Mail Archive

Are you afraid to get rid of those 17,000 emails in your Outlook deleted folder?  Worried that you'll never be able to recall the contact information of a field trip coordinator that you know was in your email someplace?  Well fear not, the Mail Archive is here to save the day!

Engaging students in an Early America Blended/Discovery Learning Unit

Goal:  Create a blended/discovery learning environment for students to engage in interactive lessons and activities while learning material and making connections between the past and present.

Look out students of the 21st century!  I decided it was time to think outside the box to get students more engaged. I needed all students answering questions and making connections, not the few who raised their hands. My classroom needed to be upgraded to a more blended and discovery experience. So, I did a little research to find programs that could get students more involved in their own learning.  

Tech PDA Recap

What an amazing four weeks!  My heart grows abundantly each year during this PDA time as we are able to work alongside so many passionate teachers at one time on improving student learning experiences.  Here are just a few snippits from our sessions...

"Getting to experiment and create with the new technologies is helpful. Having it modeled and getting to try it out right away is helping me remember what to do after class."

"I really feel like it was well organized. i felt like you were really able to meet the needs of a very diverse group of people. thank you for always being so patient with when working with some of us "novice" learners."

"I love that forms is user friendly and it can be used in so many ways. I recently surveyed students about using technology to help me plan instruction. I can’t believe that they like to use technology rather than listen to me for a class period!"

"I used google forms for a couple different things this week in class. 1. I used it to take anecdotal information as my kids were working and give them feedback on their progress. 2. I used google forms and DocAppender to let the kids keep track of their responsibilities in class and track how they are doing using my feedback from their daily work. I also used Draftback to show some of my students how much time they were wasting. This helped them to see that they did have enough time to complete their work, they were just using their time to do other things. After I showed them everything that they were doing, they were much more focused and completed much higher quality work. "

"Loved EdPuzzle for Heat Transfer video! I definitely want to use it for some reteaching in other units next year - I’m challenged to find ways for students to revisit content when the rest of the class has mastered something.  I put links to documents into my assignment menu (Google Doc) to centralize access for my students."

What Did We Do?

Our topics were wide ranging, and the classroom opportunities that they lead to were equally broad.  In fact, here are each of the working documents from Sean's PDA in published Google Doc form.

• Week 1: Core Google Offerings
• Week 2: YouTube and Chrome
• Week 3: Exploring Google Add-ons, Extensions, and Hidden Features
• Week 4: Google Classroom

Fruits of Our Labor

Finally, here are some of the fruits of our collective labor of the past four weeks.  And if you want to learn more about any of the items you saw in this post, just contact your district instructional technology coach!

• EdPuzzle Video Lessons: Puerto Rico | Inside Chipotle | Acapulco

• Google/SchoolWires Integration: Spanish HW page | The PEAK (using Sheets as an embedded HW page)

• Teacher YouTube Channels and videos (feel free to subscribe!)

HS Lifestyle | JH FACS

  
          

Sean Mullins | Secondary Instructional Tech Coach

Type, edit and format (no keyboard needed!) with Voice typing in Google Docs

Posted by Isaiah Greene, Product Manager 

(Cross-posted on the Google Docs Blog.)

We launched Voice typing in Docs to help you capture ideas, compose a letter, or even write the next great novel—all without touching your keyboard. Starting today, you can also edit and format your documents with your voice.

To get started, select ‘Voice typing’ in the ‘Tools’ menu when you’re using Docs in Chrome. Say what comes to mind—then start editing and formatting with commands like “copy,” “insert table,” and “highlight.”

Check out the full list of commands here or simply say “Voice commands help” when you’re voice typing.  Video after the jump!

Chrome Music Lab

Posted by Alex Chen, Coder and Weekend Ukelele Hobbyist 

This year, for Music in Our Schools Month, we wanted to help make learning about music a bit more accessible to everyone by using technology that’s open to everyone: the web. We built a set of experiments that let anyone explore how music works. It’s called Chrome Music Lab, and you can check it out at g.co/musiclab.

More uses for Google Hangouts!

PARCC testing has revealed a number of great uses for Google Hangouts among staff and administration.  See how it has been used this year to make testing just a bit easier (and more tolerable)!