VanWeekly
April 20, 2020
Mark your Calendars for Vanguard Only Events with Leslie Fisher!
Vanguard Only Office Hours Today at 11:30 on new Teams Channel
Remote Learning Support for Vanguard Change Starting April 20
Mark your calendar for Mondays from 11:30 am-12:30 pm for Remote Learning Office Hours with Instructional Tech Dept. (Mindy, Hoke, and Heather). This will be a time for to provide updates on known issues, updates to programs or instructions, general announcements and more importantly a time to just connect and see your smiling faces. I will make a new private channel for this. and you will see the calendar invitations there. PLEASE do not share this invite out to non-Vanguard members. We want to keep the group as small as possible and provide this customized support for all of you.
Join us for the remaining Remote Learning Series Events! All sessions from 1:00-2:00 pm.
Wednesday, April 22 - Exemplary PLC Examples (Data Use)
Friday, April 24 - Re-teaching and Enrichment in a Remote Learning Environment
Wednesday, April 29 - Teacher Leader Examples (Re-teaching and Enrichment)
These events are open to all FCS Employees, so please consider sharing with others! Previous topic videos and slide decks can be found here at www.tinyurl.com/RemoteLearningSupportSeries20
Vanguard Birthdays
Vanguard Wishes A Very Happy Birthday to
Stacie Thompson 4/16
Christine Anderson 4/18
Kristin Yann 4/23
Giovanna Allison 4/27
We want to celebrate our Vanguardian family. If you would like for us to recognize your birthday, please click this link.
Celebrate Your Vanguard Team!
We have so many amazing people in the Vanguard Team and it's so gratifying to hear about all of this amazing work you're all doing. We are truly making a difference and doing our part to make a difference during our new remote teaching reality. Keep up the game-changing work everyone! #FCSRising!
Please help to celebrate the amazing work being done by you and your colleagues at this form: bit.ly/VanBrag!
A selection of them will be shared in this space every week!
From Erin Shurbutt, Instructional Coach at Esther Jackson Elementary:
Kelly Williamson (the Esther Jackson METI) Created a school Flipgrid for teachers to read stories aloud and share with families. We have had over 2030 views! She has been coaching staff with Seesaw, Teams, Flipgrid, and any other tech tool teachers are trying to utilize. She created a virtual spirit week to keep the morale up with our students. I appreciate having her on my team, Em she is essential.
From Caroline Rawls, CST at Woodland Elementary:
Cheri Mills has been an asset to Woodland in remote learning. She is scheduling training and virtual meetings left and right to support with Remote Learning. She has been a problem solver to the extreme. Whenever teachers need something she finds it or creates it! She got all of our 3-5 teachers on Teams in a snap and has supported PLCs in transferring their work as a team to Microsoft Teams as well. WAY TO GO CHERI!
From Angus Guberman, teacher at Riverwood International Charter School:
The other day I heard Lizzo sing, "Why a man great 'til he gotta be great?"
In the case of Rama Balachandran, Lauren Fogarty, and Dana Munson, they have been great when they needed to be. They have contributed HOURS of their time to make sure Riverwood is meeting student needs. Admin has looked to them for guidance in certain situations--and through it all they are calm, cool, and collected. They represent FCS Vanguard impeccably, and we are super lucky to have them on our team!!!
We have so many amazing people in the Vanguard Team and it's so gratifying to hear about all of this amazing work you're all doing. We are truly making a difference during our new remote teaching reality. Keep up the game-changing work everyone! #FCSRising!
School Lead Info
We are so sorry that there was an error in recording our last School Leads meeting! I think we were just too excited about our guest appearance of Leslie Fisher! You will have to rely on the slide deck for all of your information this month. Please reach out if you have any questions! We are here for you!
Next & Last Meeting for 2020 - May 7th at 7:00 PM
Agenda:
- What's coming up!
- Spotlight On Lead - Angus Guberman
- Showcase of Celebrations
- Padlet Share - One Success & One Hurdle
https://padlet.com/turnert51/leiwuelho617
- Remote PD Survey Link (What are your needs)
- Special PD Series with Leslie Fisher (see banner in events section for details)
- Teams chat - All your needs (or ways to offer help or support) in one spot!
Let's See Your Remote Teaching Expertise!
Vanguard Team,
We are still in need of write-ups about your excellent remote teaching practices!
Before Spring Break, I challenged each of you to contribute one blurb, and, while I have heard from many of you, there are still many more of you who have something to contribute!
These will be going out daily from Cliff Jones to our district administrators.
Please complete the form at: http://bit.ly/VanBlurb.
The instructions can be found on that form, as well as an exemplar.
The big warning I have to give is that the technology you discuss has to be approved and officially supported by Fulton County. To see the list of supported technology, please go to the Employee Portal and click on the FCS Marketplace, and then App Marketplace. You can then find or search for your technology and click through to the description. Look for the "Status" line. It needs to say "Approved and District Supported." There are many programs and platforms that are in the Marketplace that are in pending status, so just because you see the technology in the Marketplace, that doesn't necessarily mean that it is approved.
If you submit a write-up of unsupported apps, we unfortunately won't be able to use it.
These blurbs should be relatively short, and are more oriented to the big picture rather than highly detailed - if you're spending more than about 20 minutes on this, then you've spent too long!
Some light editing may be done on your write-up, including removal of references to non-supported technologies.
Thanks for your support on this initiative!
Remote Teaching Write-Ups
Since our awesome write-ups are primarily being distributed to building and district administrators, I wanted to make sure that I shared them within the team as well. Since we're just getting back into the swing of the VW, I don't want to overwhelm you with three weeks of write-ups, so you'll get a selection today, but I hope to share the prior week's write-ups in future VanWeekly editions.
From Carrie Hilliard, Birmingham Falls ES:
FlipGrid Shorts
Looking for another way to incorporate videos into your lessons? You may know and love Flipgrid, but have you tried Flipgrid Shorts? With Flipgrid Shorts, you can create fun videos and share straight to Teams or with a link anywhere (Seesaw, email, Twitter, etc.). You can activate Whiteboard mode and use live inking in your video, overlay photos from your camera roll, add emojis, text as stickers, and apply unique filters!
You can use Flipgrid Shorts to explain directions, steps, or a lesson overview. Students and educators could also use Flipgrid Shorts for: book talks, creative storytelling, stop motion videos, whiteboard sessions, sharing projects, positive messages to families, etc. And Flipgrid Shorts videos can be transformed into augmented reality experiences by using the video’s QR code and scanning with the Flipgrid mobile app. For more information about Flipgrid Shorts: https://blog.flipgrid.com/news/shorts
From Colleen Greathouse, Dolvin Elementary:
Quick Check using Forms
Feedback is very important in digital learning. As stated in one of our webinars, students should be getting good feedback within 72 hours. For elementary aged students, this time might need to be slightly quicker to match their attention spans. There are several great ways to give students instant feedback using Microsoft or Google Forms as quick checks. I suggest you do not limit the responses to one per child. Encourage them to relearn and redo the assignment. Let students see their scores on multiple choice quick checks immediately. Depending on what you want, you can have students be able to see correct answers or they can simply see what they got correct and incorrect. They can then take the initiative to try again or if they are happy with their results and their learning, they can move on.
From Tawanda Brown, Tri-Cities HS:
Safari Montage
What is it?
Simply put, it is a collection of educational video titles tied to the curriculum from various video publishers such as PBS, The History Channel, National Geographic, Scholastic, Disney Education, BBC and more. The beauty of using Safari Montage is that teachers and students can access procured, created and curated educational digital resources, create playlists and integrate items into different types of Platforms.
There are videos for all subjects and all grade levels. A teacher can search for an individual video pertaining to a topic or standard, or they can search complete lessons created by other teachers that includes the video, quizzes, and interactive activities. This content could then be shared across multiple platforms like google classroom and teams. It will even generate a QR Code that can be shared or used doing a Live Teams Meeting for assessment.
Here are some Ideas and Best Practices:
Have in mind what specific topic or standard you want to search for. Stay focus. If you find a lesson that you like but not all the activities that accompany that lesson, you can save the content you want to your playlist and create your own lesson. You can also create your own quizzes or inquiry questions for the video.
Decide what platform you want to use, or you can work directly from Safari Montage. Once you decide how the video’s in Safari will best meet the needs of your students, become aware of the many features that will help students make connections. There is a view and chat feature that will allow your students to text or talk about the video while it is playing. The text box will appear side by side with the video. This could be useful if used this doing a Live session. You can also complete a lesson with video, inquiry questions, and a quiz and share it directly to your class in teams.
From Barbara Simon, Abbotts Hill ES:
Building Relationships with Seesaw (K-5)
The teacher/student/family relationship is more important than ever, and Seesaw can help! Seesaw is a communication tool that is used for family/student/teacher collaboration. It is also an student online journal where students can post work, upload documents, take pictures and videos, write notes, draw, and so much more! In addition, Seesaw is a great format for a teacher to post videos to communicate to students. Below are some examples of how teachers can communicate with students and actually teach mini lessons using Seesaw!
The Seesaw video can allow students to see their teacher's face and voice which will help them feel a level of normalcy in their lives. Teachers can speak to the social emotional needs of their students. Children love praise and need to know when they do a great job. Teachers can post shout outs for a job well done using a Seesaw video. For example, a teacher can read off the names of students who have shown the most growth in iReady the week, or give a shout out to the students who have gotten all of their work complete for the week, or just about anything to help them feel accomplished or help students become more excited to learn!
Another use of the Seesaw video is for the teacher to provide instruction through a short mini lesson video to students. Seesaw videos cannot be long, and they must be intentional and to point. To introduce or teach a concept, teachers could follow a mini lesson format to include a connection to what was previously learned, provide a teaching point connecting it to the standard or learning target, teach a lesson (using a whiteboard, props or anchor charts in the background) elicit active engagement from students, and finally offer closure to the lesson and link it to an activity. This is very similar to what many already do in the classroom setting! You may wonder how we can provide students with active engagement opportunities on Seesaw. It's actually pretty easy to do. Students can post answers to questions or reflect on what was said through comments directly to the Seesaw video post. Students are also able to post a video or written response directly to Seesaw. In addition, teachers can set up a Flipgrid for students to collaborate about what was learned in the lesson. Another great idea is to use a Padlet for students to answer questions or reflect on what was learned. Students and teachers can read responses on the Padlet, and learn what others are thinking. All of this can be embedded directly into Seesaw for easy use. Seesaw is a wonderful tool to encourage successful learning! Oh.... and it is fun too!!!
From Latoya Tolefree, Dunwoody Springs ES:
Padlet
What is it?
Padlet is a platform where you can add a variety of files. This type of platform is useful for organizing information. It is an on-line board where teachers and students can arrange an assortment of material that is visually appealing. As the use of social media increases, Padlet is a way for teachers and students to use a similar format to disseminate content.
Here are some ideas/best practices:
Use different formats such as a wall or stream which is similar to a social media newsfeed, a grid, timeline, or canvas to display files and content.
Use it during live lessons as a formative assessment. Students can add text, pictures, voice, files, drawings, or video as way to show mastery of content.
Teachers can use it as a way to preview or review content. Information can be organized in any manner. Files can be added to watch videos, read articles, play games, and more!
Teachers can leave boards open for students to ask questions and receive feedback.
Padlet can be used during digital learning as way to organize the weekly assignments. Here is an example: https://padlet.com/tolefree/fof1l05ayksq
Students and teachers can create online portfolios that are accessible by the entire class as a way from students to learn from each other
Vanguard Leadership Team
District Support
@hoke
Heather Van Looy -
Instructional Technology Program Specialist - New Member Support
@HeatherVan Looy
Mindy Ramon -
IT Training Support Coordinator
@fultonitdept
Executive Committee
Lead Coach - Member Support
@jeevans
Megan Endicott
Associate Lead - Events, Professional Development & School Lead Support
@endicottspot
Chanel Johnson
Associate Lead- XP & Communications
@DC_stemtastic
South Learning Community & Achievement Zone
@allisongtechie
Crystal Billingslea
billingsleac@fultonschools.org
@MathyMissB
Patricia Thomas // Evoline C. West Elementary School
@ThomasNeverStop
Northeast Learning Community
@msmorrisra
Tammie St. John
@stjohnteach
Northwest Learning Community
@MsBeardsClass
Pam Kelly
@pckelly4
Katie Pardee
@mkpardee
Central Learning Community
Fulton County Vanguard Team
Vision: Through building colaborative relationships and supporting student focused learning, the Vanguard Team will positively impact student achievement.
Pillars: Transform, Innovate, Mentor, & Support (TIMS)
Website: http://www.fcsvanguard.org/
Twitter: @FCSvanguard