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April Newsletter4/14/2021 How Students See TeachersUtah Online Science EndorsementsHemingway AppHemingway App, found at Hemingwayapp.com, provides students with lots of helpful information about their text. To use the service students just paste some text into the Hemingway editor and it will provide you with a bunch of information about that text. Hemingway highlights the parts of your writing that use passive voice, adverbs, and overly complex sentences. All of those factors are accounted for in generating a general readability score for your passage. Here's a little video overview of Hemingway App Hapara Highlights
Minds in BloomIdeas for Educators with Rachel Lynette and Cassi Noack Hot Wheels Speedometry
Stossel in the ClassroomDear Educators, Once I learned some economics, I started doing TV stories that illustrated basic economic principles. Teachers often wrote me, “Can I get a copy of that? I wished I’d recorded it for my class!” Unfortunately, I couldn’t. So I was thrilled when the Center for Independent Thought volunteered to do just that! Now teachers tell me that the free videos bring lesson plans to life, and also fulfill curriculum requirements. More than 150,000 teachers have made Stossel in the Classroom part of their lesson plans. We invite you to provide your feedback to help us improve future materials. I hope you’ll join these teachers, and request your free DVD or access our streaming versions of the segments today. I look forward to hearing what you and your students think. Sincerely, John Stossel
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March Newsletter3/15/2021 Filter Bubbles
Coding with dash's neighborhoodDash's neighborhood is an online version of the dash robot used for coding. In this online version you can create an account using your google email and students can practice coding skills online with dash the robot. If your looking to add coding to your classroom and don't have the money to buy robots, check out dash's neighborhood. Click the picture to learn more and sign up. Legends of LearningLegends of learning is an online game-based learning platform. It has 1000's of games and simulations for science and math grades 3rd-8th. Games are organized into 147 learning objectives in Earth and Space, Life Science, and Physical Science. Teachers can choose which games are available to their students and they can track their progress. Click on the image above to learn more or sign up, its free! Canvas Tutorials
Baamboozle
Factile
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February Newsletter2/11/2021 Celebrating Black History MonthThis app is free for parents and teachers. It allows you to send email, push, and SMS/text messages to parents. It works with any device and the amazingly unique thing about it is that it will track whether or not the messages were opened and read by the parent. If parents don't open the message its flagged and then the teacher can decide to send the message again or print the information in a flyer which they can send home with the student instead. The app also allows parents to get involved by utilizing sign ups for volunteering, organizing field trips, or setting up parent teacher conferences. Its easy to share messages, videos, photos, and calendar events. There is also a virtual backpack and it syncs with google classroom. Check out this website to learn more. https://home.classtag.com/ ScribleThanks to Matthew Klc for sharing this video with me. Tech To Try This YearI want to thank Cana Ivie for sharing this article with me. I recommend you take a look these items. https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/6-ed-tech-tools-to-try-in-2021/ Canvas Quiz LogTECH TICKETS
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January 2021 Newsletter1/20/2021
Frame images with a table acting as a background
When editing pages in Canvas, you might desire to spruce up the look of your images – without having to resort to learning HTML. Before adding a new image, insert a single-cell table. Using the rich content editor, you can adjust cell padding, border weight and cell spacing as well as adjusting the color of both the cell and the border. Once you’ve played with these and adjusted them to your liking, insert your image inside the table, and voila, you have a framed photo. Display multiple documents side-by-side using a table Most teachers structure their classes in a way that certain assignments recur weekly. For example, an English teacher may have journals due each week, or a math teacher may assign story problems each week. Treat your first “module” like a weekly template. Once you have built one module, you can duplicate it for each subsequent week or unit, thus preventing you from reinventing the wheel for each new module. You can, of course, edit each new module. Do this by clicking on the three vertical dots to the right of each module and selecting “duplicate. Create word art buttons using Google Draw or Google slides Give your students friendly, clickable buttons that help them navigate through Canvas. To do this, open Google Draw (or Google Slides works, too!). Type the text you want to appear on your button (for example, “week one”) and then fancy it up – change the font, size, and color until you are satisfied. Insert the image into a page, then hyperlink it to the appropriate page or module. You can align your buttons vertically or horizontally by inserting them in a borderless table. Add a Course card Using Google Draw or Powerpoint, create a custom background for your Canvas course tiles. Courses default to a single-color background; to liven this up, open Google Draw, go to file>page setup and enter the dimensions of 7.3 x 4. This will give you a square space to design in; add fonts and images until you are happy with your custom design. Back in Canvas, click settings and then choose image. Remove Unwanted Courses From Your Canvas DashboardSketchnotes
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December 15th, 202012/15/2020 Microsoft Edge Immersive ReaderAn interactive, free, cloud-based writing platform, helping students write great essays. Students write essays using essaypop's frame-writing system. It also includes sentence starters to help students that struggle with getting started. It also includes an easy export option into MLA format. Check it out below. Top 30 Education Sites and Apps of 2020EssayPop - EssayPop is an innovative cloud-based writing platform that makes it easy for students to create essays. Best of all are the vast amount of features to help students become the best writers they can be, such as guided learning, sentences starters, and framed-writing system. whiteboard.fi - A fantastic new interactive whiteboard that allows educators to create student accounts and have them sign-up via a URL. It also allows educators to assess student learning and differentiate instruction in real time. ADVERTISINGEscape Classroom - Uses game-based learning in an “escape” environment to help student’s learn. Also, Escape Classroom will customize a classroom’s learning experience and has games for remote learning. CurrikiStudio - A wonderful suite of free tools that educators can use to create unique learning experiences, including authoring software with mobile-first activities plus interactive multimedia, images, games, virtual tours, and simulations. Vocab Victor - Features game-based learning to teach vocabulary and is also ideal for working with ESL students. involve.me - Supports engagement by allowing users to create quizzes that can be automatically graded. Gimkit - Uses game-based learning to help teachers differentiate instruction and support students with self-paced learning. Doozy - A fantastic new site for educators to create online quizzes or games. TeachVid - An amazing online tool that uses flipped learning and lessons to teach foreign languages and ESL students. Cloud Stop Motion - Create stop-motion videos that can be used for digital storytelling and project-based learning. Wooclap - An excellent tool for distance learning in which teachers can create a poll or quiz and have students respond in real-time. GameChangineer - One of my favorite sites for integrating STEM into the classroom through learning how to program and code by easily creating a game. Naiku - Ideal for remote learning as this comprehensive assessment platform lets teachers easily evaluate student learning and differentiate instruction. Binumi - A nice site for creating beautiful presentations and videos so that a finished project can be embedded into a site or blog. Storillo - An innovative new platform for group writing projects that tracks individual contributions. Monsters vs Fractions - A very fun site that uses game-based learning to “solve” a mystery and teach fractions. Charttt - Create a wide variety of online graphs, including pie charts, diagrams, and bar graphs, that can be embedded in documents, presentations, and other sites. Wordstool - One of my favorite sites for creating flashcards. It also offers an educational portal to help teachers track and monitor students. Hypatia - An interesting new site that acts as a “spell check” for math. Hypatia checks a user's problem-solving techniques and offers tips on how to better solve and improve their skills. WittyWe - A wonderful site for finding animated lessons on a wide range of subjects grades K-12. Mural - A digital collaboration platform with an educational portal for creating any type of graphic organizer, including a mind map, diagram, brainstorm, and more. Teacher Made - A free site that converts old resources (such as PDFs, worksheets, documents, etc.) into interactive online activities. Insert Learning - A terrific Chrome extension that allows users to turn any webpage into a learning moment opportunity by inserting questions, notes, and instructional content. Circly - An easy-to-use drag-and-drop tool for creating beautiful diagrams and graphic organizers. HeadUP - An excellent site for digital storytelling in various subjects that can also be translated into five different languages. Unsplash for Education - Hosts free, license-free education images that anyone can use. SpeakyReads - An innovative speaking, listening, and spelling tool for ESL students looking for help with reading and comprehension. gez.la - Offers more than 140 virtual field trips, ideal for remote learning. Coggle - An interesting new collaborative site for creating brainstorms, mind maps, and more. Bibcitation - A free resource for citing a wide range of sources, including websites, documents, and videos. Backup your computer
Passwords
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November 2020 Newsletter11/9/2020 Online Reading GamesHere are a couple of websites that offer some reading games to help students with various reading concepts. When I played them they were fun and challenging. Fun and interesting videos that explain history. I highly recommend these videos. I have watched most of their videos and I just do it for fun. Here is an example of their work. GizmosFor you math and science teachers here is a fun site to take a look at. It has simulation to help your students learn key concepts. Here is a link to Gizmos. Google for EducationBakPaxBakpax is an autograding tool that grades assignments in seconds. Bakpax helps you:
This site allows you to paste the url for a youtube video and it removes ads and comments from a video.
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October Newsletter10/15/2020
Do you have students make presentations? Easelly is an easy to use tool that takes boring word documents and PowerPoints and turns them into stunning and easy to read infographics. The site is free, just sign up with your district email.
IORAD
Iorad is an app is a screen-recording app that allows you to capture a process in real time and autogenerates highlights and texts for each step. It makes the process of how-to videos much easier and faster because it eliminates the hassle of taking screen shots and annotating them. The basic app is free, but there are subscription options as well. Click on the video to see it in action.
Join Nearpod November 3, 8AM for an interactive webinar to grow your Nearpod skills. Sessions will be repeated throughout the day and are free with your Nearpod school or district account!
Using an app inside of Canvas called Redirect, you can add custom navigation buttons in your course for students. Its a great way to bring in external websites and resources into your Canvas courses. Click on the video below to see how its done.
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September Newsletter9/17/2020 Backup/Exporting your Canvas Course Data
You can click on this link to view the presentations from this summer's tech summit.
Here are some video resources to help you get started integrating Nearpod into your Canvas courses. Click on the image to access the videos.
How to create interactive games with Google sites using Wordwall.Create Interactives using H5P for Canvas and google sites.Surface Computers Facial Recognition
I use this with my Windows Surface machine and I love it. I don't have to type anything to log into my computer. I just need to be about two feet away and looking at the camera. You will need to pull down your mask for a minute.
DCSD Reading Program
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May Newsletter5/18/2020 ClassLink
Returning DCSD TechnologyIf you are retiring, transferring to another district or resigning there are a few tasks to complete in regards to tech that was given to you. Your laptop, and/or iPad will need to be left at the school with the principal or you can give it to the Technology department at the District office. There are a few housekeeping issues you need to take care of on both the iPad and Mac Laptop before turning them in. Click on the buttons below to find out what you need to do. It's the end of the school year and soon you will be receiving a new laptop. Its essential that you backup your data so the transition to your new machine is as seamless as possible. Below are some ideas and information on how to make a backup of your important files.
Backing up your laptop to Google File StreamSurviving in Quarantine
Windows 10 AppsFor us Windows 10 users in this district we can feel a little left out at times, due to all the Mac users. So here are some free apps I found that seem like real time savers. They both can be found in the Windows store. First up is QuickLook. When you are looking through your files and don't want to open every one to see what it is, just hit your space bar and QuickLook will open a preview version of the file so you can see what it is. It is also free so that part is nice. The second app is called Ditto. It saves your clip board or the items you have copied. You can set the number of copied items and how long you want to save them. Default settings is that it will save 500 items for 5 days. I have tested these items and they both seem to work really well.
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April 2020 Newsletter4/27/2020
Whiteboard.fi is a simple to use basic online whiteboard used to interact with your students. It requires no login or signup and is absolutely free and easy to use.
Food for ToughtA Different Way to Read A ClassicA Little Something For All You Star Wars FansTechnology Facebook Group For Parents
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