Gettin’ Fishy with it! 🎶 🐟 🎶

efisher713 / September 28, 2017September 29, 2017 / G-Suite, Great Tech Sites, Teacher Shout Out!

Hello EB!

COULD THERE BE A BIGGER WEEK IN ED TECH???!!!!! In my role, I have never been so busy! It’s AWESOME! A quick recap: second grade has now joined the Google party, Pear Deck had a huge announcement this week, Google made a HUGE announcement also and released “Add-ons” in Google Slides, and Front Row is really taking off with grades k-6, but wait…theres more! Let’s take a look below:

Catch of the Day: Google Slides Add-Ons

On Thursday, 9/27 at 11am, Google announced that it is launching add-ons for Google Slides. This is going to really transform Slides and allow much more versatility to an already amazing, FREE, product! You can read more about this release here. The rollout will start on 9/27, and continue over the next month, so you may not see the add-ons menu yet, but it’s coming. Guess who is going to be one of the FIRST add-ons….PEAR DECK!

The BIGGEST fish in the small pond – Shout out Grade 2!

A really big shout out to grade 2 teachers and students! You all did such an amazing job getting on your Chromebooks this week and accessing many amazing programs and sites! I am so proud to say that ALL OF GRADE 2 PLANS TO USE GOOGLE CLASSROOM! This is simply amazing to watch our oldest, little Vikings using Google Classroom. My heart swells with excitement! I’ve enjoyed coming into each and every one one of your classrooms this week (and a few next week). You’re doing GREAT!

Pear Deck add-on for Slides – WHAT?!!!! I KNOW IT!!!! OMG!!!!

Gone are the days of importing a Slide presentation into Pear Deck and not having the ability to edit! Now, with the Pear Deck add-on for Slides, you can work directly in Slides to create your Pear Deck interactive presentation. Anyone using and/or creating Pear Decks knows how tedious it can be to import images and change backgrounds….No more!! This is great news! Please click the link below to really see the fine details with this add-on! It is AWESOME!

Front Row

Thank you to the fourth grade for showing me this amazing program! If you haven’t checked out Front Row, it is a great FREE program for grades k-6 (although it does go up to 8, and they’re adding High School math soon). Central school is using it this year and the children love it! This is a great program that can run in the background for skill development, and as the teacher, you really can have as little or as much to do with it as you’d like. It’s not too game-based, and it still has a motivator with “coins” and shopping in the Piggy Shop! It differentiates and levels children as well. See the video below to see it as a child….

Google Docs Newsletter Template

You can do some pretty amazing things with Google Docs! By manipulating tables, and inserting drawings, you can create some pretty cool looking templates! Check out the video example below of Jen Rosher’s Newsletter which she created in Publisher and I was able to replicate in Docs. This now allows her to work on it anywhere since it’s in the Drive! If you would like a template to use for your own classroom please click here.

Quick Tip: The “redo” function saves so much time! ⏲⏲⏲

Thank you Amy Schleinkofer for this one! She booked me for an appointment, and asked if there was a function within Google Apps that performed the F4 function in MS Word, Excel etc. On the hunt we went, and she discovered Control Y! Take a look at the video below! So simple, yet saves so much time!

You are doing AMAZING things Vikings and I’m so honored to be a part of it! Please reach out anytime with your tech needs! Find my calendar in the Contact tab of the blog! Until next week…

oFISHally Yours,

Erin Fisher 🐟

SEAS the Day! 🐟 🌊 ☀ 🐟 🌊 ☀ 🐟 🌊 ☀ 🐟 🌊 ☀ 🐟 🌊 ☀

efisher713 / September 21, 2017September 22, 2017 / G-Suite, Great Tech Sites, Teacher Shout Out!

Hello Everyone! I hope you’ve had a great week. I had the most wonderful opportunity to start integrating technology over at Central with our Little Vikings this week! Great work Jen Rosher and Sarah Beberman in being the first to “dive in” and have me assist the children with using the Chromebooks! I’m so excited to be integrating with Central School this year!

Let’s see what we’ve got this week:

Catch of the day: Assistive Tech – New Tool – SPEECH TO TEXT

This was my BIGGEST find this week, and it came from another Google Certified Trainer from my certified trainers’ group. The extension VoiceIn allows students to dictate into all platforms, including Pear Deck, Kami, Forms, Slides, and Docs! This is an incredible tool for those needing assistive technology. It is the first tool I’ve seen that works across all platforms. Check it out on video here.

Quizizz

If you’re an iPad classroom (PreK, K, and some of 1) you may want to check out the Quizizz app. It has a read-aloud option only on the Quizizz iPad app. Quizizz is great “quiz style” game that will give you awesome data at the end of the completed quiz. Students enjoy this app because it has fun music, cute pictures, and is game based. Quizizz also updated this summer and has GREAT Google Classroom Integration. You can see each student’s progress right from Google Classroom, and it will even show if the student took the quiz multiple times! Quizizz has many pre-made quizzes and questions in the bank online, so you don’t even need to create! It’s already there for you to customize!

KaHoot!

Students can play Kahoot Challenge Mode on their phones in a student-paced mode (not teacher paced, on the board). This may work well in some of our JRSRHS rooms where students are using phones for technology integration (while the Chromebook issue is being resolved). Click here to see a video on this mode.

Clever

Did you see the “C” on your Chrome Browser this week? It’s Clever, and I must say it certainly is clever! This extension will store passwords for both you and your students. It will then act as a single-sign-on. Please let us know if there are any apps you would like to add to the Clever portal. We’ve even added SchoolBrains community portal. It’s nice because, on the Clever portal, the district school brains portal is automatically chosen which is the common error students and parents face when trying to log in (they don’t choose the right district). For privacy purposes, however, SchoolBrains is the only application that will not store passwords. It’s simply a shortcut. See a video here for an overview of Clever.

I’m really looking forward to PLC’s next week with you, GWMMS! If anyone would like to book me, find my calendar on the Contact tab of my blog. Have a great weekend everyone!

oFISHally yours,

Erin

PS: Today is the last day to register for my course that I will be running through PCEA titled: Teaching and Learning with Google Applications. It’s sure to be a great time and I look forward to seeing some of you in it!

Sail away, sail away, sail away….⛵ ⛵ ⛵

efisher713 / September 14, 2017September 14, 2017 / Great Tech Sites

I couldn’t resist putting an Enya song in this week as we watched our 1:1 Chromebooks in grades 7-12, and a few classroom at the middle school, “sail away.” I’ll admit it, I cried…quietly to myself, in my car, alone. It had to be done, for the safety of our students, absolutely. Every day I feel so proud when I see all that everyone is doing with technology – from little tasks to HUGE assignments. However, this too shall pass and we will come out of better, stronger, and hopefully with even MORE Chromebooks! The technology is simply a tool, and it does not replace nor is it needed for GREAT teaching.

In the event you are unaware of what I’m talking about in this post, click here for one of the many local news stories. A special thank you to Greg Shea, who brought coffee and donuts to the IT office Tuesday. You are so thoughtful. 😊

TIPS THIS WEEK 🙌🏻 🙌🏻 🙌🏻

How to use the cell phone to access Google Apps

Since the JRSRHS is without devices, many are using student cell phones. SHOUT OUT to Curt Shippee who loves Google Forms and uses them regularly in class! Shout out also to Annemarie Meaney and Chris Dickey who were using Google Classroom with students Thursday morning on cell phones! We ran into one little snafu with student logins, so if you’re also using student cell phones to access Google Classroom and other G Suite apps, below are two video tutorials and/or Slide Decks to show you how to get the students on their school accounts. If a student is not logged in on the school account on his or her phone, then they cannot open Google Classroom or any other google application. It will say “You need Permission.”

Using Iphones with School Accounts Video or Slide Deck

Using Samsung with School Accounts Video or Slide Deck

Tech for Cell Phones

The sites below are great on ALL devices. However, if you are using student cell phones, and want to use some technology in the classroom, these are some apps that run particularly well on a cell phone for technology integration:

🐙 Plickers (no student devices needed – just a “plicker”) 🐙

🐙 KaHoot! (has a phone app) 🐙

🐙Quizizz (has a phone app) 🐙

🐙 Pear Deck (go to peardeck.com/join on a phone) 🐙

🐙 Quizlet (has a phone app) 🐙

🐙 Flipgrid (has a phone app) 🐙

🐙 SeeSaw (has a phone app) 🐙

I’m sure there are many, many more great apps that work well in the classroom! Feel free to share and comment below, it may help your colleagues during these low-tech times!

NEW TECH 💻 💻 💻

KaHoot! Jumble

KaHoot! is a fun site to use in class all on its own, but now they have even more to offer! KaHoot! came out with KaHoot Jumble. This game wants kids to sequence the answers into the correct order. So, rather than choose the correct answer, students really need to think critically and order the 4 options correctly. This would work well for ordering numbers (fractions, decimals, whole numbers etc) or sentence parts, or anything really that follows a sequence. You can read more about this here.

KAMI

This application, that we purchased for teachers district wide, allows you to manipulate PDF’s. It also allows you to push out PDFs to students to manipulate. Here is a video with a very BRIEF overview of this program. I can’t say enough about it – it’s really cool!

🐟 🐟 🐟 If you would like to use any of the tech listed above or would like any assistance at all, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Here is my booking calendar: https://efisher.youcanbook.me/ My calendar sometimes is the quickest way to get me! 🐟 🐟 🐟

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

oFISHally yours,

Erin Fisher

(PS – I will be teaching an online course through PCEA on everything Google titled Teaching and Learning with Google Applications! Check it out here: https://pcea.massteacher.org/courses/ )

What Fish are in your School? 🐟 🏫

efisher713 / September 7, 2017 / Teacher Shout Out!, Tech Gurus

Image result for blog

I learn an incredible amount on any given day about educational technology. The world of ed-tech is growing at such a rapid pace, one could easily learn something new every hour of every day! Students have taught me many new things, staff members, and famous ed-tech leaders out on that there interweb 😉 ! This week, I learned quite a bit from two of my favorite tech bloggers Richard Byrne of Practical Ed Tech and Eric Curts of Control Alt Achieve. I also learned of a new (to me) extension from teacher/Google Leader/blogger Alice Keeler and Matt Miller (Ditch That Textbook) while working with our own Lauren Dalton! Lastly, Chris Alles sent me a WICKED COOL FREE website that would be great for Elementary and Middle school teachers. Check out some awesome click bait below:

The Fish in MY School 🐠 🐟 🐠 🐟 🐠 🐟 🐠 🐟 🐠 🐟 🐠 🐟 🐠

Chris Alles sent me a great site this week called “Whoos Reading.” I created an account and fiddled around. At first, I thought, THIS IS TO GOOD TO BE TRUE. However, so far….it’s the catch of the day! This site boasts that it is a FREE, and improved according to them, version of Accelerated Reader. Basically, teachers set up or import classes via Google Classroom (ALWAYS CLASSROOM – YEAH!). Students then can search for any book and take a quiz. However, the quizzes are open response style, and STILL, get scored! WHAT?! I know, right?! It’s a super cute owl who gives feedback for the questions too. Students can also answer questions in an online journal WHILE reading and receive coins to upgrade their owl avatar. The site also reads aloud as well and has a speech to text option so students can dictate their answers rather than type. It is a very cute site…I’m still waiting to find the catch, so if you find it, comment below!

Lauren Dalton is an amazing preschool teacher and early childhood coordinator at Central School. Speaking as a parent of a former student in her class, I can say she is AWESOME at sending home weekly emails and pictures to show what is happening in her classroom. This year, she wanted to find an easier way to do this. In our hunt, together, to figure out the best way we tried the extension DriveSlides (created by none other than Alice Keeler and Matt Miller). This extension is SO COOL – it will take a whole folder of images….any images….and plop the whole thing into a slideshow. You have to see it to believe it. Watch here!

Other Fishes in the Sea 🐠 🐟 🐠 🐟 🐠 🐟 🐠 🐟 🐠 🐟🐠 🐟 🐠 🐟 🐠 🐟

Practical Ed Tech Handbook 🐠

This Google Doc handbook is an incredibly useful resource written by one of my favorite techies, Richard Byrne. The best part is since it is a Google Doc, he constantly updates it! If you save it to your own Drive (File: Save to my Drive.…not make a copy) you will always have the most up to date version!It features some great tech including:

Communication with students and parents.
Text/ SMS/ push notification tools. (A GREAT TEXT APP FOR PARENTS, besides REMIND)
Email management tips.
Blogging tools.
Web search strategies.
Getting beyond the first pages of Google.com results.
Digital citizenship.
K-6
7-12
Video creation.
Video projects and tools for creating them.
Tools for building & distributing flipped lessons.
Audio recording and publishing.
Web-based & mobile recording tools.
Backchannels & informal assessment.
Digital portfolios.

6 Bad Ways to Write Email 🐟

The title above says it all! I love Eric Curts, he has so many great posts. Check this one out here – ESPECIALLY, if you are new…so many good tips!

Month: September 2017