TIS & THAT January 17, 2014
Volume 2, Issue 9
A Glimpse of What’s Ahead
Contributors: Megan McCoy Billie Jo Shackleford Cynthia Alderman
January 1/20/14- Martin Luther King Jr. 1/31/14- Chinese New Year
Inside this issue: A Glimpse of What’s Ahead
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GradeCam
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TechSteps
Digital Learning Day
March is a month to celebrate… National Nutrition, Music in Our Schools, Young Art, Women’s History 3/9/14- Daylight Savings Time, “Spring Forward”,
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February is a month to celebrate... National African American History
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2/5/14– Digital Learning Day
3/20/14– First Day of Spring
2/12/14- Lincoln’s Birthday
3/30/14-Vietnam Veteran Recognition Day
Tools to Help Prepare 5 Students For Testing Top Ten “Gifty” Gadgets
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Oh No! SNOW!
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2/14/14– Valentine’s Day 2/24/14– West Test 2 Online Writing Assessment (grades 3-11)- Window opens Online LA Assessment
3/19/14-Golden Horshoe
April 4/21/14 through 5/2/14- APTA (Alt. Performance Task Assessment) 4/25/14- West Test 2 Online Writing Assessment (grades 3 -11)- Window Closes
May is a month to celebrate… Asian Pacific American Heritage 5/4/14 through 5/10/14– Teacher Appreciation Week 5/11/14– Mother’s Day 5/17/14– Armed Forces Day 5/26/14– Memorial Day
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Volume 2, Issue 9
“GradeCam- the New Way to Grade” Tired of spending countless hours grading papers? Start making a list of those things you claimed you never had time for because you had to grade papers.
It is the newest big thing! GradeCam features a way for any teacher to grade multiple choice tests whenever they need to without having to wait to use the Scantron machine. Now we can print forms and create custom assignments including multiple forms of the tests. Student's answer sheets can be scanned with a document “Reclaim the scanner, laptop camera, or mobile device and sent to your grade book. time you You can also perform item analysis and keep track of student spend grading progress/weaknesses. Questions can even be linked to State assignments Standards. Teachers can access it at http://www.gradecam.com/, in your where they can watch informational and step by step instructive classroom.” videos, available with a teacher free version.
There are several ways to get GradeCam. Teacher Starter is a totally free plan that you can use for as long as you want. There is also a “Teacher Plus” version that adds lots of great features, such as importing your graded assignments onto your web-based gradebook! When you sign up as a teacher, they will sign you up for Teacher Plus for 60 days for free, after which you will have the option of staying with Teacher Plus or switching to Teacher Starter. Teacher Plus costs $15 a month per teacher or your county/district can purchase every feature of the product for $2.50 per student.
Techsteps New students to your school Did you get new students enrolled in your school since your county uploaded them into Techsteps? Don’t forget you need to add them to your Techstep roster. It is very simple. Just follow the intructions below or visit tildee.com to see the following directions in more detail. 1.Go to Groups on the left side. First, you should click Member to check to see if the student was added already. 2. Then you need to click Settings and select Add Student. Type your student’s name to search and when you find them you need to click Add to Group. If you have more than one student to add, you can search for students per grade level or as a whole group. Be aware that if they are from another school, you might have to go to your name located in the right corner and click Account Manager. Proceed to the student link and click Students Accounts. Search for the students again and change them to your school. In my county, this is being done for me. In Students Account, you can reset their passwords for them. Good luck with Techsteps and remember you can get help by clicking on this link.
Volume 2, Issue 9
G DAY DIGITAL LEARNIN
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Many of us incorporate technology in our classrooms, so digital learning day is nothing new, right? We are always wanting our students to go one step further when learning; why not go one step further as their teacher on February 5th? Go to their website and check it out yourself. There are lessons, games, activities, and even contests to get your classes motivated. You can share what you did in your classes that day or quietly participate; it is up to you! Also, The Alliance for Excellent Education will be hosting a virtual workshop that will inspire and guide you in your Digital Learning Day efforts. Their webinar’s panel of experts will provide ideas and advice to help you make the most of the day. Some of those experts will be Zak Malamed-sharing ideas about how to get students involved, Kamila Thigpen - with lessons learned from the “Lights On Afterschool”, Kim Sharp shares some of the exciting events taking place in the Klein Independent School District (Houston, Texas), Sherri Wilson from the National PTA provides insights on parent outreach, and Terri Schwartzbeck will be the moderator. The discussion and panelists will address questions submitted by viewers from across the country. You can register for the webinar or watch the archived version available atall4ed.org/webinarsevents/. Don’t forget to Twitter #BYOTchat: Digital Learning Day Edition 9:00 pm – 10:00 pm EST on January 30.
http://www.digitallearningday.org/ Follow others and their great ideas on: Twitter @OfficialDLDay & Facebook
Volume 2, Issue 9
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Tools to Help Prepare Students For Testing Socrative: Engage your classroom with this easy to use student response system via smartphones, laptops, and tablets. Log in and create quizzes/games within minutes. Students log in to the teacher’s virtual classroom, complete the activity, and obtain immediate feedback. The student responses are visually represented for multiple choice, true/ false, and short answer questions. And after quizzes are complete, teachers can view reports online as a Google document or as an email Excel file. WV Writes lets your students practice their writing skills. There are prompts already available. However, any teacher can create a new assignment for their area of content. Student’s work are graded immediately and they are able to resubmit to improve scores as many times as they need, all the while allowing them to practice with online writing. Acuity & Acuity Unwired are additional tools teachers can use for testing practice, as well as tracking benchmarks in learning. Acuity questions make excellent warm-ups, allowing students to practice answering standardized questions. In the lab, students get the opportunity to practice online testing. Webquests may not be the ideal way to prepare your students for testing this year but keep them in mind for next year! Since we are transitioning towards Smarter Balanced testing, web quests can be great tools to help students demonstrate research, writing, and analytical skills.
Volume 2, Issue 9
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Top 10 Nifty, Gifty Gadgets After browsing through all the top listed technology wonders that are available in stores this Christmas season, here are several gadgets that you might want to make your classroom and yourself run more smoothly: 1. Portable Backup Drive-Sea Gate Backup Plus Are you tired of carrying around several jump drives? Do you have loads of paperwork & files on your computer? Did you run out of space on your cloud device? Why not get a portable drive and backup all your files. The sea gate has 1TB (1,000GB) available to purchase for around $66.00. 2. Belkin Music Receiver You can wirelessly stream music from any device whether it is an ipod, computer, android, tablet, as long as it has a line in or and aux import. Approx. Price $39.00. 3. Bluetooth Speakers-Phillips Sound Shooter Wireless NO more wires to plug into your music device. With Bluetooth, all you have to do is sync. Long lasting battery and rechargeable cord that is hidden until it is needed. Although similar to the one above, you can carry it in your pocket or gym bag. It makes listening to music fun and a blast. Price Range $18.00-$50.00
10 Gadgets under $100.00
4. Dice + Tired of students arguing about a student cheating at a board game? Want a new way to do math? Try a Bluetooth dice that has an algorithm to randomly produce numbers on the dice as you roll them. A good way to randomly produce math problems to students. Approx. Price $40.00. 5. Fitbit Flex After the holidays, we need to burn off the extra trimmings that we have consumed during our break. Why not wear a fitbit to measure all the work that you do during your school day. Fitbit is an electronic fitness band that will sync to your android device or iPod. It will measure your pulse, and calories burned. Aprox. $99.95. 6. Roku 3 Need to show a movie or a video about an event related to your classroom. All of you have to do is plug this device into your television or computer and you would have hundreds of movies and events ready for you to show to the classroom. Remember to check your school licensing for your movies. Approx. Price $49.00 7. Logitech Keyboards, Washable or Solar Charger Do you have dirty keys on your keyboard? Tired of students with sticky, dirty fingers? Do you find keyboards hard to keep clean? Well now they have washable, submersible keyboards with holes that will allow the water to drain. If you are an energy saving, fossil fuel science teacher, why not try a solar keyboard to use in your classroom. Washable $40.00. Solar $60.00 8. Paper Airplane Conversion Kit Don’t yell at your students for making a paper airplane in class, now you can put it to good use. With a conversion kit, you can teach science concepts such as air, wind and velocity. Approx. Price $20. 9. Rhino Screen Protector Afraid of a broken Screen? This screen protector is supposed to be so durable that you can take a hammer to it according to the website video review found online. Approx. $18 10. SanDisk Connect Wireless Flash Drive Need to share a project with another student, transfer a file to multiple kids, with this flash drive you can share movies, photos, documents and music via wi-fi without using cables, router, or internet connection. It even has a password protection and holds a 4 hour charge. Approx. Price is $60.00
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TIS & THAT
Oh NO! SNOW! The weather is getting colder and Old Man Winter may possibly alter a few of your classroom lesson plans. It is time to consider technology as an option for students to use at home on a wintery day, so they do not slip up academically!
Classroom Tools to use at Home Edmodo.com- connecting in online classrooms, collaborating on assignments, and discovering new resources. Teacher’s First.com- collection of lessons, units, and web resources designed to save teachers time by delivering just what they need in a practical, userfriendly, and ad-free format. Resources for parents, and students. Schoology.com– It works just like Edmodo where you can place assignments for students, and have students submit their work for you to grade. There is a gradebook, absent and seating charts plus a variety of already loaded lessons for you to choose from. Students do not need an email to log on to access the account and there is a code for students and parents to access. Blogger.com – You can post assignments and communicate with your students on places to visit while on a snow day. khanacademy.org - Students make use of extensive library of content, including interactive challenges, assessments, and videos from any computer with access to the web Discovery Education - digital learning environment & textbooks Reflex Math - game-based, adaptive and individualized Zunal.com– Mobile friendly! The easiest way to create a WebQuest with more than 255 thousand users. It is a web-based software for creating WebQuests in a short time without writing any HTML codes. apexlearning.com—offering online courses in mathematics, science, English studies, social , virtual school Shmoop: Homework Assistance