to learn about the wildlife from that area. They were shocked that polar bears and moose lived near our friends from Canada. It was a wonderful way for the students to connect in a different way to the other class.