New Tools

You know I’m not a fan of adopting new tech tools just for the sake of it, however I recognize that lots of new stuff is coming out each day that may make the good work that we do with students each day easier, more efficient etc. Below are a few bits worth checking out that perhaps can enhance learning within your class or your workflow in general.

Read&Write web: highlighting, text to speech, predictive text, converts pdfs and images to text (works well with gMath) on Google docs and now slides

Unroll.Me: Instantly see a list of all your subscription emails. Unsubscribe easily from whatever you don’t want.

Hypothes.is: Collaborative annotation

Google Classroom Notifications

Questions arose from last weeks PD related to notifications. Below is an overview of notifications and how to turn them off.

By default, you receive an email notification when any of the following events occur:

Someone adds a comment to your post.
An assignment is created for one of your classes.
An assignment is returned to you.
One of your teachers changes a grade or posts an announcement.
A teacher sends a private comment to you regarding an assignment.

To change your email notifications setting:

Go to classroom.google.com.
At the top, click Menu .
Click Settings (you might need to scroll down).
Check or uncheck the Send email notifications box.

Lunchtime PD: Google Classroom This Thursday

On Thursday, September 22 at 12:40 outside of the IT Office there will be an open-share session related to effective digital communication with students using the wagon wheel protocol. Bring your tablet and be ready to open up your Google Classrooms with the following two questions in mind:

What can I share that has worked well when digitally communicating with my classes?
What can I improve to make students experience navigating my class a bit more effective?

Classroom Stream PD

Below is a self paced learning opportunity. In step two choose (beginner, intermediate or advanced) based on your previous experience using the Classroom stream. Finally if you would like to begin with the end in mind click straight to step 4 and take the automatically graded quiz first.

Win a Fan- Share Evidence of Inquiry

It’s hot! We have a cool prize… your own portable fan!

Want it?………It’s yours if you can come up with the most examples of visible inquiry by the end of today!

Put examples in the comments, share photos w/ Liz or come and write them on the write board outside the IT Office.

Timing is Everything

When communicating in general, timing factors into how your message is received. Take this digital and time can mean the difference between your message being seen at all and consumed the way you ideally want it to. When communicating with students, the schedule feature in Google Classroom can support directing students attention. Some examples are below:

-Schedule an announcement or assignment to post during a specific time when your class is in session. This helps students see it on top as their first message in the stream, and also helps from you interrupting your fellow colleagues when you are connecting with students during their class on your prep period.

-Purposeful place the due dates of assignments or questions when you are prepared to enter information into PowerTeacher Gradebook and follow up with the Late Work Policy. This will prompt the students to see work that is late indicted as late in red on their to do list.

Device Use Class Norms and Management

1st ask yourself, as a teacher, the following essential questions:

Is the use of technology enhancing conceptual understanding?
Is the use of technology allowing you to work more efficiently?
Is learning being differentiated with technology to meet each student where they are at?

If your answer to all of these is no…..STOP and unplug!

Make sure you have clearly decided your own answer to the following questions and that your students know where you stand. Try your best not to make exceptions, especially due the first month of school.

What happens with phones when students enter your class?
Can students leave class to print?
Can students charge their tablets in class?
Is social networking allowed in class? If so, for what purposes?
How will students turn in work digitally? Do you have a specific way files should be named?
Can students use their tablets/devices to take notes?
Is tablet/device free time ok? If so, when and under what conditions?
What are the ground rules and expectations when researching? (ask Kevin if you need help!)
How do you expect students to give appropriate credit for digital sources including various forms of media?

Clear expectations and cues go along way. Some favorites are:

Phone tower: have all students stack their phones in one designated location in the room. Alternatively you could use a box or a basket (aka the digital basket) to specifically mark where phones are to be placed when they are not actively being used as LEARNING tools.
Lids down or flat whenever someone is talking to the whole group
Access information for learning about the topic the group is focusing on….PERIOD!
Use SmartSync to dynamically manage your class and differentiate!
Unless you created the work, a citation must be present. (consider creative commons)

Additional Resources

One-to-One Computing and Classroom Management- Tech& Learning (August 1, 2007)

Keeping Students Engaged in a 1-to-1 Project Based Classroom– Janet Moeller-Abercrombie (Janruary 29, 2012)

Ready for Summer?

Before you leave campus please check the following:

-All contents from classroom desktops you would like to keep are backed up in another location

-If you are using your tablet over the summer, please remember tablets do not like extreme heat

-If you wish to have new Moodle courses created, fill out this form. Remember, next school year is the last year for Moodle, so we strongly recommend building new courses in Classroom.

*Summer PD? Get ready for Google Classroom: (1) Online training resources for Google tools from Google, and (2) Alice Keeler’s blog, a gold mine for ideas of how to use Google Classroom

Are you Device Independent?

green_gd_chall Continuum_techtoolflexibility
By now you should know that you can work with Google Drive in two places on any device (the cloud and the desktop/within app downloaded) and have supported students in advisory to do so during the recent road checks. To keep with our Upper School edtech goal of streamlining communication we are holding a contest.

The first five faculty/staff members to show Alison, Liz or Mike zero Google drive items synced down to their yoga and at least 20GB free on their C disk will be awarded prizes.

Visualize Your Email

Sometimes email can seem like a black hole of time and energy. How much email do you actually send? How much do you receive? Who emails you the most? Check out immersion, a visualization tool developed at MIT’s media lab to help you reflect on your use of email and perhaps find ways to optimize communication with your top connections. If as a faculty member you have a lot of student communication within email, brainstorm ways to move these conversations into a more appropriate realm like your digital class space or within the work itself with comments.

Below is a screenshot that takes you to a demo:

Tech Tuesday

Resources for Modern Learning with Technology

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