Tech Tips
February 2015: Volume 2 Number 9
Brrrr. Stay warm and drive safe!
Booktrack
"Booktrack Classroom allows students to read with a movie-style soundtrack, or to create their own soundtrack for any story, essay or other text. Students can also create and publish their own Booktracks, reading them on the web or on mobile phones and tablets."
Study Jams
Study Jams Math & Science
"You can find over 200 Jams on topics like The Universe , listen to songs about Landforms , and test yourself on concepts likeRange ."
8 Minutes that Matter Most
Excerpt:
2. Start With Good News
If you want to create a safe space for students to take risks, you won't get there with a pry bar. Edutopia blogger Todd Finley starts his classes with two minutes of sharing good news. Classrooms that celebrate success build the comfort necessary for students to ask critical questions, share ideas, and participate in honest and open discussions. Starting with celebrations is a short, easy way to get there.
3. Cross Disciplines
Toss a football around the class before you teach the physics of a Peyton Manning spiral. Play a song that makes a classical allusion for your mythology unit. Measure the angles of a Picasso painting in math class. Integrating other disciplines teaches students that ideas and concepts do not stand alone but rather exist within a wider web of knowledge. Starting with another discipline can open their senses to deeper learning.
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A Look Inside the Classroom of the Future
"Over the next generation, whether they work for corporations, small businesses, government organizations, nonprofits, or other organizations, many U.S. employees will move from working primarily with American colleagues, bosses, and customers for American organizations in U.S. cities, to being part of global teams. As leaders, they will use technology to bridge geographic divides, build organizations that transcend borders, and work together with colleagues from around the world on issues such as climate change, food security, and population growth -- issues that require multinational teams coming together to effect change.
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Questions Before Answers: What Drives a Great Lesson?
"Too many classrooms ignore this basic learning model. They spend most of class time providing information and then ask questions in the form of a quiz, test, or discussion. This is backward. Too many students never learn this way. It is simply too hard to understand, organize, interpret, or make sense out of information -- or even to care about it -- unless it answers a question that students care about.
Lessons, units, and topics are more motivating when they begin with a question whose answer students want to know. Not only do great questions generate interest, they also answer the question that so many students wonder about: "Why do I have to learn this?" Finally, great questions increase cognitive organization of the content by framing it into a meaningful answer to the opening question."
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Planning to Assess: How to Align Your Instruction
"We recently showed you how Sarah Brown Wessling is “skinnying” the standards into six buckets to make the Core more accessible in her classroom.
- We partnered with Achieve.org to show you how to use EQuIP’s rubrics andStudent Work Protocols to check if your lesson plans align to standards.
- And we’ve given you templates and other resources for creating Common Core lessons, as well as recommended places to find ready-made, standards-aligned lesson and units.
Next up, we’ve partnered with PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) to bring you a set of tools and a process for carefully analyzing how standards, evidence, and tasks interact, and applying these understandings to inform instructional decisions. This process encourages you to think about answers to important questions
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"How to Be a Google Search Star" Infographic
50 Tools for Differentiating Instruction through Social Media
"For educators differentiating instruction, social media tools embrace collaboration and global access to people and other resources. We give students a variety of learning experiences that incorporate the capability to:
- Exchange ideas
- Provide positive, constructive, and kind feedback
- Provide avenues to connect content with our learners' many different interests.
Differentiating with social media is most effective when we plan learning experiences based on content, process, and product (our lesson structure) and incorporate readiness, interests, and learning profiles (student voice). The following guidelines can help any classroom teacher ensure that the tool used will address students' needs:"
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11 Class Activities with Sensors You Didn't Know Your Phone Had
Excerpt:
"That’s where Rebecca Vieyra and her husband, Chrystian, come in. Rebecca, as a high school physics teacher, asked Chrystian to develop some free Android mobile apps that tap into these capabilities.
She saw potential while taking students to Six Flags, an amusement park, as a class field trip. She knew that many of her students had cell phones and could measure some significant data while on the roller coasters at the park if they had the right apps. Chrystian developed Physics Toolbox, a suite of apps that teachers (and others) could use to gather data from the world around them."
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How to Embed Remind 101 Messages into Google Sites
Teachers Easy Guide to Creating Quiz Shows on Google Drive
"Flippity is a powerful web tool that you can use with Google Spreadsheets to perform a variety of tasks. In the last post we published here we talked about how to use Flippity to create Flashcards and we visually demonstrated how teachers can go about creating their own flashcards using this tool. Today, we are sharing with you another great functionality provided by Flippity. This time you will get to learn how to use Flippity to create a Quiz Show from a Google Spreadsheet. Click here to see a demo." Check out the template in a spreadsheet.
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How to Use Google Template Tabs with Students
Excerpt:
"So I was perusing Alice’s blog and found yet another ridiculously cool thing! I found her post on “Google Sheets Copy a Template for Each Student”; the wheels started whirling. How could I make this Google Sheet template thing work with my 3rd graders? We were about to launch into a Compare and Contrast lesson so I decided to combine Alice’s Sheet Template with my lesson. It worked beautifully!
I followed the directions on her blog. I added my roster on the first sheet. I made my template on the second sheet, then I clicked the “Click here to create tabs”. Oh my, it was awesome! I watched as her script created a tab for each of my students."
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Beyond Google Drive: Extensions and Web Sites for Chromebooks
"So you and your students have started using Google Drive, and you're familiar with how to use the various tools that Google provides. What can you do next with Chromebooks?"
6 Ways Google Hangouts Can Make Any Teachers Life Better
"1. Connecting with other educators: I’ve been amazed at how easy (and how glitch-free) it’s been to start a video call via Google Hangouts with educators in the United States and beyond. For me, all it has taken is finding them on Google Plus or using their Gmail account in the Hangouts tab. Then, click on the video camera button to start a video call. All you need is a camera and a microphone, and many computers and devices already have them built in. It’s been great to connect with teachers in California and Washington D.C. in the last couple weeks, especially because of all the miles between them and me in Indiana!"
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My "One Word": Giving Students a "Voice" in Class
Excerpt:
I’m going to start this new calendar year with just one word. Just one.
It’s based on a book — “One Word that Will Change Your Life” by Dan Britton, Jimmy Page and Jon Gordon. The authors’ website states, “One Word that Will Change Your Life will inspire you to simplify your life and work by focusing on just one word for this year.” I was inspired by this almost two years ago, and I chose my first word — “create” — the following August.
More than 60 educators from around the world are also choosing their “one word” as part of the #YourEdustory movement.#YourEdustory is a blogging challenge created by Jo-Ann Fox to share our stories and document the great work that education does every day. Anyone can participate. It involves weekly topics to inspire participants to blog and share their ideas.
Anyhow, without further delay, here’s the word I’m choosing for 2015:
“Voice.”
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Differentiation & Elementary Music
"Something beyond description is happening in my 4th grade recorder class. Teaching recorder with a SMARTBoard + iPads is a magical way to differentiate learning in the Music Classroom."
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Strongsville City Schools Instructional Technology Information
Contact me if you have any questions or would like help using these tools.
Email: turner@strongnet.org
Website: http://www.strongnet.org/InstructionalTechnology
Phone: 440-572-7067