Going Google (Without Going Crazy) - Volume 1

Click on the picture below to be taking to a Google Tips Flier put together by your friendly neighborhood ITSs.

These fliers have been created using Smore--a web 2.0 tool that allows folks to sign up for free and create a simple one page digital flyer.  The designs are clean and simple and the program is easy to use. http://www.smore.com

TechKNOWLEDGEy Tips: Popplet

Here's another Tuesday Tip over Popplet. Click on the picture to be taken to the tutorial.

Want to know more or use it in your classroom, contact your friendly neighborhood ITS for a small-group or 1-on-1 training opportunity.

Education: Go Get It! Week @ CeVMS

The students of CeVMS focused on getting an education during Education: Go Get It! Week and told us where they were thinking about, planning on, dreaming of, hoping to attending college one day. During advisory or on their own, students visited the Cedar Valley home page and placed their vote in the Answer Garden widget. Here's what it looked like on the Cedar Valley Homepage:

The cool thing about this application is that it is free, it doesn't require a log in (unless you'd like to have some administrative rights), and it creates a great word cloud (interactive and print)!

After polling was closed, the answers were exported easily to Tagxedo to create this great image:

Another cool part of EGGI Week was seeing all the places that Cedar Valley Staff and Faculty members attended college. A map of all of these post-secondary institutions was created and shared through Batchgeo.com. With this site, one can easily copy and paste a spreadsheet of information into the site and create a map. The map can then be exported as a Google Earth file. Check out our map:

Education: Go Get It!

TechKNOWLEDGEy Tips: Remind 101

The RRISD Middle school ITSs have teamed up to provide Tuesday Tips to our campuses. Check out this great tip about Remind 101. Click on the picture to visit the tutorial.

Some additional advantages:

• Subscribers can un-enroll in a class/group by sending a text reply with "STOP" to the number.
• It can be used with text or with email;
• can have multiple classes/groups;
• from what we have used, it is unlimited subscribers;
• it keeps phone numbers and emails private; there's an app for iOS devices.

We also encourage you to get with the whole administrative team, department, horizontal team, or campus to discuss possibilities, time schedules, etc. so that parents and students are not unintentionally bombarded with the same message repetitively.

Want to know more or use it in your classroom, contact your friendly neighborhood ITS for a small-group or 1-on-1 training opportunity.

QR Codes in Math

Ms. Johnson's 6th Grade Math class integrated QR codes easily into their Order of Operations lesson this week. Here's Ms. Johnson's description of the activity:

"...the kids used dry erase boards to solve a problem (each child did a part of each problem), the one that wrote the answer then came to me with their dry erase board and used a phone (theirs, table mates, mine) to scan the code...I asked them if they got that answer on their board--if so, they did the next problem---if not, I had them scan a 2nd code that reminded them of what they should have done and they went back to their table to do it again correctly."

Here's a photo taken by one of our Photo Journalism students, M. Russell, of Ms. Johnson's class in action:

Photo taken by M. Russell

Great Job, Jags!

Monster Mash!

The Cedar Valley Foreign Language classes are making a "monstrous" splash into technology this year already! Check out this assignment from Ms. Ruiz de Chavez's classroom and how the students combined speaking, listening, recording, writing, and technology all in one lesson---and it's in a different language!!! Can you believe it? 


Here's the correspondence from Ms. Ruiz de Chavez explaining the lesson: 


Hola!, 

I just thought I'd share a technology lesson that I'm doing with my students this week. They made a bunch of really cool monsters & today they are recording descriptions using vocaroo & posting them on wall wisher. Tomorrow, they will listen to their classmate's description of their monsters & try to recreate them.

If you want to see what they've come up with, here are the links to their wall wisher sites:

http://wallwisher.com/wall/mi_monstruo-p2

http://wallwisher.com/wall/mi_monstruo-p3

http://wallwisher.com/wall/mi_monstruo-p4

http://wallwisher.com/wall/mi_monstruo-p7

http://wallwisher.com/wall/mi_monstruo-p8

http://wallwisher.com/wall/mi_monstruo-p9

-- 

Cordialmente,

Nelly Ruiz de Chavez

Español 1A

Cedar Valley Middle School

Thank you Ms. Ruiz de Chavez for sharing your class with us! Here are links to the resources this class used: http://vocaroo.com/ and http://wallwisher.com/

Taking Advantage of Testing

The 6th graders at CeVMS were not tested during this round of STAAR testing, however they took advantage of the time they were given in their advisory classes. The core area teachers planned an array of activities to keep the students learning while their older peers were being tested--keeping in mind that, during the next go-round of STAAR testing, the sixth graders will be part of the testing frenzy.

Snagging all the mobile computer labs for the day, the 6th grade teams experienced two days of technology enhanced learning. During one session, students were asked to visit Khan Academy and create personalized math goals. Upon reaching their goals, they are given virtual awards--the math teachers on campus have created a playfully competitive environment between each class. During another session the students used the information they gained by doing this webquest in their World Cultures class to apply the knowledge to a case study over The Color of Friendship. Students also spent time inquiring about science concepts with StemScopes--another game-based learning environment where students play games to learn scientific concepts. They rounded out their core subjects tour with a flashback to this webquest as they completed a case study over Inkheart. I even caught a glimpse of some of them using their electronic readers as part of a BYOD option during D.E.A.R (Drop Everything and Read) Time.

(Unfortunately, I was unable to catch them in the act with photo evidence because my electronic devices had been confiscated due to popping in and out of the testing areas) I was totally amazed at the intensity with which most of the students worked for the extended amount of time. I shouldn't have been because the research states that gaming is becoming an integral part of our learning environment...