LC News
Resources for you from the Learning Commons
December 10th, 2014
<Issue #4>
These publications are designed to minimize the number of emails in your inbox. Most of the information in this newsletter is important and gainful for you to read, while other articles are helpful but not necessary. None of this is fluff! Please read each article to determine whether it applies to you.
Team Meetings this Week
What to be prepared for:
- a brief overview of the items in this newsletter
- an opportunity for you to provide me with a list of programs/websites that you use with your students on a regular basis (so that we can support you when you or your students experience technical issues)
- a Q&A session
Change of Date for Club LC - Now Wednesday January 28th!
Why the Change?
Thank you to all of you who provided me with feedback on the Club LC date needing to be changed due to the end of quarter and all the related responsibilities that would potential need to be taken care of on the prior date chosen. I have spoken with our administration and they have graciously offered up the 28th, which is a ROCK Wednesday. By combining ROCK Wednesday and Club LC, we thought that this would give all of you more time for planning both individually and with your teams. Club LC attendance will remain optional but we hope you decide to be a part of the festivities.
What is Club LC?
Club LC is going to be a social learning event consisting of:- Best Appetizer and Best Dessert Competitions Sponsored by the Social Committee
- Club Themed LC - Come for Drinks, Food and Music!
- Costume Competition - Dress like a VIP (Celebrity of your Choice)
- Door Prizes too!
- Micro-Workshops - 5 minute teaching followed by 10-15 minutes of "play time"
- Options and Ideas that you can quickly take back to your classroom.
Help Out A Doctoral Student.. Fill Out A Survey
Derrel Fincher is researching how teachers' integrate BYOD in their classes, and whether or not these educators think it helps student learning. Please consider participating. You may find more information and the survey link on http://byodresearch.net, including a link for contacting him if you need more information. I also have asked for a summary of the research results to be sent to us after the research is completed. Thank you for your help!
If you would like a copy of the results of the research after the analysis is completed, please click here.Resources from your DLS
Team Computer Use
Team Computers Should:
- only be used for single class period (teacher hands to student, student give back to teacher at the end of the class period)
- be stored and charged in team area (teams should determine a check in/check out process to communicate when and where devices have been checked out)
- Given to student who have a temporary issue with their own device (E.G. Low/no battery, Java, Shockwave, or other website will not load issues, internet connection problems, etc.) <Please instruct these students to bring their own device to the LC the next morning during advisory for assistance with fixing the issue>
- be given to any student to use all day long
- be taken home by any student
- be used repeatedly over consecutive days by the same student (unless certain arrangement have been agreed upon by a team for a specific student)
Tool in Focus - SendEmail Tool
Team 8-4 requested that a user friendly email assistant tool be created/found that allows messages combining both general and individualized sections be sent to each student within the mailing list so that group assignments can be communicated in a discrete manner.
After working with Google App Script a tool has been created that will do just that. It involves working with a Google Sheet included below. I have included a video that explains the tool and how it works, but I would also be happy to meet with you or your team and give you a live tutorial as well.
You will need the link provided to get started as the Script is associated specifically with this spreadsheet document. You will notice that the link will require you to make a copy of the spreadsheet document which is another cool tool trick which I explain in the video (written instruction for making copy only links is provided in the one of the tech news articles)
PARCC Assessment Tip #2
- The tool must allow you to build your own questions in a simple and user-friendly way.
- The tool should be free or low cost and can be used online (preferably in a Schoology if at all possible).
- The tool should require students to execute tasks exactly-like or nearly the same as TestNav (PARCC's testing program) without a lot of fluff which eats up valuable time from you and your students.
Tech News
Announcing!!! Central Office Printing
Copy Only Google Doc Links
How Are We Doing?
Central Print
Currently we are over budget on printing costs. There are a number of factors that contribute to our high printing costs.
#1 Too much printing from classroom printers.
Did you know that it costs far less to print to a copier than it does to print to a classroom printer? If you are printing more than 5 pages please use the copiers instead.
#2 Reprints of large volume print jobs
There are a number of times when print jobs get left in the print room or tossed out and the same large volume print job must be ran a second time. The following two scenarios seem to be the most frequent reasons for reprints and the associated solutions.
- Papers get lost/taken due to being mixed in with someone else’s job
- Use a runner or personally walk down to the copier immediately after you've sent a print job
- Bring your laptop down with you and send print jobs while next to the copier
- Send large volume print jobs to Central Print and they will make the copies for you (see below for more details)
- The person responsible for the print makes changes based upon errors in the first batch of print
- Perform a single copy test print before sending a large volume print job.
- If you find minor typos or other minor errors that you can live with, make the changes to your electronic copy for future use, but use the documents you've printed for present use… You can even turn it into an activity for your students to see how critically they can read… Tell them that there are ___ errors in the document and see if they can find each error.
How to use Central Print:
- Send an email to susanprice@foresthills.edu with the document attached.
- Provide the following information using the Central Print Order Form and attach it to the email as well using the Drive attachment feature in Gmail.
- Relax and wait while you copies are made for you and delivered to your mailbox or classroom.
Google Docs Copy Only Links
Do you share Google docs with students but sometimes run into the issue of wanting them to make a copy of it before they interact with it? You can force them to make a copy of the file by making a minor edit to the url text. Look at the examples below:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19T_uVqNdElAznCS0bHJTtwznnfLR0_raZ7kU1wcEeXM/edit?usp=sharing ⇐ Delete the text
Copy the link and paste it, but before you send it out to students, change the word edit text in bold at the end to copy.
So now it would look like this:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19T_uVqNdElAznCS0bHJTtwznnfLR0_raZ7kU1wcEeXM/copy ⇐ Insert the text
Now before students can even view the file they will be prompted to make a copy of it. Magic! This will work for all types of google files - sheets, presentations, drawings, and docs; but the text at the end that must be deleted and then inserted might be slightly different.
E.G. In sheets the end text to delete will look something like this:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AoIP5fZg946ydHluWERIVVM1MnE4bDdFWmVJekZxQ1E&usp=sharing
The text to be inserted will look like this:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AoIP5fZg946ydHluWERIVVM1MnE4bDdFWmVJekZxQ1E&newcopy=true