Classroom Conversations & Adventures

Hey Teachers! Here are just a few random gems. Many of these have been shared out before, but one or two are new. Don't try to tackle all at once ~ Focus on one that you're interested in exploring further.

As always, we would love to meet with you to check out any of them together and discuss how to integrate them into your classroom learning adventures.

Take or Toss!

• Do students need a quick audio/video recorder?  
• Alice Keeler's WebCam Record (Perfect for Google Slides. Students can extend the default 30 sec limit)
• ScreenCastify for screen-casting or audio/video recording.

• Go Deeper with Classroom Conversations :
• FlipGrid if you want to catch the FlipGrid fever for classroom conversations.
• Synth ~ another awesome tool to amplify student voice. Great for student podcasting too. Here's a Synth overview and a basic intro here.

• Travel the world with your students!  
• Google Earth Voyager ~educational tours/field trips around the world!
• Exploring By the Seat of your Pants
• Who do you want to connect students with? We've had virtual visits from archaeologists, scientists, penguin experts, zoologists, other classrooms around the globe......Break down those walls!

• Digital Literacy  
• Links we shared out last year. Too good not to share again.
• What'sGoingOnInThisPicture and more.
• Copyright friendly images (aside from adding "Pixabay" to their search) : Unsplash Google Slides Add-on. Please be sure to include this important Digital Citizenship conversation, copyright, into your class conversations. Let us know if you would like to meet to chat about this further!

Doodle for Google & Student Film Festival

Hello Teachers! Below are a couple awesome opportunities for our students.

Student Film Festival ~ Amplify student voice! The theme is "Activating Change" and the deadline for submissions is Monday, February 18th. Check out the site to see last year's winners and runner-ups.

Doodle for Google Drawing Contest ~ When I Grow Up, I Hope.... > "This year’s theme invites you to show us what you hope for in your future. Classrooms on Mars? Shoes that can fly? Food for everyone? A pill that cures everything? Take your ideas and put them into your Doodle!" Deadline is March 18, 2019 Kermit & Jimmy Fallon will be judges! Last year, a 2nd grader's drawing won. She had the opportunity to work with Google to animate her creation and bring it to life. Oh, and she also received a $30,000 college scholarship! Check it out.

If you have any questions about the rules/registering for either or about digital storytelling for the Film Festival, give us a shout! We'd love to work with you and your students. As always, be sure to tag pics #pg46pride. Also : #DoodleForGoogle for that contest OR #GSVFF for the Film Festival. 

If you don't feel as though this is something you can make happen at school, please share the opportunities with students & families as parents can submit as well.

Thank you for all that you do to support our students in exploring their passions, creativity, empowering their voice and making learning experiences memorable!

~Kait😊

👨‍🚀Explore by the Seat of Your Pants! 👨‍🚀

Happy New Year!

Just wanted to pass along the latest Exploring By The Seat of Your Pants.

As always, there are tons of great connection opportunities within.

Remember, you can :

1. Get a camera spot

2. Just be a live viewer (without interacting with presenter)

3. Watch the whole presentation at a later time when it fits best into your schedule.

Take or Toss. Give us a shout if you need any assistance. If none of these times match up

to connect live, let us know who you're interested in connecting your class with ~an author,
archaeologist, NASA, another classroom in another state, region, country......
Let's work together to break down the walls of your classroom for an epic learning adventure!

Have a great first week back with kiddos.

Kaiti

💗😊"8 Respectful Routines" 😊💗

Saw this post by Catlin Tucker and liked the suggestions for classroom routines. Most of these are just good reminders and much of what you're already doing. I see a lot of you rocking something similar to #4 with student chromebooks already. Sometimes we ask students to close the lid, angle the lid closed slightly, hands on head etc. ~Whatever it takes to shift the focus to the speaker, whether it be another classmate, a guest speaker or you!

"Screens 45", "Lids Closed" or anything else that is a lil more fun and catchy
As with any expectation, be sure to practice whatever phrase or strategy you go with and
discuss what that looks-like/sounds-like/feels-like.

Please share if you have a routine, phrase or strategy that you love

We grow from helping one another

As always, give us a shout if you want to explore ideas together.

Have an awesome rest of your week!

AdobeSpark for EDU

Hey All! Came across this post by Sarah Kiefer and wanted to share.

We've shared Adobe Spark before, but it's definitely worth a look if you haven't explored it yet.

In any curricular area, you and your students can create awesome :

• Graphics

(info-graphics, posters, collages, memes, character quotes, poetry, famous quotes,

add captions & labels to an image, selfie showcase, vocabulary, etc etc etc).

Matt Miller has some great examples in this post. and also on Adobe's site here.

• Videos (slide shows too)
• WebSites

It comes with a library of images to choose from, but students can also upload their own.
It looks like many already come from the Public Domain as Pixabay pops up as one of the options
when searching for images.  

Of course, much of this can be accomplished with other tools too, even our Google Apps!
However, AdobeSpark makes it a breeze with preloaded images for your students to create,
create, create and share their knowledge!! One more tool for your toolbox.

Take or Toss ~ Let us know if you want to explore together.
Kait😊

Join the Global Movement

Hour of Code is an annual computer science experience that takes place across the globe.
Don't miss out! Carve out some time during the week of December 3rd-9th to participate
~ Yes, YOU and your students! This can be implemented in every grade, anywhere across
the curriculum, in any core classroom, co-curricular, special service, you name it!

• NO coding/computer science experience required by the teacher or students.

For ages "4 to 104".

• Coding activities are self-guided. Many students have experience with some level

of coding fromSTEM class, so they can help each other out!

• Choose from ipad/chromebook activities or "unlugged" activities ~both are awesome!

• You could even invite experts from STEM fields in to talk with students (in-person or via Skype/Hangouts).

If you're interested, but don't know how to get started, give us a shout!

We'd be happy to help you plan your hour of code. Don't be intimidated by the
"hour" ~ it's flexible!

167,799 events around the world have signed up to participate so far. 1273 are in IL so far!
Sign up here and let's add to those numbers!

Hope to see your students coding, programing and computing!

Please be sure to post pictures. You can add our # on Thrillshare anytime~  #pg46pride and also #HourOfCode for this one.

Animations ~ Bring Concepts to Life!

Hey All!

Stumbled upon this post by Richard Byrne today and thought it would be a great tool
to add to the toolbox. Across the curriculum, students can bring a concept to life and communicate their knowledge/explain their thinking.  They can animate a process or bring vocabulary to life using Brush Ninja. The author then took it a step further and had students record their explanation/explain their thinking using Screencastify. Last, embed it all on a slide. One slide per student and you have a classroom digital "book" of science processes, vocabulary words, animated idioms, math concepts, animated How-To's, sequencing and soooo much more.

You could skip Screencastify too and have students record directly on the slide
with AliceKeelerWebCamRecord instead. Less steps and still just as powerful!

Take or Toss ~ As always, let us know if you want to explore any of this together.

Kaiti😊

Take a Snapshot is back….and more!

If you haven't already seen it, the camera feature is available once again in Google apps. For those of you who have missed "Take a snapshot", it is back as Insert > Camera.

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Other fun tidbits and tips :

• Alice Keeler recently shared : You/students can bold comments in Google Docs(etc) by putting asterisks around the word(s) you want to emphasize. *bold*

• You/students can also italicize comments in Google Docs(etc) by putting underscores on both sides of the word(s) that you want to emphasize.  _italics_

• In Google, try voice typing to help save you time too. We know it's a great option for students, but sometimes we don't realize all of these great tools that can help us too. Have a lot to type into a form or other program? >Voice Type and copy/paste over.

• Global Read Aloud Fall 2018 registration is open already!

• Student Voice Film Festival - Students can create an original story or produce a biographical film using the theme, “In Another’s Shoes” -  Deadline is February 28th. Finalists are invited to ISTE 2018 in Chicago. If you have any questions registering or about digital storytelling via WeVideo, give us a shout!

• Eric Curts recently re-shared his Random Writing Prompt Generator with Google Sheets and his Emoji Writing Prompt Generator

Take or Toss!

So many of you are rockin' Google, as well as SeeSaw/ClassDojo, into your
teaching and learning adventures - Just wanted to share some opportunities to become ambassadors or certified in those programs that you are incorporating into your classrooms

(if you haven't already).

• SeeSaw Ambassador  ~ Apply today! Love SeeSaw!

There are also so many opportunities to connect with other classes

around the world through student connected "blogs"/portfolios.  

Knock down those walls and share to a global audience!

• Class Dojo has an ambassador program as well, but it looks

like it opens up in the summer each year. We can keep an eye out if
any of you are interested. Love their Big Ideas component too!

• Google Certification - Levels 1&2 (assessment fees apply)

Let us know if you have any questions about moving forward with any of these
or if you want to explore any together.

Thank you for all that you do for our students each and every day!

Have a wonderful, restful, well-deserved Break!

See you in 2018!

-->Did you know?
Students can crop images in Google Slides into shapes rather than just the default square?!

Sumdog ~K-8 Math

This may be old news to you, but saw some education peeps talking about some of their favorite math programs. Many of the ones that you incorporate were mentioned ; However, there was one I saw a few times that I hadn't heard of and wanted to share in case it's "new" to you too > Sumdog

Looks like it's along the lines of Prodigy as far as having an avatar and completing questions.

Says it is free /CCSS aligned  ~ Haven't explored it myself yet, but please let us know if you want to check it out together.

Take or Toss!

12 Days of Tech-Mas

Eric Curts shares great resources and tools (He's the one who created the Snowman and Halloween interactive writing templates that we've shared out before).

He has a 12 Days of Tech-Mas countdown here too.

Take or Toss😊 Let us know if you want to explore anything together.

The Google Voyager tours look like amazing virtual field trips to embark on!

⛄️❄️Wintertime Googley Writing Activities⛄️❄️

Just wanted to share these Googley Winter Activities from Eric Curts via the 12 Days of TechMas in case you missed them. Just another set of tools to give students choice for switching up platforms for writing. Focus on just one to consider implementing or let the students explore a number of them and report back to the class about their discoveries.

Keep in mind that you can compile each activity onto an online gallery to share with families rather than printing them.

Students can also make their links "public" and create a QR code of their activity. >With an extension like Quick QR Code generator, students can easily make a QR code for their project. You can have them drop their code in Classroom or in a shared doc similar to this. Rather than printing out the full-colored activity, you're only printing a small QR Code. You can still have a designated classroom place to showcase their "work", but just swap out the QR code that peers and visitors will interact with.

This also works great for digital books that students create in Slides, Little Bird Tales, StoryBird, BookCreator, StoryJumper, etc.

~Your own little Read-Box for student-created ebooks~

Let us know if you have any questions or want to explore together.

Take or Toss!

Digital Rubrics & Google Keep

Have you been checking out the 12 Days of Tech-mas?! Love these rubric options! Some of the rubrics can be "stamped" right on a student's google doc. There are options for written/voice feedback, customized rubrics and you can ingest your Google Classroom assignments so that you can easily go from student to student. With anything new, there's a learning curve, but hopefully these save you time in the long-run while still providing students with authentic feedback.

The other countdown calendar highlights Google Keep today. Don't forget, Google Keep is also linked to the Docs/Slides now which makes researching, note-taking and collaborating that much more streamlined for your students. Add images, drawings, links and more! Try it out for yourself.

As always, let us know if you want to check out any of these together.