Weekly Geekly
December 9, 2019
Students Taking Home Chromebooks
State of the Chromebooks
- Rice #9
- Southwestern #1
Please check your rooms. Victoria went and checked EVERY cart herself to look for them and they are not in a cart.They have also not been used in quite a while. They are both disabled at this time.
Grades are due tonight at 11:59 PM
The grade cutoff for the 9 weeks is Friday, Dec 20, and grades will be due on January 6 at 11:59 for that one.
Please remember:
According to the FISD Grade Weights and Minimums, at this time you must have:
- At least 4 Minor grades
- At least 1 Major grade
- NOTE: All graded assignments must be fully published .
Additional info:
- Grade load directions.
- Grades due through Fri, Dec. 6th will be included in the average.
- Grades due Mon, Dec. 9th or Tue, Dec. 10th will NOT be included in the IPR average. Keep this in mind if loading next week.
- Contact Lisa Grey if students are missing/extra on the IPR screen.
- This IPR is for regaining UIL eligibility. UIL Eligibility Calendar and Explanations
You can find all the garde send deadlines for the year at https://sites.google.com/friscoisd.org/lths-technology/grade-deadlines
Learning over Break?
Also, Matt Miller was a featured speaker in the 12 Day Innovation Summit from Birdville ISD today., They have had George Couros, Catlin Tucker, and Jacob Chastain already as well, but there is still more to come! They deliver content directly to your email each morning, and you can request an hour of PD credit for each "talk" by filling out a Google form and writing a short reflection on what you heard. Register here.
New feature in Aware Testing- Text to speech!
- Students can have questions and answer choices read to them in full or they can highlight specific words to be read aloud
- Teachers will be able to manage who receives this support and update needs as necessary through Test Proctoring
- District and Campus leaders can manage student supports and save default testing support needs for each child
You can register for their Text to Speech Webinar if you are interested in learning more about this.
See what Kids are doing on their chromebooks in your class!
Don't forget to learn about our new Chromebook monitoring features in Relay Classroom by taking the QUICK course here. I STRONGLY suggest that all teachers complete this very brief introduction to Classroom.
To access Classroom you will visit https://classroom.relay.school in a browser and sign in with Google.
Come join the Hour of Code THIS WEEK in the library!
The Hour of Code is coming!
Every year, the global movement known as the "Hour of Code" seeks to expose more and more people to the joys of computational thinking and coding. This year we will host Hour of Code activities for staff and students in the library from December 9-13. Students may participate before and after school, or during MegaLunch. Staff are welcome any time.
Activities include:
- programing with Scratch to make Christmas lights twinkle and music play
- programming an Ozobot to round a holiday track
- programming a Sphero robot to do an ice skating routine
- Programming the Dash robot to do some slalom skiing
- using block coding to make some animated characters dance
- and completing a coding digital breakout
You do NOT have to know anything about coding to participate! All of these are entry level coding activities that should take no longer than 15-20 minutes apiece. Even if you can only come try one thing, I encourage you to try something new!
Don't forget the #12DaysTwitter Challenge! It isn't too late to catch up!
Getting Canvas Ready for Semester 2
For ALL TEACHERS
If you have already used Canvas this year, you will need to
- follow these instructions (of course these are also in the Digital Melting Pot) There are 2 pages of instructions. The first page is for year long classes, the second page is for semester long classes.
- make sure your S2 course has the LTHS landing page in it. Instructions here. this is non-negotiable, but I will be soliciting feedback on changes that we want to make to that landing page before the end of the year, so anything you love or hate about it, make note!
If you have NOT already used Canvas at all this year, you will need to get your courses ready for use by following these instructions. The only change to these instructions is in step 6 you need to publish S2 courses instead of S1.
Please remember this only looks overwhelming because it is new!
I am more than happy to help you with this process. If you or your PLC want to meet with me about this, please email me as soon as possible to schedule a time. I will also be in lab B112 on Tuesday December 17 to help you with anything you need. I will be there before school starting at 8:15, both MegaLunches, and after school starting at 4:15.