Instructional Technology Updates for January 2020

Take a look at the U5 Instructional Tech Updates for January 2021.  

Hope you all have had a great start to 2021.  Each new year, brings new and exciting adventures. What is your new adventure? 

Junior Scholastic & Pear Deck

Using PearDeck is as easy as 1,2, 3.  Use the add-on via Google Slides and login with your Google email and sign up for a premium trial.   The interactive slide activities are plentiful and you can make presentations which are teacher lead and/or student paced.  There is a great teacher dashboard where you can add additional co-teachers to the presentation, see student responses with their names, send feedback directly to individual students and highlight student answers for all to see. It is a great way to engage students in class and remotely as well. You will be able to see student responses, and share results in real time while in the presentation with students anonymously to get an idea where everyone is at in their learning. 

While this is great, having resources where you can add already created slide decks and manipulate them to make them work within your curriculum is even better.  In the video below, we show you how to use a slide deck from Junior Scholastic, (subscription required) and embed Pear Deck interactive slides into it.  Have questions, ask your Instructional Coach for support! 

Amanda Gorman's Inaugural Poem "The Hill We Climb"

If you missed Amanda Gorman during the 2021 Inauguration you missed a talented young woman who wrote and read "The Hill We Climb." Here is it again.  Included is also a couple of good teaching resources for you to use within your classroom.  This  is a great opportunity for students to discuss and express their thoughts and meaning of democracy. 

Teaching Resources:

• PBS Newshour Extra - Lesson Plan: Discuss 22-Year-old Amanda Gorman's inaugural poem "The Hill We Climb"

• Teaching Tollerance - "The Hill We Climb" and the 2021 Inauguration

• Pernille Ripp, a teacher in Wisconsin, also shared this Google slideshow she put together for teaching Inauguration Poetry.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day Resources

As we dedicate this day to the great Martin Luther King Jr, the civil rights leader; we should all be thinking about what ways we can be of service to each other, our communities and our nation.  MLK was key in ending segregation and the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  He was a Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1964 and was remembered as one of the greatest African-American leaders.  Below is a video of  his "I Have a Dream" speech on Aug. 28, 1963 to 250,000 people who marched to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill that created a federal holiday to honor King, celebrated on the third Monday in January.

Here are some other resources for the classroom this week.

• Resources for Martin Luther King Jr. Day
• 9 Meaningful Martin Luther King Jr. Activities for the Classroom
• PBS NewsHour Extra - Martin Luther King - 6-12
• Civil Rights Leaders: Martin Luther King Jr.  May need to sign in
• Discovery Ed Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Channel - Paid subscription
• Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Nonviolence Homepage
• Civil Rights - Junior Scholastic
• MLK Day Lesson for Younger Students 

Google Docs - Muti- Page Orientation, Smart Compose and Autocorrect

Last month an announcement from Google Workspaces indicated  Google Docs will be featuring multi-orientation layouts.  What this means is you will be able to use portrait and landscape in the same document using multiple pages.  Here is how it will work:

Change the orientation of a selection 

1. On your computer, open a document in Google Docs.
2. Highlight the text or image that you want to change the orientation, Right click on the text or image.
3. Select Change page to landscape or Change page to portrait. 

Change the orientation of a section or multiple sections 

1. On your computer, open a document in Google Docs.
2. Click where you want to create multiple sections.
3. Go to Insert,  Break Section break.
4. To change the orientation of a section, click File,  Page setup,  Apply To, Orientation.
   1. Set “Apply to” to “This section” if you would like to apply the page orientation to the selected section only or “This section forward” if you would like to apply the page orientation to this and all subsequent sections.
   2. Select the orientation to apply.
   3. Click OK

The other features which just came out are the Smart Compose and autocorrect within the comments section of Google Docs.  Those you should see sometime in the next couple of weeks.  

If you prefer a video here it is:

 

Clever Class Badges

Using Clever as a single sign on portal allows the younger students to use a badging system to login. In our district, our K-2 students are able to login to their district provided tablets using this system but what happens when students lose their badge, or a teacher would like to print off a class set?  Watch the following video for a quick walk through on the process of accessing and downloading these badges.

Talking to Students about What Happened at the Capitol

While we are all aware of what is going on in our country right now, it may not be that obvious for some of our students. Take a look at these resources for talking to your students about these events. 

• Resources for Talking To Students About the Attack on the Capitol - We Are Teachers
• Support for You an Your Students: Chaos at the U.S. Capitol - Scholastic's EDU Blog
• Talking to Kids About the Violence at the U.S. Capitol - Common Sense Media
• Leading Conversations After Crisis - Teaching Tolerance
• Resources for Teachers on Days After the Attack on the U.S. Capitol - Beyond the Stoplight
• Responding to the Insurrection at the U.S. Capitol - Facing History and Ourselves

Google Meet “Sticky” Settings for Education Users

Based on feedback from teachers across the world, Google has made some features “Sticky.”  What this means is when you turn on/off certain HOST features, they will remain that way when you start your next Google Classroom meet. Which means, if you turn off the present screen or chat for one class, it be off the next time you open that same meet link.

Another feature that started rolling out on Jan 7, 2021 was additional features off of the Google Meet landing page. https://meet.google.com/ When you create a new meeting you will have the following three options:

• Create a meeting for later:
• Start an instant meeting:
• Schedule in Google Calendar:

These feature have yet to hit our domain, so be on the lookout if you use the Meet landing page.  I use it a lot to create meetings for teachers and students to pop into, if they have questions. 

There is an App for That

Over the holidays we all set goals for the year to come.  Some may choose to exercise more, start  healthier eating habits, get more sleep or whatever it is there seems to be an app that can help you achieve those goals.  While watching the Today Show with Hoda and Jena, there was a segment on just this... Take a look at the video below and find out more about all the apps they talk about.  Under the video is the list and the link to each app with a little description for what it does. As we start the new year in the spring semester of remote/hybrid or all in person learning, these apps may offer some needed assistance to keeping on track with meeting those new year goals. 

App List:

Sleep Score  Track your time in Bed and looks at overall trends.

You Need A Budget Tracking your spending and your budget. Makes you address spending and saving.  Find out about “Zero spending Day’s”

Couch to 5K Getting back into a fitness routine. You can get trained in a safe way even if you have never ran before.

Focus Takes away the opportunity to do anything else. Set Goal and get penalized when picking up your phone when the app is running.