Tech Tuesday BlendSpace

Transitions

Today we are speaking at a New Teacher & Mentor workshop for LCPS and have been asked to provide some resources for transitions. We are showcasing the tool, 'Thinglink', with the resources we found for this group of teachers. Thinglink allowed us to start with one large 'thing' (bumper cars pic) and then add 'links' from it. Our links all have to do with transitions, of course!

The Lowdown on Google Drive

Choose Your Own Adventure with Google Drive

Google Drive Cheat Sheet

100 Important Google Drive Tips

15 Best Google Drive Add-ons

20 Expert Tricks & Shortcuts

Blendspace

Manage digital materials, assess students, and track progress in real time.  Blendspace can be used at all grade levels and for a variety of purposes.  For instance you can try flipping your classroom, adopting a project based learning approach or simply just to differentiate your instruction.  Here is an example of a Photosynthesis Blend. 

This is a great tool to use as you plan your instruction.  All of your digital resources are saved in one spot for your students to access with one URL.  Give it a try.  It will save you time and energy when you need to review content or provide resources for students that are absent.  Happy Blending!!

Let the World See your Documents!

It is not a great idea to assume that your students and/or their families have Microsoft Office on the computer they use to access your website. If you are uploading Word or Publisher documents or Excel files, and your end user does not have Office installed, they may have trouble accessing your documents.

Making all your documents PDF files before you upload/save them to your Google drive helps insure they still look the way you want them to and that they can be read on most computers (a PDF reader is a free download if it isn't standard on a computer).

To make a PDF of the document you want to publish, you can:

1. Choose “save as” and change the file type to PDF when your document is finalized
2. Choose “print” and choose “CutePDF writer” as the printer and follow the prompts to save your document

Enjoy your webmastering!

Sharing in Google Drive

With the roll-out of our new LCPS website, most of our teachers have created new Google websites! And with this new Google knowledge has come the challenge of learning how to share Google 'stuff' like Google Pages and Google Docs. In fact, the #1 challenge our teachers are faced with seems to be understanding exactly how 'sharing' works in Google. There are some great resources available through a simple Google search, such as: Google's How To Share page in their help section and the GCFLearnFree.org's Google Docs & Drive Sharing & Collaborating. My favorite help pages usually include info-graphics with links like this one from ShakeUpLearning, The Magic Button: Share.

Chromebook Classrooms PLC: Google Forms

A small group of LCPS teachers are piloting the use of Google Chromebooks in their classrooms this year. This blog post is the first in a series of resources aimed at these Chromebook Classrooms. We encourage you to learn along with us by using the same resources in your classroom.

Google Forms

Google Forms are web-based forms and surveys that allow teachers to poll students for data. Images and videos can be included in the forms along with multiple different question types. All the data from each form is neatly dumped into a spreadsheet. Try out this one below.

Here is the form:




Here is the data:

Timestamp	First Name	Last Name	What is the capital of Virginia?	Choose one:	How many counties are in the state of VA?
8/1/2014 13:12:44	Zinnia	Flowers	Charlottesville	George Washington	59
8/1/2014 13:13:12	Oscar	Meyer	Richmond	Thomas Jefferson	95

PowerTeacher Gradebook Setup

A refresher for teachers at back-to-school time. (Courtesy of Mr. Lent and Mr. Woody)

-          One of the main mistakes when setting up the grade book is not being consistent with your style of grading (you must do total point for all marking periods, or category weights for all marking periods, depending on your choice). 

-          Another common mistake is entering in a points assignment and grade(35/50), when the grade book is set up for category weights (all assignments 100%), or vice versa (you enter in a 90% for an assignment, which is category weights, rather than entering in a total points grade). 

-          If you are going to use category weights, the total of all categories used must add up to 100%. 

 

Thank you Mr. Lent for your screen-cast help video!

 

Other resources:

PowerSchool Teacher Tutorials from Connecticut Technical School

New Teacher Orientation

ITRT Chalk-Talk LINK HERE