Technology Talk
November 2017
What is Clever?
Clever is a secure pipeline between your district's data and the learning applications that you and your students use. Clever Instant Login is a single-sign-on solution, allowing users to log into applications with a single set of credentials which will be their school email address and password. With the ease of only one username and password, Clever can help teachers reclaim valuable class time. Students and teachers can open their devices, sign into the Clever Portal, and click on their connected applications to automatically access the online learning program.
Clever is already set up for our district to use. If you are interested in using Clever, browse their App Gallery of more than 300 educational applications at https://clever.com/app-gallery. Please email cwhitehead@boazk12.org with the name of the app that you would like set up. Please include your school and the course name for the students that you want to have access to the app. You are unlimited on the number of apps your students can have but do know that some of the apps require a paid subscription that will be up to you to purchase.
Review of Alabama Course of Study Digital Literacy and Computer Science- Call for Public Comment
In order to receive public input, a copy of the draft is being made available on the Alabama State Department of Education website at https://www.alsde.edu/dept/cosreview and will be posted from Wednesday, November 1, 2017, through Friday, December 1, 2017. Comments should be entered electronically on the review website and must be received by Friday, December 1, 2017.
Virtual Field Trip Offerings
Three for Free
CK-12
CK-12 Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing access to high quality educational materials for K-12 students all over the world. They offer free high-quality, standards-aligned, open content in the STEM subjects. By providing these free resources, CK-12 is working toward educational equity for all. Student logins can be set up through Clever.
QuickDraw
This is a game built with machine learning. You draw, and a neural network tries to guess what you’re drawing. Of course, it doesn’t always work. But the more you play with it, the more it will learn. This is great for vocabulary development, artistic skills, and brain breaks.
WatchKnowLearn
The vision behind WatchKnowLearn is to provide a world-class, online domain on which educators can store, categorize, and rate the best, K – 12 educational videos on the Internet today. This service is FREE so teachers, parents and students everywhere may have access to those videos.
GoGuardian Tip of the Month - Scenes
Scenes in GoGuardian Teacher give you more control over how your students are using their Chromebooks. You can use Scenes to create a set of tabs to automatically open on each student device when class begins, set a maximum number of tabs, and create allowed and blocked lists of websites.
You can use scenes to:
- Create better testing environments that allow students to only access the test or related web pages.
- Automatically open each page students will need for the day’s lesson, like a relevant encyclopedia article, a collaborative Google Doc, or the login page to a learning management system (LMS).
- Give students free time where they are allowed to play math or other educational games, but not access social media or other, non-educational gaming sites.
- Create a full lesson plan by using different scenes as a slideshow.
- Set a prescheduled lock screen by changing to a scene where all websites are blocked.
--Cara, Barry, Ryan, Alex, and Brett
Dr. Cara Whitehead, NBCT
Boaz City Schools
Email: cwhitehead@boazk12.org
Website: www.boazk12.org/tech
Phone: (256) 593-8180
Twitter: @whiteheadsclass