U5 Instructional Technology: March 2015

Mar 30, 2015

Connecting Your Google Calendar to Schoolwires

In a recent update, Schoolwires added the ability to connect your Google Calendar to your Schoolwires calendar.

This is great news for those of you who are avid Google Calendar users who also want to keep a Schoolwires calendar up to date. Examples include; a calendar for practices or clubs or a homework calendar. Now you can make the changes on your Google Calendar and have it automatically update your publicly accessible, official Unit 5 calendar.

In order to connect the two, first navigate to your calendar app and click on the Options button.

On the Options page, you will check the Google Calendar Integration button, Connect a new calendar, and then Accept the connection between Schoolwires and Google. After these steps, you can choose which of your Google calendars you would like to bring in information from. You can even connect multiple Google calendars.

Sean Mullins | District Instructional Technology Coach

Mar 16, 2015

Technology PDA Reflections

We appreciated being treated as professionals.

Working with coworkers. Exploration time. Help from instructor one-on-one. Everything was great.

Getting one-on-one help with specific questions is so much better than just being presented to.

The ability to determine the path/content of the PDA was refreshing, as was time to work and collaborate.

This was so personalized, since I got to choose what all to work on and go at my own pace.

For the fourth time I was privileged to serve as a PDA instructor for Using Technology to Engage and Inspire Your Students this spring; this time as an "advanced" section. The quotes above, which came from our feedback activities through CMS, epitomize what this PDA offers to our staff members. Technology should enable individualization, collaboration, and more time for one-on-one feedback. I am happy to report that this year's offering was a rousing success!

I thoroughly enjoyed my four weeks working with these 18 dedicated individuals. Their hard work and willingness to explore, ask questions, implement, fail, and implement again, led to dozens of success stories for their students. Here are a few examples of such successes...

Formative Assessments Through Kahoot!

Advanced Quiz Techniques and Course Streamlining in CMS

Padlet for Classroom Conversations

Exploring Google Classroom

Google Forms and Flubaroo for Automatically Graded Surveys and Formative Assessments

I am blown away every day with the passion and dedication that I see in our classrooms. Opportunities like these PDA's do not come around as often as I would like, so if you are interested in anything that you have seen here, make sure to sign up for our next PDA! Additionally, if you would like to hear about the details of these, or any other technology related classroom instructional techniques, please contact your district instructional technology coach today!