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March 2020 Newsletter3/6/2020 Something to Help Remember the Steps to Wash HandsKami - PDF annotation appZoom Tutorial Found By Jackie LoertscherThis is a tool for secondary students that accelerates feedback, prevents plagiarism, and builds information literacy skills. We have the full app version turned on in Canvas for a limited time. Check out the resouces below:
Hidden Mac OS Catalina TipFrom Nathan Smith, Utah State University If you use Windows, you probably know that you can drag an application window until your cursor touches the left or right side of your screen, and then it will dock that window to the left half or right half of the screen. In Mac OSX Catalina, did you know you can do that as well? Here's how! Your window will then be docked to the side you've chosen, and the Mac will then allow you to choose an application or Finder window to dock to the other side of the screen. To quit this view, move your cursor to the top of an application window and click on the green button. Respondus Lockdown BrowserTeachers many of you have asked for a secure testing browser. Well, the Respondus Lockdown browser is now available in Canvas. We have also set up all-district owned Chromebooks to use this browser. The students will access it through the kiosk apps on the login screen. You will have to set the test up to use the Lockdown Browser and your quiz needs to be created using the classic quiz maker in Canvas. I know that the district has asked that you use the new quiz maker, but Respondus does not work with it yet. If you want the secure browser you must use the classic tool. There is also training material located in Canvas for you to use. One final thought is that right now we are set up as a trial account if you like this tool let us know. So we can push for the purchase of Respondus Lockdown Browser. They have also given us access to their StudyMate Tool. Take a look at that tool too. It is a flashcard tool and self-assessment and other learning games. Right now we have it until the end of the school year. How to Direct share a Classic Quiz on Canvas
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February 2020 Newsletter2/21/2020 Six BricksLast week Tom and I attended a Lego training. We spent the day learning how to use Lego in the classroom. We did one of the Six Bricks activity, called Back to Back. We enjoyed it and it was a great activity. Take a minute and see what activities you might use in your classroom. LEGO Lesson PlansLooking for some new ways to bring fun into learning. Lego has developed some great lesson plans that are free to use. SlideDog is a powerful application for Windows based machines that allows you to create stunning presentations by combining different file and media types. You can seamlessly blend a PowerPoint deck, PDF document, a website, Prezis, YouTube clips, images and movies together in a single presentation without having to stop the presentation to go to a different media type. It all flows as one presentation without. any interruption. Watch the video below to check it out. Best of History WebsiteBest of History Web sites was created by EdTech Teacher Inc. It has links to over a 1000 history web sites and links to hundreds of quality history lesson plans for k-12, as well as teacher guides, activities, games and quizzes. Interactive Activities in Google SlidesWatch this video to see you can make a google slide show more interactive. Apple Classroom for iPads
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January Newsletter1/14/2020 Recording Yourself in CanvasgoFormativeThis is an online formative assessment tool that allows you to build assessments using their editor tools or upload your own assessment in pdf, google doc, or word document. You can embed content from other websites and even add audio, video, and image files. They also have interactive question types for high order thinking questions. You can even add standards to each assessment. There are many video tutorials to learn all the features available in Formative. Photoshop and Graphic Design CourseTop 16 Authentic Assessment Tools for Educators Learning To SearchAs a teacher one thing, we need to help our students learn to use the internet effectively. Also, it never hurts for us to improve our skills. Google provides free lesson plans to help students and us to learn to better use the internet. District Website TrainingIn Honor of the Superbowl this weekend
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December 2019 Newsletter12/10/2019 Image AnnotatorWith this tool from Classtools.net you can easily make any image interactive. Just upload an image, click on the image to create hotspots, generate a link to share the image, and embed the image into a website. There are also many other games you can design to and use in your classroom. Would you like to spruce up your presentations for you class? Would you like to be able to take wordy content and turn it into something visually creative? Now you can with Easelly. With Easelly you can make stunning infographics to share information and get your point across in style. Make your own infographic with their easy to use templates or take on of theirs and make it your own. Register through google to get started.
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November Newsletter11/26/2019 Mac trick of the Month!Have you ever wanted to show someone how to do something on your computer but didn't have a screen recording program? Now you can in the latest update with Mac OS Catalina (10.15) All you have to do is push Command+shift+5. Thats it. A menu will come up giving you the option of recording the entire screen, a selected window, or a selected portion of the screen. You can then upload the video to a website or email it to a colleague. Watch the short video below to see it in action. Clearing Your Cache in Chrome Why should you clear your browser cache? Programs like PowerSchool, Canvas, Mastery Connect store information on your computer every time you visit their sites. That information becomes out of date as changes are made to data. Such as you entering grades, updating profile information. This out of date cache can cause slowness or errors as you work online. Therefore clearing your cache periodically is important. This site allows teachers to quickly and easily make a variety of online activities for their classroom. There are templates to create your activity or you create from scratch. Teachers have the option of sharing their Wordwall activities or embedding the activity on a website. You can also publish an activity to Canvas with the activity link.
Use Padlet to create multimedia maps!Some of the things that students can do with Padlet's mapping tool include making maps of landmarks they've researched, creating maps of the locations of historically significant events, and developing maps based on some of their favorite stories. Check out the video below. Release December 20, 2019Duchesne Canavas Speedgrader
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October Newsletter10/14/2019
Click on any of the tools below to see a quick tutorial of the different tools in Photoshop 2019.
This PDF includes links to video tutorials and free apps for Mac and PC. The tutorials will show you how to use the apps to download a YouTube video without the accompanying ads, and if needed, cut a snippet of it to share with your students.
In Webjets, users create boards where they gather items on cards, placing these on a desktop that feels like a bulletin board. Its similar to the Padlet app but does a few more things for you. On Webjets a card can contain an image, an embedded video, a live Google Doc, an attached file, or a table containing a variety of elements organized into columns. I think best feature is that cards can be collected into folders, where the items are listed along the left, and the selected item appears in a larger window on the right. You can keep multiple folders on one board, and all cards can be collapsed or expanded, making it easy to neatly collect large amounts of resources all in one place. Check out the video below to see Webjets in action or click on the button above to create your own free account. Just sign in with your google account.
This is a backchannel chat app that allows you to set up a free chat room for your students. Just give your students the URL, and everyone can come on in and chat just like they did on TodaysMeet. What’s even better is that you can password protect your room, participants can add pictures and drawings in the chat, and rooms don’t appear to ever expire.
WeAre Teachers
Are you always looking for great ideas, lesson material, or free stuff to use in your classroom? Then do I have a site for you? WeAre Teachers is a new site I have found and it seems great. One of the articles I liked was this one, "19 Times Teaching Is Exactly Like The Walking Dead". Give this site a chance.
UCET is a great opportunity to go and see what other teachers are doing in their classrooms. To see how you too could incorporate tech into your classroom. Talk with your principal about attending this great conference.
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September Newsletter9/6/2019
Google Jamboard |
Adobe licensing "Utah has a statewide agreement with Adobe for their Creative Suite software. The project, called Create UT, is for students in grades 7-12 and all Utah faculty/staff whose school or district has completed and returned a Participation Agreement with UETN. " Our district is participating in this program which means that you and your students have access to Adobe and its products. We are excited about this new program and what it will mean for our students. To access your account all you do is click on the image next to this article. It is a link to https://www.adobe.com. Once there you click on sign in. Use your district email to sign in. You may be asked to do this twice, it is ok it just depends if Creative Cloud is already installed or not. Once you are in your account you can manage the apps you have installed, the files you have on adobe's servers, and you can access tutorials to learn to use the software. If you have any problems with this process feel free to contact Tom or I and we will try to help you the best we can. |
How to download a Youtube video and put it in Canvas
A refresher on how to submit a tech ticket on Spiceworks
Chrome extensions that students will really use
It allows a user to split their screen so they can work in two tabs simultaneously. For example, if a student needs to watch a video review of a lesson, they can open and view it in one tab while taking notes in Google Docs at the same time. Students have a choice of different sizes of screen, you're not stuck with a 50-50 split. You can also split the screen horizontally. |
Google Doc and Canvas
Google Internet Safety & Digital Citizenship
I want to thank Jessica Evans for providing information about this awesome resource. If you're wanting to teach your students how to be internet safe and have good digital citizenship skills than this resource is for you. It has a fantastic interactive platform that engages students and provides incentives for completing the modules. There are several resources for the teacher to easily implement the material into the classroom. Check out the video in the buttons below to learn more.
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Adobe Photoshop Tip
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May Newsletter
5/13/2019
Adobe Photoshop Tip
Adobe Photoshop is a powerful photo editing program. There are a lot of cool things you can do with pictures using this software. I was recently looking on Youtube for an idea for something to do with Photoshop and found this tutorial. The guy goes slow enough to follow, and he shows the key commands to use as you go along. You can see my first attempt here. I think it turned out pretty good. Adobe Photoshop is a powerful photo editing program. |
Google Tip of the Month
When creating an event, start by choosing “More Options” so you can see all the options available. There will be a paper clip icon in the description box menu. You can add a file directly from Google Drive or upload a file. If you select a Drive file, you will be prompted to share it with the event guests if it hasn’t already been shared with them. It’s super convenient!
You can use this when creating an invitation to a virtual meeting – to share the agenda or other relevant documents. It can also be used to add notes, presentation slides, YouTube videos, and more. It’s a fabulous way to have all the information you need right at your fingertips. No wasting time searching for the info you need!
You can use this when creating an invitation to a virtual meeting – to share the agenda or other relevant documents. It can also be used to add notes, presentation slides, YouTube videos, and more. It’s a fabulous way to have all the information you need right at your fingertips. No wasting time searching for the info you need!
Free Professional Development
Adobe offers some wonderful opportunities for professional development, also you can apply to be a campus leader with Adobe. We are also excited about some licensing changes coming soon that will be great for us all. We will let you know about them soon.
Mistakes in Learning
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April Newsletter
4/12/2019
Use Google Drive to turn a photo of text into editable text!
Step 1: Take a photo of a page of text with your phone or camera.
Step 2: Drag the photo into your Google Drive. Then right mouse click or control click on the photo and choose "Open with with - Google Docs."
Step 3: Google docs will open your image, and also do OCR (optical character recognition) on the photo and put editable text below the image. It's not always 100% accurate, but its pretty close.
A Powerful Tool That You All Have Access to, EXCEL
I have purchased a couple of programs to help track my family's expenses. The first one was a Microsoft program and I really liked it, but they discounted the program. Then I switched to another program, but it tried to help me too much and didn't let me control things the way I wanted. Since then I have tried some other free online options and they too are good, but not what I wanted. So, recently I built my own spreadsheet and set things up the way I wanted them to go. I will continue to modify it to meet my needs and wants.
This is why I like Excel, and I also feel that it is an underused program. I thought I might share some tools to help you all learn to use it some more.
This is why I like Excel, and I also feel that it is an underused program. I thought I might share some tools to help you all learn to use it some more.
Are you pushing your student's to seize their day? Are you pushing them to reach their greatest potential, or are we stuck pushing them through a system? As the year is coming to an end I challenge us all to reach out to our students and help them see their potential and strive to seize it.
Classroom is an iOS app designed for the iPad which allows teachers to view, remote control, and transfer files to students in their classes. The app is designed as a companion for Schoolwork, which allows teachers to assign activities to students. If you would like to learn how to use the Classroom app or Schoolwork app in your class please fill out the form below.
With iOS 11 we can record an iPad or iPhone's screen without using a computer! Screen recording with narration is handy for producing how-to videos and app demonstrations. It’s also great for students to record think-alouds as they use an app or series of apps.
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If you've ever used your iPad or iPhone to airplay to a larger screen, then you've noticed that your audience cannot see your fingers. With the Zoom Controller on, you can move the round icon around the screen and you have yourself a pointer that floats above every app and Home screen! When not in use, simply drag the Zoom Controller to the side of the screen. You can turn on Zoom in the Accessibility settings.
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Do you ever get those annoying pop upasking you to rate an app? Do you wish you could make them go away? When using an iPhone or iPad, you don’t want to stop what you are doing to rate an app. And you certainly don’t want students to be distracted by any unnecessary popups. Good news! With iOS 11, you can disable app rating and review popups! You can find the option to turn them off in the iTunes & App Store section in the Settings app. Please, though, if you like an app, please take the time to rate and review it in the App Store. I would mean a lot to the developer.
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In iOS 11 you can now use the photos app to edit and markup any photo! While viewing the image, tap Edit, tap More (the three dots), and tap Markup. You will see tools along the bottom for adding drawings, highlights, shapes, magnifiers, and text. Apple’s Markup editor provides 6 color choices, three line thicknesses, and three fonts choices. Shapes, arrows, and magnifiers can be adjusted by dragging blue and green dots. Tap and hold any markup item for Duplicate and Delete options.
With these tools students can circle objects in historical photos, ask questions about images, sign their work, add information to diagrams, draw arrows on a screenshot, insert numbers on a photo of a math manipulative, and edit screenshots of others' writing. Plus much, much more. When done editing just tap Done to save the image with the markups. If you want to go back just hit the revert button and the photo goes back to the original. |
Here is a cool idea I thought I would share with you all. You will have to ignore the items he paints, but the way he does his painting is cool.
Keyboard Shortcuts for the Different Computer Types
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March Newsletter
3/18/2019
Word Clouds are a type of graph or image composed of words used in a specific text or subject. The size of the word indicates its frequency and importance. The bigger and more bold the word is the more important it is and the smaller words are those that are of less importance and also show up less frequently. Teachers can use word clouds to compare and contrast pre-reading to post-reading, as an idea generator, as a cover for a book read in class, or as a word map. Below is a list of word cloud generator tools. Enjoy!
Computers are here, and they are becoming a larger part of our everyday life. They are in our cars, TVs, appliances, and jobs. Careers in the computer science field are growing. Have you ever thought about how coding could help your students learn your curriculum? Have you been afraid that you don't know anything about coding, and how could you teach it to your students? Well, I challenge you to take a course from CodeHS and learn it yourself. This is a simple to use, web-based learning platform. There are videos explaining the steps you are going to learn. Questions to see if you understand what you have watched, and practice to try what you have learned.
When you have completed a course stop and think about how you could use this in your curriculum. Let's help our students find their passions for life.
When you have completed a course stop and think about how you could use this in your curriculum. Let's help our students find their passions for life.
CS First is a coding curriculum provided by Google. It uses a program called scratch to teach students how to code. Even if your not familiar with coding you can teach and learn along with your students. CS First has a step by step guide with instruction and activities that allows almost anyone to add coding into their classes. The CS First kit includes lesson plans and solution sheets for the teacher, as well as fun passports and stickers for the students. Check out what its all about at CS First.
Jamboard is a digital collaborative whiteboard app that integrates with everything in a google apps for education account. You can access the web version by going to www.jamboard.com, or download the iOS app from the app store. The iOS app has a bit more features and functionality then the web version. Through the iOS app a teacher can import google drive files and folders, and import pictures and videos. You can also use the app's drawing features which are not included in the web version. Whatever you put on the iPad will sync directly to the app on the web. It's easy to share a Jam with students so that groups or whole classes can collaborate together. Check out the videos below!
Google Jamboard Web version | Google Jamboard app for iOS |
This is a chrome extension that allows you to insert instructional content into any webpage. You start by going to almost any web page, then highlight text, add notes, and embed your own questions—either multiple-choice or open-ended—that students answer right on the page. You can also embed other content like YouTube videos, ThingLink images, flashcards from Quizlet, mind maps from Coggle, even your own recorded videos. Once a lesson is created, assign it to a class of students with a special code or through Google Classroom, and student responses are sent to a teacher dashboard, where you can grade them right inside the app. You can also share lessons with other teachers, so they can copy and edit them for their own use. Easily monitor student responses and annotations during class. TO get started go to the chrome webstore to download the extension. I've included a short tutorial below.
Buncee
This is a Buncee presentation I created just to try it out.
Jessica Evans shared this site with us, and Tom and I felt that it is a great resource for teachers. This is a source that provides pictures that students can use, and not worry about the other junk that comes with other search engines. It is pretty safe, I tried to search for common things that I have seen student search for that brought up inappropriate stuff. I couldn't with Kiddle. However, not all of the pictures are great works of art either. The best thing is that you can have your kids search and be safe.
Google Sheets to Google Calendar
Sheets2Gcal is a Google sheets add-on that allows you to put several calendar events into a spreadsheet and then quickly add them to your Google Calendar saving you time from adding the events individually. Just follow the video tutorial below.
Standards Based Grading
Here are two good articles I recently read that I enjoyed reading about SBG. I wanted to share them with you.