Technology Tailgate

Ms. Mitchell shared this blog with me. It provides a lot of great tech tools! One that she recently got an email about is called OpenEd.

This site provides videos, games, and activties that are aligned with the common core. It is a great website! Take the time to check out the blog and this website they suggest!

Mr. Nussbaum

Mrs. Taylor shared, MrNussbaum.com, which is another great website for math games. He also has Language Arts, Social Studies, and Science activities. He has his site leveled from Pre-K-6th grade. The Language Arts activities are really good and resemble what the students will see when they take online tests. These activities would be great whole group on the SmartBoard or used in a center. Most of the language arts activities are mixed skills, but he has added a new section that offers skill specific activties.

Website Share!

Mrs. Barber shared some great websites with me today.

The first one is ICT Games. There are math games and reading games. One thing that is really awesome about this website is it shows how to do math on a number line! I know this is something students have been struggling with. This site offers great practice for that.

Another great one she found is IXL Math and English. This website has math and reading activities as well that are broken down by grade and skill.

Scholastic Story Starters

This is another great creation from Scholastic. Students can go to Story Starters and choose between adventure, sci-fi, fantasy, and scrambler. When they click the one they want, they will then put in their grade (this goes from K-6), then the scramble machine will select a prompt for them. Once the prompt is selected they can choose to write in a notebook, as a letter, a newspaper article, or a postcard. These can then be saved or printed!

QR Codes

This year you all have a QR code by your door for parents to get linked directly to your website. While at the technology showcase, we got a few more ideas of how to use QR codes in your classroom. One school had their students create summaries for books in their school library and in classroom libraries using Google Docs. They then used the link to create a QR code. When students scanned the QR code with their iPod touch or iPad, they were given a summary of the book. Another GREAT idea from this same school was to put the QR code on the bottom of a math homework worksheet. The code could be linked to a learnzillion video or some other website that would help parents understand the math strategies you are trying to teach!

Click here to go to a QR generator!

or you can scan the QR code with your smartphone or iPad!

Figure This! Math Callenge for Families

 Figure This!

This is an excellent math site that provides information and activities for families. These are real world activities and math challenges that parents can do at home with their kids. There is also a section to show parents how to help their children with their math homework. It provides an explanation of why we aren't teaching math the way it was taught when they were in school!

WolframAlpha

This is a great search engine for comparing 2 things. It will put the information side by side which makes it easy for students to compare. Here is an example I did on Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy.

County Level Trainings

District Wide trainings available in MyLearningPlan

The digital learning team has posted five upcoming trainings open to anyone.
 Each workshop has thirty slots and will begin at 3:45 and end at 5:45 pm in the
West Campus Computer Lab.  In order to earn credit each participant will need
to attend 3 sessions.

Oct 10 - Google Basics

Nov 7 - Edmodo

Jan 16 - Web 2.0 Tools

Feb 25 - iPad Apps for the Elementary Classroom

Mar 25 - Advanced Google

Visit MyLearningPlan to sign up!

Conferapp

Jennifer Barber told me about this AWESOME app that you can use to keep notes on your students during small group time. It allows you to upload your students, then type in notes on your iPad. It also has an option where you could share the notes if you needed to with another teacher. (For example: Tam if she works with your students.) Watch the short video to see how it works. I hate to be redundant but it is AWESOME!

e-Books

Blog Assignment

In one of my graduate school classes I was given the assignment to "post about best practices in use of blogs in K12." One of my favorite things to do is read education blogs. I like to see the new tools that people have found and I also like to read their opinions on what is going on in education. I went to Google and searched this assignment topic. One article that popped up was "The Honor Roll: 50 Must-Read Education IT Blogs," which I thought would be a good start. I decided I would look through these top blogs to see what made them stand out from the rest.



I clicked on the first blog which was titled 2 cents Worth. The author of this blog is David Warlick. I immediately was entranced by his blog and spent at least an hour reading through his past posts and the comments from other readers. It wasn't because his blog was flashy and had pretty colors, it is actually very plain. It was his choice of topics that had my attention. He wrote about things that teachers want to know about and that will help teachers become better at what they do. Which led me to understand one of the best practices in blogs...posting about topics that motivate teachers to be better. It's not always about posting a new tool that will excite the kids and make the teacher's job easier, but it's also about motivating teachers to want to do better! One of his posts was titled, "It's not about the technology." This post immediately got my attention, but what he was saying was, it's not about the technology that we choose to use, but more about what the kids get from it and what they ultimately learn.

A couple others on this list, The Cool Cat Teacher and 21st Century Principal also do the same thing. They make you think about what you are doing as an educator and what you can do to be better.


A blog of a different kind, and one many people already know about, is freetech4teachers.com.  This is my go-to blog if I am looking for any new digital learning tool for my students or for the teachers at my school. This blog is written by Richard Byrne.  He is always on the search for great digital tools and posts new ones each day. He only posts tools and websites that have substance and I know I can trust the things he posts. That is another best practice for blogs. If you are giving ideas for digital tools, be sure they work well and have substance. If not, people will not trust the things you post.

PBL: Explained

For the Teachers

Here is an awesome resource that aligns with the common core and is broken up by students' RIT scores. I don't know if some of you have already seen it, but there are tons of great things on this site. If you click "Common Core Curriculum Ladders", then on your particular subject, there are activities broken up based on student RIT scores. There is also a lot of good ideas under "Instructional Strategies: New Ideas and Old Favorites."

http://www.fortheteachers.org/

Google Tidbit: Research Features

Friday's Google Tidbit: Research Features

Do you or teachers in your school use Google Search to find information and then use Google Docs to type the information for a research paper?  Why not flip the process?  Type the paper and search within it.  Here's how:

When you are in your document and get to a word that you want more information about, right click and use Research from the menu to look up the word in Google.

Once you have clicked on Research, the Research panel will be open, which contains basic information at the top and Google search results at the bottom.

If you select a page from the Web Results, you will have 3 options:  Preview, Insert Link or Cite.

If you select Cite, 2 things will happen: (1) a small footnote number will be placed in your document wherever your cursor is and (2) a Citation will be placed at the end of your document.

Sample Number: 

Sample Bibliography Citation:

If you want to adjust the format of your citation to MLA, APA or Chicago, you can do that by selecting your default format.  Simply click the drop-down arrow below the search bar. Use the drop-down menus to choose from MLA, APA, or Chicago citation formatting, and customize other settings (like image filtering preferences for images or language settings for the dictionary). Your selected citation format is applicable to citations for web results, images, quotations and article citations.

HAPPY RESEARCHING!

THANKS TO KELLY SIEGERT FOR SHARING THIS TIDBIT SHE PICKED UP AT NCTIES

There's an App for That!!

Here is a list of apps worth checking out. I will update this list as people send them to me or I find them!

Reading 

Collins Big Cat Stories

Cambugs

Reading Monster

Reading Raven

WWF

Math 

Native Numbers

Writing 

Jumbled Sentences

Misc.

Air Sketch

 We Want Apps

Daily 5 Padlet

Created with Padlet

Google Safe Search

Friday's Google Tidbit: SafeSearch

Recently there has been a lot of discussion about Google Images in our office, so we wanted to share just a few things with you that we hope you will share with your teachers.  These tips can help to keep everyone safe and help make using the internet at school a positive learning experience.

Google has a SafeSearch feature that works great with images.  SafeSearch is automatically applied if the student is using a Chromebook, but for other devices (desktop, laptop or iPad), the student will have to turn the safe search feature on.  While this will not deter the student who is intentionally looking for inappropriate images, it will help with those who stumble upon these images by mistake. 

Directions for turning on SafeSearch on a computer:

1. Go to Google's image search: http://images.google.com (or just click images from the home screen)
2. Once on the image search, type in something safe (like apples) just to get to the search results page. From there, you will see in the top right corner the option to turn on SafeSearch. It actually says Filter explicit results.  Choosing to filter actually turns on Safe Search.

Once you have chosen SafeSearch, you will see this: 

Directions for turning on SafeSearch on an iPad:

1. Go to Google, search for something, and you will see a little wrench in the top right corner of the search results page.  Tap it, and you will see SafeSearch in the dropdown menu.
2. If you select SafeSearch, you will see there are 3 settings: Off, Moderate, and Strict. If you set it to Strict your iPad will have SafeSearch turned on - this setting should be remembered on the device.

Note: If you are in the Chrome app, logged into your Google account, and turn this feature on, the setting will be remembered.  For other browsers, this not the case.

MClass: Reading 3D Instructional Resources List

Books:

Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction--Isabel L. Beck

Phonemic Awareness Activities for Early Reading Success--Wiley Blevins

The Daily Five--Gail Bourshey and Joan Moser

The Cafe Book--Gail Bourshey and Joan Moser

Making the Most of Small Groups: Differentiated for All--Debbie Diller

When Readers Struggle: Teaching that Works--Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell

Reading With Meaning--Debbie Miller

Guided Reading Basics--Lori Jamison Rog

Small Group Reading Instruction: A Differentiated Teaching Model for Beginning and Struggling Readers--Beverly Tyner

Websites:

Florida Center for Reading Research (FCRR.org)

Reading Rockets

The Free Reading Resource Center and Community for Early Literacy Teachers

U. of Washington, Fluent Reader

Not Enough Computers?

I know it gets frustrating only having 1-2 computers for your students to use in your classroom. I found this on freetech4teachers.com. This blogger gives ways to use your 1 computer in the most efficient way!

Tech Alternatives for the One Computer Classroom

So you have been ordered to integrate technology in you classroom. Only problem is, you only have one computer. There is light at the end of the tunnel.  Here are 10 ways you can use your one computer as an invigorating learning tool. 

1. Presentation Tool- The first (and simplest way) to use your computer is to present notes or information to your students. To do this project your computer screen onto a presentation screen or smart board. If you don’t have one a dry erase board works just as good. This also requires the aid of an LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) projector. The best way to do this is for the teacher to walk the room explaining the notes and making sure students are on task while a student works the keyboard.
• Example- Present a power point on the steps of solving a quadratic equation.
2. Game Show Host- There are a ton of interactive games, note taking techniques, and simulation activities on the internet. Allow one student to direct activities projected on the screen or fill in a graphic organizer on the dry erase board and another student to make the movements on the computer. Students can be grouped to increase competition.  
• Example- Go to http://www.schooltimegames.com/ and search for games based a lesson you will be teaching.  Divide students into groups of 3-4 and allow them to compete against each other in a game. One student will operate the computer and be the score keeper.
3. Competition Tool- Play the games or competition listed above (in #2). However, make it a competition between classes to get the whole class involved. The results can be calculated on the board or tracked using an excel spreadsheet with a bar graph.
• Example-  Have students compete to identify the battles of the Civil War of the parts of the body onwww.purposegames.com
4. Learning Center- Setup learning centers in your classroom. Create an activity where groups of students move through various learning centers with one of the centers being a computer learning center.

• Example-Create learning stations about the stages of mitosis. Have a one station where students take notes, have another station where they color diagrams on the stages of mitosis, another stage where they interact with a simulation on the stages of mitosis (such as http://www.cellsalive.com/mitosis.htm)  , another where they create a model of mitosis, and another for assessments.

5. Computer as the Peak Activity (Pre-search, Research, Post-search) - Have a group assignment where students have a before the computer part (or parts) of the assignment, on the computer part of the assignment, and an after the computer part(s). This allows each group to prepare for what they will do on the computer as well as evaluate what they did while on the computer.

• Example- Students prepare to write a debate on abortion by writing a thesis and creating an outline, get on the computer and research information about cell phones in school usinghttp://idebate.org/debatabase , and then use the research information to formulate their debate.

6. Jigsaw Puzzle- By now I’m sure you’ve heard of the jigsaw method. It breaks a lesson down into parts and groups of students work on different parts of the lesson. Each part of the lesson will equal one piece of the puzzle. One of those pieces will be a computer group.
• Example- When teaching a lesson on China, I jig sawed the lesson into a language group, a culture group, a religion group, a history group, a customs group and a geography group. While the other groups used the textbook and other resource books , I allowed the geography group to use my computer to map famous places using Google Earthhttp://www.google.com/earth/index.html
7. Students-Teacher- Allow students to become a specialist on a particular topic and they can create a PowerPoint or other activity to teach the rest of the class about the topic
• Example- As an end of the year review, students can pick a war (i.e. World War I) and create a short 3 slide PowerPoint on the topic to present to the class. Other students can be busied doing their research in a textbook or creating a multiple choice quiz about their PowerPoint.
8. Post Master-Allow students to work on an activity at their desk. When they get their part correct, they can go type it into a master list or Power Point projected on the board.
• Example- This is a great “Get to Know Your Classmates” activity for the beginning of the year. Have each student come up and make one PowerPoint slide about themselves and present a master PowerPoint show entitled “Getting to Mrs./Mr. ___________’s class”
1. For fun make it a quiz, where the student puts a weird fact about themselves and the class has to guess who it is.
9. Scavenger Hunt- Have students complete an in class scavenger hunt that allows students to get on the computer for only part of the answers.
• Example- Have students answer questions in the different resources in the room (textbook, encyclopedia, classroom books) about the Civil Rights Movement and for one of the questions have them listen to Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech on  http://www.history.com/speeches
10. Tutor- Use it for struggling students for remediation or enrichment for early finishers. This is also a great for students who need some extra credit.
• Example-A student who finishes an assignment early and needs a few extra points to improve their grade can create a comic strip on the current lesson using Toon Doo. http://www.toondoo.com/Home.do?param=log&msg=1  

Kimberly Scott has more than six years of teaching experience. This includes middle and high school, both in the traditional and online environment. She has done numerous trainings, designed several innovative curriculums, and developed end-of-course assessments. She specializes in innovative teaching techniques, curriculum design, and integrating technology in the classroom. For more information, visit her blog www.ingeniousteaching.blogspot.com

JCS Tech Leaders Blog--Friday Google Tidbit

Google Forms has a new look!

You can now collaborate with others when creating a Form just like you can with Docs, Sheets, and Slides!  Need to work with another teacher on a Form?   You can now work on the Form together at the same time--include the chat on that, as well.

One of the biggest changes is where the data will be stored after a Form is submitted.  In the old look, a Spreadsheet is automatically created.  Now, you have the option to choose the response destination.   You can create a new Spreadsheet (like in the old version), place the data in a newsheet in an existing Spreadsheet, or you can just keep the responses in Forms.

Check out more details here.

RIT Sites

Mr. Mahoney shared these from the meeting with Angela. They provide games online that are indexed by a child's MAP/RIT score. Pretty awesome stuff!

MATH

http://www.linnmar.k12.ia.us/schools/westfield/westweb/NWEA_Math_RIT_Sites.html

http://www.sowashco.k12.mn.us/ro/pages/studentlinks/map/

READING

http://www.sowashco.k12.mn.us/ro/pages/studentlinks/map/reading.htm

Main Page for MAP for Washington County Schools (kentucky) - links at bottom break math activities by grade (elem)

http://www.webster.k12.ky.us/About/NWEAMAP/tabid/2068/Default.aspx

Common Core Ready

Here is a site that Mrs. Poland sent me. She loves using it with her math class. There are great worksheets, videos, and games that align with the common core! I know math teachers are having a hard time finding things that match up with the new way of teaching so this is GREAT!

Padlet (Wallwisher)

Padlet, which used to be Wallwisher, is awesome! Basically it is a wall where you can put links and documents. It would be perfect to put all the websites and documents you need for the day. Below is an example!

Created with Wallwisher

Google/Gaggle Integration

Google/Gaggle Integration

Elementary & Middle School

Our Google/Gaggle integration is complete!  Our 3-8 students now have a Google Drive account that is also associated with their Gaggle accounts.  What does this mean?  If a student logs in on a Google Chromebook using his complete Gaggle email address (epri8727@jcsnc2.org), the student will be logged into the device and three tabs will open in the Chrome browser:

• student Gaggle dashboard (with the student already logged in to his Gaggle account)
• Student Online Connections page
• student Google search page (with the student already logged in to his Google account)

On a desktop, a 3-8 student can login to his new Google account at Google's homepage (using the complete email address) or at www.google.com/a/jcsnc2.org (using just the username).

Students' names will appear in the autopopulate directory so teachers can build a student email group.

Please note that once in Google, Gmail will not be functional as we will continue to use Gaggle's mail services for the rest of this year.

* The Google/Gaggle integration has no impact on high school students.

23 Microsoft Free Teaching Tools

http://elearningindustry.com/23-microsoft-free-teaching-tools-for-educators-education

Mouse Mischief

Take a look at this great way to allow students to ALL interact with your Smart Board!

Mouse Mischief

Big6

Safe Search Sites

Here are a few search sites that are great for kids to use!

Ask Kids: http://www.askkids.com

Kid Rex: http://www.kidrex.org

Yahoo! Kids: http://www.kids.yahoo.com

Google SafeSearch for Kids: http://www.safesearchkids.com/google-for-kids.html

Fact Monster: http://www.factmonster.com

Teacher Gaming Network

Mike Kessler will be leading a workshop on the Teacher Gaming Network.   If you are interested or know someone who might be interested, please contact Diana Freeman for details.

25 Signs you Might be a 21st Century Educator

The JCS Tech Leaders put this on their blog. Very interesting read! See how many of these fit your classroom! 25 Signs you Might be a 21st Century Educator

Take Book Reports to Another Level

This is a great resource provided by Scholastic. Students can look up book reviews written by kids their own age in other parts of the country. They can also write their own book review. What a great way to collaborate with kids in other states! You can search by grade and by genre. Reviews are written by students  K-12.

Social Studies Links

Here are some great links stolen from Free Technology for Teachers.

Scholastic has created an interactive Underground Railroad. It follows a slave from Virginia all the way to freedom in Ohio. It is a great resource and it provides a teachers guide that goes with each stop along the way. Definitely worth checking out!

This site is also created by Scholastic. Students will be able to be President for the day. They will create a budget for the country. Once they have finished creating their budget, they then will defend what they created.

Listen and Read is also through Scholastic. There are 54 non-fiction books that can be read with your students. These stories can be used by the students independently or they can be projected on your Smart Board! The stories I clicked on look to be geared towards lower elementary (K-2).

Interesting Article--The Use and Abuse of Technology

The Use and Abuse of Technology

I came across this article and thought it was a good read. If you get a chance, read it and let me know what you think!

http://kathycassidy.com/2013/01/05/the-use-and-abuse-of-technology-in-the-classroom/

Dropbox