Organize your work in Google Chrome by using "Pin Tab". You can lock tabs to the left of your browser window and then when you close and reopen Chrome the tabs will remain pinned to the browser window. Watch this short screencast to learn how to pin tabs in Google Chrome.
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Students are in their 3rd week of Virtual Summer School (VSS) and loving it! Over the past 2 weeks when visiting the on-site tutoring sessions, students reported that they are spending at least double, if not triple, the amount of time on their daily lessons assigned by Mr. Shermak. One student reported that she is glad to be able to keep up on her reading skills over the summer and she is having fun interacting with the online programs. All students reported that they would recommend VSS to their friends and enjoy communicating and collaborating using Edmodo. Students are motivated by watching their skills improve via the math and literacy online resources. Some of the resources that students are using are TenMarks (math), MobyMax (reading and math), Big Universe and TweenTribune (literacy). Online resources such as TodaysMeet and Twiddla are also being used to collaborate and communicate on projects. During week 4 students will be collaborating online with Mr. Shermak via Google Hangouts. There is a lot to be excited about with Virtual Summer School! On July 7th and 8th, Wood Dale School District 7 hosted a Google Certified Educator training with 25 staff members participating. The training was taught by Google Certified Trainer, Mike Berago, Instructional Technology Coach from Fenton High School. Participants deepened their knowledge with using Google Docs, Calendar, Chrome, Sites, and Gmail. During the training, teachers took 5 exams, related to the content, to become Google Certified Educators.
The workshop was a success! Teachers commented that they left the training with a deeper knowledge base and the ability to apply this knowledge in the classroom with their students. The district plans to continue to offer staff basic, intermediate, and advanced training with the Google Suite of products. Trainings will be offered during the work day, after work and in the summer. As part of the regular workday trainings, our Systems Trainer (Greg Augsburg) and our Instructional Coaches (Lisa Applequist, Donna Breckenfelder, Steve Hovey, Kelly Lynn, and Tim Shermak) will work with teachers in their classrooms modeling or co-teaching lessons. District 7 is committed to helping students learn and retain information over the summer vacation. This summer Wood Dale District 7 is piloting a 5 week online/onsite tutoring program with a small group of students. Students will be tutored in reading and/or math for a minimal charge to families. Virtual Summer School (VSS) begins on July 7th and ends on August 8th. A parent/student orientation meeting will be held before the program begins. At this meeting, families will receive important information about the VSS program, specifically information about accessing the online programs. Mr. Shermak, the VSS teacher, will provide students with weekly assignments that they will complete virtually. It is recommended that students spend at least 20 minutes a day on these assignments. At least once a week, Mr. Shermak will provide feedback to the students using Google Hangout, Skype and/or Edmodo. In addition, the tutoring group will meet in person with the teacher 3 times during the tutoring period (1st, 3rd, and 5th weeks). The day and time for the on-site tutoring will be scheduled between the teacher and families. Students will use many of the online programs accessed throughout the school year (ex. Google Docs, Google Hangout, and math and reading online programs). Edmodo will be used to post assignments and communicate with the students and parents. Parents are encouraged to monitor their child's progress using Edmodo and assist with online assignments when needed. If a family does not have a computer, one will be provided. Internet access is needed via the home, library, or public entity. District 7 is excited to be offering this innovative and exciting program. Hopefully, the pilot program will be successful for our families and we will be able to expand it next summer. While attending the ICE conference, Ms. Davis, Ms. Ehrhardt, and Ms. Welter learned how to do screencasting using iMovie and Explain Everything. Upon returning to the classroom, they quickly put their new knowledge to work by creating a video that their students watched to learn how to make an iMovie on their own. The students used the iMovie to create commercials to advertise a business that they had created as a class project. The teacher screencast/iMovie was used by the students, at home or at school, as a way to review the steps of making an iMovie on their own. The teachers were very pleased with the final projects and the creativity of their students. Here is a link to the teacher created video, How to Create Your Commerical on iMovie. This lesson was designed to meet some of the common core writing standards at 2nd grade. As part of these standards, students should be able to use digital tools to publish their writing and ideas. The screencast helped them to learn another way to publish their ideas. In addition, the business project required students to collaborate, communicate, think critically, and be creative. This is a wonderful example of how you can flip your lessons so that students have resources to use on their own, anywhere, and at any time. This year the Speech and Language Pathologists (Alyssa Fuggiti, Kaitlin Kearney, Anna Rakowski, and Tammi Maynard-Robbins) had a goal to create videos to familiarize students, parents, and teachers about speech evaluations and the Individualized Education Plan (IEP) annual review process. They also developed instructional videos including specific details to the production of commonly misarticulated speech sounds (s,z,l,sh,ch,j,f,v,k,g,th,r). These videos can be found on their website.
1. Go to http://wooddalespeech.weebly.com 2. Click on the Videos for Parents tab This is a great way to get families involved in the learning process! Thank you to Mr. Krause for submitting this blog post! What happens when a child finds out that they get to choose what they are learning about? What happens when a child gets to present what they are passionate about to the rest of the class and maybe even to a wider audience than that? The answer is great things! Currently three classrooms at Westview School are working through genius or passion hour and both students and teachers are finding out how engaging this type of inquiry- based learning can be. Mrs. Cericola's 5th grade class started 3 weeks ago and Mrs Papanicolaou's 5th grade class have been working for a couple months. In Mr. Halverson's 4th grade classroom, the students have been working for 6 weeks on their genius hour projects. One hour is scheduled each week for students to explore what they are passionate about and to creatively present what they are learning to their classmates. Teachers started by having each student write about their passions. After that, the rest of the class commented on each other's passions using their Google Chromebooks. On the Chromebooks the kids are able to share their articles with each other and respond to each other in real time! That gives the students effective, timely feedback. Next, the class discussed the rubric, which explained to the students exactly how they were going to be evaluated. They decided to use key words from Angela Maiers' Habitudes rubric. Habitudes are the habits and attitudes needed to be successful in the 21st century. The six Habitudes include imagination, curiosity, perseverance, self- awareness, courage and adaptability. The students were divided into groups and each group presented one of the Habitudes to the rest of the class. Students were able to chose various presentation formats which allowed for creativity and collaboration. Here are a few Habitude presentations: After students understood the assessment expectations, they began to design a project related to their passion. Some examples of student projects are: starting a store and/or business, creating art organizational devices, creating a personal soccer training program, creating a science experiment to teach the class, and many more exciting things. The kids are enthusiastic about genius hour. This hour combines many skills from the Common Core such as writing, reading, speaking, and in many cases math and science. Student feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Student and Teacher Testimonials: Evelyn said, “This is a fun experience because I have always wanted to try to make a business and I can see what it will be like for real. I want to create a math playground where you answer math questions to get to the next obstacle, It will be fun.” Marcelo remarked, “I like it because there is a lot of learning. Each time it is different as you work on the project.” Mr. Halverson has enjoyed the process as well, He said, “We have been working 6 weeks and 6 hours and everyone is totally engaged and learning - that's epic." Mrs. Acord has assisted with projects and said, "It is wonderful to go into the classrooms and see all the great ideas they are coming up with!" Mrs. Wagner's class will be the first class to be doing Genius Hour at Oakbrook in the upcoming weeks and it will interesting and exciting to see the great ideas the 2nd graders come up with. Genius hour is off and running in Wood Dale District #7! Watch this running slideshow for pictures of Genius Hour! I use goo.gl URL shortener several times a day. This web application and extension in Google Drive can quickly shorten the current website URL that you are using. In addition to shortening the web URL, the extension will provide a QR code, auto copy the URL to the clipboard, and provide a history and details about the link that was provided to others. So stop attaching l-o-n-g URLs to emails and embedding them into documents - try shortening them in a fast and easy way by adding the extension to your Chrome tool bar or visiting goo.gl! An example of what the information from the extension looks like: Below is a screenshot of the web application. Click on details to access graphs and additional information about the link you provided. Notice the last column that tells you how many times that someone clicked on the link.
This week Google added their new Add-ons feature into Google Docs and Sheets. These tools will add features to your documents to help you be more efficient. Who doesn't like efficiency? Watch this 2 minute video to learn how to use Add-ons. ) So far I have added: EasyBib, Kaizena, Track Changes, and Workflows. These Add-ons will stay in my Docs and can be easily accessed when I need them. Here are some other blog posts about Add-ons: Lifehacker Teaching Like It's 2999 by Jennie Magiera A short video on how to incorporate Add-ons into Google Sheets: Check out this post by Kevin Brookhouser, Google Certified Trainer, on how to start an assignment in Google Drive and work with students throughout the entire assignment. Kevin included a nice 4 minute video explaining the process.
One of the blog comments said, "Every teach should view this. Really well done. (I've done this for a few years and it works seamlessly with Edmodo, too.)" |
AuthorWelcome to my blog! I'm Merri Beth Kudrna , a Curriculum Director in a PreK-8 school district. My past experiences as an educator include classroom teacher, reading specialist, instructional coach, assistant principal, and principal. I love watching kids learn & grow through authentic learning experiences. My passion is integrating technology into the curriculum and using social media to connect students & staff to the world. Archives
January 2019
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