Sun Valley Technology News
February 2015
This month's Favorite Website!
This fabulous Interactive Timeline allows you to access videos of inventions from 1900 to 2010. These short videos show live footage, actual audio, and factual tidbits and quotes from each decade. This is a great springboard for scientific discussion, setting the background for a novel's time period, looking at life in a different era, or viewing open sources. (click on ITSource at the bottom to access more information/videos)
Cool Things Happening in the Valley
McKelder
Students in Ms. McKelder's 8th Grade Science class created "Pinterest" Products to share their knowledge of infectious diseases.
Medford
Mrs. Medford's AP Art students created digital products to learn about famous artists. Their goal was to learn about an artist that inspired them or was similar to their artistic style. Students used Piktograph and Smores to create their digital "posters".
Belk/Kapp
Math students in Ms. Belk and Mr. Kapp's class used a variety of digital tools to show what they knew about math concepts.
Content Area Focus - ELA
Read "The Family Photograph" by Vona Groarke
Have students bring in/find 3 family photographs with differing moods. Use the photos to springboard into poetry creation that:
- compares and contrasts mood
- includes imagery
- includes the concept of character development
- displays the impact of theme
Use the website Poets.org to explore and find companion poems to one of the focus elements above.
How To......
...Force students to make a copy of a Google Document, Spreadsheet, or Presentation.
- Pull up the document you want to share
- Change the share settings to "anyone with the link" "can view"
- Go to the share address and delete /view at the end of the address
- replace it with /copy
(If you're using a spreadsheet link, delete the #gid=# as well)
Did you Know?
Google Classroom has some new features!
- You can share the "Classroom Folder" in your Google Drive with another teacher and give him/her editing rights. Although the shared teacher cannot grade an assignment, he/she can comment on and see the grades for each student and assignment. This should be great for Inclusion/EC classes!
- You can change the point value of an assignment while you're in the grading box. Just change the value and then click outside the box somewhere (don't click Enter!).
- You can share an entire folder of resources with students! Select the folder in your drive and change the share settings to "anyone with the link can view". Post the link to the folder in the "About" Page section.