PASD LTR for Staff

Chances are if you are focusing on differentiation, problem-based learning or personalized learning that Empowered Learning  is already happening. Studies have proven that more learning happens when the student has the CHOICE in what they are doing. Students who feel empowered will go the extra step and have deeper learning than those that just learn enough to pass the assessment. via GIPHY Differentiation can mean many different things in each classroom, but Learners who feel empowered are immersed in an environment where they have access to resources, can explore relevant to them topics and utilized critical thinking skills. With much of the district going 1:1 this school year our students have access to so many resources. One of the most important resources that we have access to are the library websites. (Though I have a bit of bias here) The elementary  and the middle/high  websites are both organized in similar headings of Reader, Researcher, and Listener. The...

This month the LTR posts will be focused on Empowering Learners. Since this is the first post of the month on it, this post will focus on what standards are included in this heading. EL1-Students leverage digital tools and strategies to take an active role in choosing and achieving their learning goals. Supporting Standards include: EL1.a: Set goals and reflect. EL1.b: Build network to support learning. EL1.c: Create personalized learning environment. EL1.d: Seek and utilize feedback. Some things to reflect on with this standard that many of us already do are: Setting goals and reflecting is something that many of us already do our classrooms and with the district going 1:1 it just makes sense to start modeling and expecting students to utilize digital tools like SeeSaw, Google Docs, Classroom and Gmail to make, reflect upon and modify goals on a regular basis. Show them the benefits and drawbacks of each and let them have the choice on how they choose to reflect.  Personali...

Standard 1 for Digital Citizenship states that " Students recognize the rights, responsibilities, and opportunities of living, learning, and working in an interconnected digital world." I think that in order for students to recognize this that staff also need to recognize the impact of a Digital Footprint. One resource that I stumbled upon a few years ago was "What Happens in Vegas Stays on Youtube" by Erik Qualman and the more student version of "What Happens on Campus Stays on Youtube." Think of these books as a What if... Chicken Soup for the Digital Soul, where the author shares real life stories of how digital footprints have impacted both adults and students and gives ways to create a positive footprint. Let's face it, we can't not have a digital footprint, unless you are totally disconnected, so we, staff and students, need to focus on making sure what others can see of us online is what we want them to see. Ways you can check what...

This month's focus: Digital Citizens, is perfect because October 14-18 is Digital Citizenship Week! Citizenship is something that we as educators teach and model ALL OF THE TIME! It is especially important more so now that we model this behavior online and give students opportunities to practice proper digital citizenship in the safe space of our classrooms. Standard DC1 - Students recognize the rights, responsibilities, and opportunities of living, learning, and working in an interconnected digital world. This does NOT mean that you should have them all sign up for social media and connect with them there. In fact that is against Board Policy. But there are ways that you can get creative, model appropriate digital citizenship and engage your students. It means talking about privacy, not just having students agree to statements without reading what they are agreeing to. Making sure that students are on resources that we have permission for through our Web 2.0 permission slips an...

Super exciting news guys! We were able to purchase the Adobe Spark platform for students and staff here at PASD this year. What is it? Well, thanks to Wikipedia : "Adobe Spark is an integrated suite of media creation applications for the mobile and web developed by Adobe Systems. It comprises three separate design apps: Spark Page, Spark Post, and Spark Video." Why do you want to know about it? Well, it allows you and your students to create (professional looking) publishable graphics and flyers (and more!) quickly and easily. It also has the ability (like Google docs) to collaborate on projects!  How can I use it? Here is an awesome guest post by Claudio Zavala Jr. on Matt Miller's Ditch that Textbook website from August 2018. There are some great "real" examples on this website. Here Adobe created an article titled "16 Ways to Motivate Students in the Classroom Using Adobe Spark." There are some great idea starters here. If yo...

Last year the Technology Steering Committee worked on the District Vision in terms of technology and our school. I presented this to the School Board at the end of the school year. The District Future Ready Plan can be found here . Our vision for the 2019-20 school year is: "... to inform all staff of ITL (Information and Technology) Standards and how they apply to their content areas and promote 21st Century Skills in their content area." For this the Tech Steering will be conducting literature studies on current trends and Authentic Learning. You will be exposed to this in many different ways. One way is through this PASD LTR blog. One of my professional goals is to focus on one Standard a month in at least 3 posts. The first post will be an overview of that Standard and how it can be incorporated in different areas. The following will look at different tools that you could or even already use in your classroom. Bottom line is that the ITL Standards and technology shoul...

As many have found out we are no longer paying for Newsela. When we first purchased this subscription Newsela was a great resource for leveling nonfiction content. Over the past few years they have transitioned into more of an assessment tool. While the assessment tool is great, it made it not covered by CSF, Common School Fund, one of my primary funds for budgets. The purpose of this Blog post is to highlight some other tools and websites that offer similar articles. If you have a website not mentioned, please add it in the comments or contact me directly!  1) Dogo News - ELA, Science and Social Studies articles for kids. While there is a paid version that has the assigning, listening and quiz options I haven't found an article that I haven't been able to access. Categories on the top ribbon include Current Events, Science, Social Studies, World, Environment, Fun, Video and Sports. You can filter top stories by Week, Month and Year. You can share the article to Google Classr...

Have you subscribed to the Google for Education's EDU in 90 second videos in YouTube? If not, you really should. If you had on May 1 you would have received this quick PD in 90 seconds with Chromebook tricks like how to enable CAPS LOCK on a Chromebook: What I love about subscribing to YouTube is that when I subscribe I get a notification ANY time they upload a new video and I can watch that video right away. Or if it's something that doesn't interest me, I can delete it. It's so much easier than trying to remember to go to YouTube to check what's new or find how to fix what I think is broken. It is so EASY to do! All you have to do is click the red Subscribe button below the video. Here are a few of my favorite subscriptions: 1) Google for Education - In case you missed the link above here it is again. This is how I quickly stay up to date and am often inspired by seeing videos of teachers talk about why they love GSuite. 2) Epic Reads - I love video b...

A few years ago I read a book where the character created infographics to communicate her ideas. This got me thinking and I have tried to implement them into how I communicate important information with staff and students. Here is a great article from November 2015 regarding how effective infographics can be.  https://www.ragan.com/infographic-5-reasons-why-infographics-are-e%C2%ADffective/ I find that when I send regular emails that staff often overlook them and some times I send a lot of emails to staff. It is a goal that I am still working on. I do remember to send them out at the elementary every spring though. I have used a few different infographic websites to create. However, the one that I used this year was Canva. Things I look for when evaluating a resource like this are: Price (I prefer FREE) Ease of Use (If it takes much longer than I need to type out an email, I am not going to use it) Templates (this helps with the time issue) Ability to sign in with my G...

TBR-To Be Read. For me this list is often endless and filled with picture books, children's books, YA, adult, magazine articles, blog posts and random rabbit holes that I find myself falling into. In this post, I am going to give you an update of what I have been looking at and perusing. Some of the titles I have read, some are on my list of TBR. #1  The Donkey Egg by by Janet Stevens, Susan Stevens Crummel.  This one came in my Junior Library Guild book box recently and I judged it by it's cover. It just didn't look all that exciting to me. However, thanks to the new Facebook groups that I have joined with other's in the trenches of School Libraries, I gave this one another shot. It is a cute story of a grumpy old bear who is sold a donkey egg from a sly fox. That bear takes his new job of keeping the egg warm, cared for and loved in hopes of meeting his new baby donkey. Well, as we all know donkeys do not hatch from eggs but Bear and Hare take what looks like ...

Some of you may be saying, I don't need one of those or I already knew how to do it. But this was a big win for me today. Sometimes you need a little GIF to add some levity or in my case to quickly show an awesome tool without a cumbersome video. I did so many Google searches, but have never quite figured it out until TODAY, FRIDAY! Today I mashed a few different articles that I have been reading and finally found the method that WORKED. I am going to treat it a bit recipe of what I needed. 1 cool feature that you want to share with someone 1 WeVideo website (you can substitute many other screenshot style resources out there, this is my prefered one as I can use it on my Chromebook while being at school) 1  https://ezgif.com  website (this one has so many tools that I was able to figure out pretty easily) 2 Tbsp of candy of choice (Skittles worked well for me here) Step 1: Take a screencast of a website, don't worry if you are only want part of the screen ezgif has...

I know that many of us have used the common features of Google Search such as the calculator, timer and getting a quick definition. However, did you know some of the other features? "I'm feeling curious" will give you a fun fact like this: The words "Play Snake" will give you an updated version that you may recall from your old Nokia. "Play Solitaire" will bring up a quick game of solitaire (Easy or Hard) "Random Number Generator" will allow you to get a quick random number. Looking for a random "Spinner" will give you a spinner to generate your random number up to 20. Best part about this is if you expand the box you will see other Games and Toys or Tools that you can use. Do you already use one? Go ahead and share it in the comments.

As a child of the 80's and 90's I absolutely LOVED this game! I remember fighting my brother over who got to play this on our PC growing up. Checking out Almanacs from the library just so that I could try to solve the questions that were given. Watching the game show on PBS: Man, that song was really catchy! Then on one of our many snow/cold days Roland and I discovered that Netflix had released their own animated version to answer the question: Who really is Carmen Sandiego? Then, it just got better! If you saw the latest Google for Education Newsletter, XVIII, March 2019 you may have seen what I saw: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Google have created an interactive quiz that takes your students across the globe to find clues and solve the mystery of the Crown Jewels caper:  Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?   Melding the world of Google Earth and the classic game we remember (it's even pixelated like we remember!) Students get to interview different peopl...

During the latest days off due to cold/snow I caught up with some of the latest podcasts. During The Google Teacher Tribe's  January 28, 2019 episode-App Smashing with G Suite  I learned about this newer tool Wakelet . What is it? It is a digital curation tool. You can add multiple articles, images, videos, etc. to one page (or wake) and share one page on your Google Classroom. Create a wake for each unit of study or for a research project. You as a teacher can use this tool this year, if you want students they need to be 13 or have a permission slip according to their Terms of Conditions . If this is a tool that you may want to use with your students you can still fill out the Web 2.0 permission form . Resources Wakelet Help Tutorials -this is a super informative playlist on how to access the different features of Wakelet. I know many times it is easier for me to see and hear someone else do it before attempting to do it myself. 12 Curation Ideas for Teac...