PASD LTR for Staff

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 ...