Dear Staff, Take a look at what you can and come back for seconds later. QR Codes: You might be saying to yourself--What is a QR code? Well, a QR code is like a barcode that get's scanned at a cash register to indicate the item's price. To give you an image to attach to an existing schema, I put a customized QR code at the end of this email. With iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches, students can turn their phones into handheld scanners. Are you sick of watching students mistype web addresses? Using QR codes in the classroom is a solution circumventing this problem. Go to my blog for additional resources on QR codes. URL Shorteners: Let me ask this question again: Are you tired of watching students mistype long web addresses? Shorten them with a URL shortener. I will warn that some shorteners may be blocked by our LightSpeed Filter; however, I know TinyURL worked for me last week. Here is an example of a URL Shortener's benefits. Take a look at this long Google Docs URL: • https://docs.google.com/document/d/ 1nkUSlw9nQrTH97DpT5bsxDQNYF94P8iPAAXY79gsTdM/edit Even your most tech-savvy student would struggle with this Google Docs web address. Now try the next two shortened web addresses (*additional resource found at links): • TinyURL's shortener - http://tinyurl.com/TCSC1 • Google's URL shortener - http://goo.gl/z8DMO Rubrics: After sitting in on a meeting a Three Creeks and our New Teacher program, I know some teachers were worried about creating their own Scales/Rubrics for the new iObservation evaluation program. Check out Rubristar for creating rubrics. That website has been around for every (i.e. before MySpace). Also, check out Rubrics for Teachers, which has several links to already made rubrics. Last, just search Teachers Pay Teachers for free rubrics. Classroom Connection: So, I walked into the Art Room at Lake Prairie and Ms. Sayers was using the following website to make a digital snowflake. The students were using their mouse to cutout a snowflake. Then, the students were attempting to email the file to Ms. Sayers, but it just wasn't working. This was a minor roadblock, and Ms. Sayers was able to figure out a solution in the moment. Because she invited me to preview the project, I was able to offer a few suggestions for download the picture off the website. Then, instead of emailing the image, the students one at a time could have AirDropped the image to her. If you ever have a project and need to pick my brain about file transferring/conversion or you just need an extra set of hands on standby, please book a time with me.
Printing Monica Scheidt deserves praise for hearing me out on not being able to print from student computers. Monica and I talked about other options to printing out all student work. To name a few options, we can: • AirDrop the documents to the teacher machine (do this in small groups), • Use student Google Docs accounts and share the documents, • Use a student blog to showcase student work, • Use a student blog to turn in writing prompts or writing assignments (displays growth overtime), • Upload assignments to Edmodo, and • Use the comments section within Pages and email parents graded work. Of course, there is a time and place to print, but we want to limit unnecessary printing. Try to go at least a little green! We have all of this technology. Now, let's use it to cut down on our paper consumption; so that, we don't have to cut down more trees. -- Dan Gibson