Wednesday, May 29, 2019

Summer Professional Learning Catalog

Summer vacation offers teachers an opportunity to reflect and re-charge before the hectic pace of the next school year becomes a reality. If you are thinking about incorporating something new into your teaching repertoire for next year, look no further than our catalog of online and face-to-face Summer Instructional Technology workshops. With over 20 professional learning offerings, there is something for every teacher at every grade level to help you transform your instruction through meaningful instructional technology integration.

Digital Badges

This year, we are incorporating the concept of "digital badges" into our professional learning courses. Digital badges are an emerging tool to help identify and validate our teachers' skills, knowledge, accomplishments, and competencies...think of it as a Boy or Girl Scout earning a merit badge to demonstrate mastery of a specific skill. It is our hope that each building will have pockets of experts who can share their knowledge with their colleagues and help build capacity throughout the district. You can check out our Badge List here. Don't stop till you collect 'em all!

Summer Professional Learning At a Glance

Face-to-Face Workshops
  • Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays
  • 9:00 - 11:30
  • WGHS, C213 or Library Classroom (check MLP for details)
  • Bring your fully-charged laptop
  • Paid at the contractual rate
  • CTLE credit
  • See Summer Professional Learning Catalog for descriptions and registration links
Online Classes
  • 3 x three-week courses
    • Edpuzzle: 7/15 - 8/2
    • PowToon: 7/22 - 8/9
    • WeVideo: 7/29 - 8/16
  • No face-to-face meetings
  • 3 CTLE hours each
  • Paid at the contractual rate (3 hours per class)
  • See Summer Professional Learning Catalog for descriptions and registration links



Thursday, May 16, 2019

Nearpod Interactive Presentations


Of all the digital formative assessment tools on the Web, Nearpod does something unique: It provides teachers with real-time feedback on student understanding to help monitor and adjust instruction. At its core, Nearpod is an interactive presentation tool that allows teachers to share their presentations with students as well as assess their understanding through a variety of formative assessment question-types. Teachers can upload PowerPoint, PDF, and PNG files and add questions in between their slides to check for understanding. When the teacher advances her slides, the students' screens will automatically jump to the slide that the teacher is sharing. When students reply to questions, the teacher will be able to see who answered correctly and who answered incorrectly. Getting started is easy. You can log in with your Google account and upload a PowerPoint presentation you have already created. If you are accustomed to using Google Slides to share presentations with students, you can download your Slides as a PowerPoint file or you can add the Nearpodize Chrome Extension to upload your Slides directly to Nearpod. Nearpod also has a vast library of teacher-created and commercial content that can be copied and modified. Check out the video tutorials below or sign up for a summer workshop to learn how you can use Nearpod in your classroom.

Nearpod 01: Create and Explore


Nearpod 02: Import Slides and Add Activities


Nearpod 03: Live Session and Student View


Nearpod 04: Live Session and Student Reports


Nearpod 05: Nearpodize Chrome Extension



Wednesday, May 8, 2019

Google Forms for Review and Breakout EDU

Google Forms are useful for collecting data from surveys and quizzes, but you can also use Google Forms to create review activities. You can set up an answer key of sorts so that students must enter the correct answer or they won't be able to submit the Form. This technique can also be used to create your own Digital Breakout EDU activities in which students must solve a series of puzzles to "unlock" their answers on a Google Form rather than a physical lock. The video below will show you how to include "Response Validation" into each question on your Form, forcing students to enter the correct answer.



Thursday, May 2, 2019

Virtual Reality Made Easy

I've been playing around with Google Cardboard recently and am excited about the potential for using it in the classroom. Google Cardboard is a virtual reality platform that pairs with a smartphone that runs a variety of virtual reality applications like Google Expeditions to immerse the viewer into a virtual world filled with educational content. Users can download one of Google's templates like a tour of Machu Pichu or create their own VR content using Google Maps Street View that can be published to Expeditions using Google Tour Creator. Here's how it works:

Required Materials:
  • Google Cardboard 
  • Smartphone
  • Google Expeditions App
View an Existing Expedition using your Smartphone:
  1. Download and install the Google Expeditions app to your smartphone and log in to your Google account (see Android and iOS links above).
  2. Open Expeditions, search for a Tour you would like to view in VR and download it to your Library (Note: Google Expeditions has VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality) content. Think of it this way--VR replaces your vision; AR adds to it. Explore both! 
  3. Open the Tour you selected and insert your smartphone into the Google Cardboard headset and immerse yourself into a virtual world!
View an Existing Expedition using Google Tour Creator:
  1. On your computer or Chromebook, visit Google Tour Creator.
  2. Click Get Started and select Templates from the menu at the top of the screen.
  3. Scroll through the templates and select one that you would like to edit or publish.
  4. You can publish the template as-is, or you can add your own text, voice narration, points of interest, and scenes.
  5. Publish your template--you can view it on your computer or Chromebook or you can open it using the Google Expeditions app on your smartphone to view it in Google Cardboard.
Create Your Own VR Tour using Google Tour Creator:
  1. On your computer or Chromebook, visit Google Tour Creator.
  2. Click Get Started and select + New Tour from the menu at the top of the screen.
  3. Give your tour a title and description. Upload a cover photo, select a category, and click Create.
  4. Search for a location and drop the "peg man" onto the map to add a Street View photo to your scene (or upload your own Street View photos--you can take 360° photos using the Street View app for Android or iOS on your smartphone. Some smartphone cameras will allow you to take "photo sphere" 360° photos with the native camera app.
  5. Add the scene to your tour and type a title and description. You can also add voice narration and points of interest. 
  6. Continue to add scenes and publish your work when you are done. Your tour by default is public, but you can make it unlisted.
  7. View your tour on your computer or Chromebook or you can open it using the Google Expeditions app on your smartphone to view it in Google Cardboard.

Google Tour Creator Walk-Through