OS Educational Technology News
March 2017
This issue of the newsletter contains registration links for free virtual events for Pi Day and Earth Day; a reminder about the MACUL Conference; information about the newest read-aloud story on Storyline Online; a free, ebook resource; resources on the Michigan eLibrary that link to current, accurate, and balanced news reporting; links to some very good Open Educational Resources; information on our newest, free online course, "iMovie for iPads in the Classroom;" directions for adding additional fonts to your Google Suite; and more.
~Laura
Discovery Streaming - Free Virtual Events
Pi Day Virtual Experience
Date: March 14, 2017
Time: 1:00 - 2:00 PM (EST)
Join Discovery to celebrate the mathematical constant Pi. Learn more about the significance of pi in mathematical research and its everyday applications through this virtual experience.
Click here to register for the Pi Day Virtual Experience!
Earth Day Virtual Viewing Party
Date: April 21, 2017
Time: 1:00 - 2:00 PM
Join Discovery and explore the history of Earth Day, an annual holiday observed on April 22nd to celebrate the beauty and fragility of Planet Earth. With this virtual viewing party your students will explore the importance of Earth Day and the best way they can promote environmentalism in their local communities.
Click here to register for the Earth Day Virtual Viewing Party
MACUL Conference 2017
The annual Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning (MACUL) Conference is fast approaching! The Conference runs from March 15-17, 2017 and is at the Cobo Center in Detroit, MI this year. There is still time to register to attend! Check out the Pre-Con Workshops too and consider volunteering!
Download the conference app to review the conference schedule, view the sessions descriptions, and locate presenters' resources!
Storyline Online
To celebrate Women’s History Month, Storyline Online released a new video featuring actor Kiernan Shipka reading The House That Jane Built, which was written by Tanya Lee Stone, illustrated by Kathryn Brown and published by Henry Holt & Company / Macmillan Publishers. The book tells the true story of Jane Addams, an activist and social worker living in Chicago during the turn of the 20th century. Driven by her desire to help the destitute, Addams opened the community center Hull House in 1889. By 1907, Hull House had expanded into 13 buildings to accommodate and aid the less fortunate. In 1931, Addams became the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. There are supplemental activity guides for both home and school. Aimed at students in the 3rd-5th grades, these activities encourage students to engage in critical thinking and ponder the themes from the book including empathy, empowerment, education and ambition.
Unite for Literacy
Michigan eLibrary: InfoTrac = Current, Accurate, and Balanced News
When Michigan students and teachers need current, accurate and balanced news, they can rely on the InfoTrac family of Gale Cengage resources found in MeL.org. Below is an entry from the Gale Blog listing just some of the sources available 24 hours a day, every day, at no charge in Academic OneFile, General OneFile, and InfoTrac Newsstand, with content that is updated every 24 hours.
Gale’s InfoTrac collections, like Academic OneFile, General OneFile, and InfoTrac Newsstand, bring users news content from the world’s leading periodical publications—authoritative sources you can trust. InfoTrac also gives you every side of the story, with a balance of publications from across the political spectrum. In addition to mainstream news sources like The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, CNN, NPR, CBC, The Christian Science Monitor, Maclean’s, and NBC Nightly News, InfoTrac collections provide full-text access to conservative-leaning sources such as The National Review, The New American, World Affairs, Newsmax, The Spectator, The Economist, The Hill, and Fox News, as well as liberal-leaning sources like The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Progressive, American Prospect, Mother Jones, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Newsweek, and MSNBC.
Acquiring personal subscriptions to these publications would be time consuming and cost-prohibitive. Fortunately, because of MeL.org, it’s unnecessary. Michigan residents or Michigan library access only.
Free Open Educational Resources (OER)
LITERACY:
WordGen Weekly. Visit the WordGen Weekly Website.
WordGen Weekly (the “original” Word Generation program) is a supplementary curricular resource that offers a series of discussable dilemmas designed to promote academic language and other academic practices prioritized in the 21st century learning standards. The program is unique in its cross-disciplinary design, giving teachers of ELA, science, social studies, and math the chance to collaborate on the shared goal of helping students use academic language to articulate their thinking. Each series (or individual units) can be used school-wide in grades 6-8. Download a one-page description.
WordGen Elementary. Visit the WordGen Elementary Website.
Word Generation for grades 4 and 5 is comprised of 12 two-week units. It expands students’ background knowledge and academic vocabulary, while emphasizing 21st century learning practices such as argumentation, analytic reasoning, reading to find evidence, oral discussion, and writing.
Download a one-page description.
Strategic Adolescent Reading Intervention (STARI). Visit the STARI Website.
STARI is a literature-focused, Tier II intervention for students in grades 6-9 who are reading 2-4 years below grade level. Using research-based practices and highly engaging texts, STARI addresses gaps in fluency, decoding, reading stamina, and reading comprehension, aiming to move struggling students to higher levels of proficiency at the end of one year. STARI actively engages students in discussions of cognitively challenging content aligned to the Common Core and other 21st century standards. Download a one-page description.
MATH:
AlgebraByExample. Visit the AlgebraByExample Website.
AlgebraByExample is a set of Algebra 1 assignments that incorporates worked examples and prompts students to analyze and explain. Download a one-page description.
Tools for Sense-making
Visit the Tools for Sense-making Website.
Tools for Sense-making was developed to shift the culture of mathematics classrooms away from answer-getting and toward sense-making. These tools help teachers guide their students through solving word problems. Download a one-page description.
SCIENCE LITERACY:
Reading to Learn in Science. Visit the Reading to Learn in Science Website.
Reading to Learn in Science provides a series of classroom strategies to help students and teachers address the challenges of comprehending science texts. Download a one-page description.
SciGen. Visit the SciGen Website.
Inspired by the original Word Generation program, Science Generation (SciGen) goes in-depth on science topics commonly taught to 6th, 7th, and 8th graders. These curricular materials provide opportunities to read, write, discuss, and build arguments about basic questions in science. Download a one-page description.
SOCIAL STUDIES LITERACY:
SoGen. Visit the SoGen Website.
Inspired by the original Word Generation program, Social Studies Generation (SoGen) is comprised of three six-week sequences around topics commonly included in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade social studies content standards. These curricular materials provide opportunities to read, write, discuss, and build arguments about central concepts in social studies. Download a one-page description.
New Online Course! "Using iMovie for iPads in the Classroom"
Oakland Schools Educational Technology has added "Using iMovie for iPads in the Classroom," another, free, self-paced, online course to our catalog of courses. The course is available free of charge to educators who teach in Oakland County. Note: There is a $10 fee if you want to earn SCECH credits.
iMovie is Apple’s video editing app. iMovie is easy to learn, easy to use and can produce great results that will wow students, parents and colleagues. With iMovie you and your students can create digital stories, reports, etc. by adding titles, voice, music, transitions, credits and more to videos and photos. It's easy to share your finished iMovie videos because they can be uploaded to YouTube, SeeSaw, DropBox, Vimeo, and more. They can also be stored in the Photos app and/or shared via iMessage and AirDrop. This course will teach you how to use iMovie on an iPad to do all of these things.
If you would like to get started using iMovie in your classroom, sign up for this free, self-paced, online course. You will be guided, via video and text-based tutorials, through all of the steps needed to use iMovie on an iPad. It is expected that it will take 6 hours to complete the course. This includes the time you will spend creating an iMovie project and an iMovie Trailer. Begin and end anytime between January 30, 2017 and January 29, 2018.
Click here to register for "Using iMovie for iPads in the Classroom!"
Free Online Course! "Google Mapping Tools in the Classroom"
Google Maps is the Google mapping tool that most of us have used to get directions at one time or another. Because of things like Street View and Photospheres, Google Maps is now so much more than a method of finding your way from Place A to Place B. Google My Maps is a newer Google mapping tool that is associated with a user's Google Drive. It provides a way for you and your students to create and share customized maps. Google My Maps allows you to add images, movies and text in Placemarks to create interactive maps that tell a story, outline historical events, explore geography and more!
If you would like to get started using Google mapping tools in your classroom, sign up for "Google Mapping Tools in the Classroom." You will be guided, via video and text-based tutorials, through all of the steps needed to use Google mapping tools. It is expected that it will take 9 hours to complete the course. This includes the time you will spend developing mapping resources and activities to use with your students. Note: You can begin and complete the courses any time between now and November 13, 2017.
Click here to register for "Google Mapping Tools in the Classroom!"
Example of an Elementary Student Map
Google Fonts!
Are you tired of using the same few fonts over and over again when creating a Google Doc? Do you wish you had more options? Many Google Suite users don’t realize that Google provides more than 800 different fonts that you can add to your account and use in your creations. Click here to preview all 818 of the Google Fonts!
Follow the steps below to add new fonts.
Oakland Schools Educational Technology Twitter posts can be found at: os_edtech
When you are posting to Twitter about things related to educational technology, don't forget to use the hashtag: #oakedtech
Using the hashtag will help all of us Oakland County educators, who are interested in the effective use of educational technology, to connect and better collaborate with each other.
Oakland Schools Educational Technology Consultants
Laura.Cummings@oakland.k12.mi.us
248-209-2283
Judy Nichols
Judith.Nichols@oakland.k12.mi.us
248-209-2080
Stay Up to Date with the Oakland Schools Information Center!
The Oakland Schools Information Center Newsletter contains information on apps, new books in the collection, MeL database features and other topics related to literature and technology. Past issues of the newsletter are archived on the Information Center web page.
If you would like to receive the IC Newsletter contact Judy Hauser at judy.hauser@oakland.k12.mi.us and ask to be added to the IC Newsletter list.
To receive more frequent updates from the Oakland Schools Information Center, be sure to follow the Oakland Schools IC Twitter feed at: https://twitter.com/osinfocenter