Tech Tuesday (on Thursday) - Google Slides

Here is the presentation from yesterday's session:

TxEIS Gradebook setting for Google Chrome

If you access your TxEIS Gradebook through the Google Chrome browser, please watch this video and change your settings to keep your data more secure. Need further assistance, let us know.

Tech Tuesday - Google Documents

Below you will find the presentation for last week's Tech Tuesday. Hope you find it helpful!

Skyping in BCISD

Exciting things have happened at BCISD schools in the past week! Two schools have hosted learning activities that used Skype as a way to connect our students to other groups for a one of a kind educational experience.

Skyping with New Jersey

We started at Tenie Holmes Elementary last week with the classes of Marissa Wendel and Ashley Haag for a game called Mystery Skype. This activity connects two classrooms, but the facilitators do not tell the students where the other class is located. Each group of students creates questions that can only be answered with yes or no to narrow down and eventually guess where the other students are located. One by one, in turn, students walk to the laptop, state their name, and ask their question. The other group answers and then asks their question.

The school on the other end of our Mystery Skype was a 4th grade class at the Academy of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Tenafly, New Jersey just across the George Washington bridge from New York City. The only clue that had been given was that the other class was somewhere in the world so they used higher order thinking skills to create questions to help them solve the mystery. Our students wrote some really thought provoking questions, like "Do you live where it is freezing?" and "Do you play football with your feet?" The students used Google Maps to help narrow down the search and decide what to ask next. They really enjoyed the activity and wanted to do it again!

CSI Shannon Shafer

We then moved Skype to Bay City High School and connected Sarah Herring's Forensic Science classes with Shannon Shafer, a Crime Scene Specialist with Travis County Sheriff's Department. The original plan was for all three sections of Forensics to Skype with her on Monday, but in the first session, she got called out to multiple dead body scenes. Two classes were able to Skype with her on Monday while the other class got their Skype session on Wednesday. The students had written questions that they took turns asking. Ms. Shafer shared information on how to become a CSI, unique scenes she has worked, and how the real job is different what you see on the television shows which have become so popular. Students gained valuable insight into the field of forensics and hopefully got a better understanding of the job as they decide about their future career plans.

These two activities tore down the walls of these classrooms and made the student learning a much larger event. We won't stop here! I hope to see many more connected learning events in our future.

Teacher Website with Google Sites

Teacher websites are incredibly valuable for both the teacher and parents. Teachers can post homework, lessons, links to projects, newsletters, and all kinds of other important information. Parents can check the website for ways to help their students study and even see pictures of their child. Teacher websites are a win-win!!!

But teachers need website creation and maintenance to be super easy. That is where Google Sites comes in!

Choose a template so you only have to update the information or choose a theme that you can completely customize. Create Google docs and spreadsheets to embed into your site to quickly update lesson plans. Use Google slides to create a slideshow of students in your classroom. Gather feedback from parents and students with Google forms. Attach print files to be downloaded from your site.

Google Sites could be a great solution for your classroom site!

Basic Google Drive Training

We have started the Google Apps for Education Rollout in BCISD. An introduction session was held for administrators yesterday. The slides are shared below:


 

Chrome Extension - Tab Cloud

I love Chrome because it let's me do my favorite thing - Work Smarter, not Harder. This extension is a great example of that. Tab Cloud lets you bookmark multiple tabs at once. Imagine if you were doing a lesson that required five or six web sites opened at one time and you needed this set up at the beginning of each class period all day long. Add the Tab Cloud extension, set your tabs, and click one link at the beginning of each period to be ready to go! In my trainings I use tons of web tools in the course of one session, and Tab Cloud is the perfect way for me to have my tabs ready to go each time.

Tour Builder - a Google Earth experiment

Google is a great company for allowing their employees to be creative and think outside of the box. Awesome experiments are produced from this encouragement of open thinking.

Tour Builder (https://tourbuilder.withgoogle.com/) is one of those creative project experiments. It uses Google Earth and allows users to great virtual tours of the world that can follow a person's life, historical events, and company's growth journey. The possibilities for educational uses of tour builder are endless. Teachers can use it to bring their lessons to life. Students can use it to replace a traditional research paper. Applications could be made in many subject areas to track the path of a character, movement of a people, expedition, disease spread, etc. Give Tour Builder a try!

Watch this video of a teacher who uses Tour Builder to engage his history students:

BCHS Tech Time with Jennifer Episode 2 - Jeopardy Labs

We are going to continue on our quest for gamification and engagement by looking at a site that holds templates for Jeopardy games. Visit www.jeopardylabs.com to use this tool.

Here is a simple video tutorial on how to use Jeopardy Labs.

I love how easy it is to create a template using Jeopadry Labs. Make one for each chapter and bookmark them to use over and over. I especially love the ability to browse games already created and shared by others. Edit them to make it specific to your need or use it as is! Try this game template today!

Open Dyslexic Chrome Extension

If you have students in your class that are dyslexic, here is a great Google Chrome extension to make their internet text viewable in the Open Dyslexic font.

Watch the video on how to set it up in your Chrome browser: