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You can turn on safe search in google. Just click on Settings, Search Settings and check the box that says Filter Explicit Results and click Save.
Rachelle Galang
Three Ring This is free for teachers, students, parents, and adniminstrators. This app allows you to share student work with parents. It is a great communication tool and allows families to be a “fly on the wall” in their child’s classroom. Three Ring makes it easy to capture student work. It is very simple to upload a picture with a caption. Three Ring provides a more private way to share student work rather than putting everything on a public blog.
DID YOU KNOW? You can turn on safe search in google. Just click on Settings, Search Settings and check the box that says Filter Explicit Results and click Save.
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This week I have web tools that will help students become better typers. Handwriting, spelling, and math facts do not come overnight. Students need to practice on a daily basis. The same goes for typing. If students can type properly, they can become more efficient at getting their work done when using technology.
That being said, it is also important for students to be able to type on a computer as well as their iPad. Since the iPad has the assistive technology of the keyboard, students can also type efficiently with their thumbs. It all is really of preference. Regardless, students need to know keyboard orientation and become efficient typers without looking. Please do not think that this is just for lower elementary. Even I still need to work on my typing, as an adult. Below are some suggested tools to help students practice typing skills. We work on this in my class, however, the consistency piece is not there. I only see the kids every twelve days. If students only practiced typing every 12 days, that would be similar to only reading once every 12 days. This could be a simple thing kids can work on when they are finished with assignments early, even if it is only for five minutes. Dance Mat Typing Learning Games for Kids (this one has several different games) Typing Test Sorry for the late post this week. The tool if have for you this week is Nearpod. After talking with my colleagues who attended the San Diego iPad summit, this tool popped up. It was a tool that I've looked into using before and it has made a come back. It has been around for a while but they’ve made some pretty awesome improvements and added new features for 2015. I'm looking forward to trying it out!
Nearpod is great because it gives you control over what your student sees on their iPad and when they see it. The tool allows students to view presentations that you put together for your lessons. Each slide can contain media or information such as videos, webpages, etc. It also has interactive features such as quizzes, surveys, sharing pictures, etc. I highly recommend that you test it out! The nice thing is that you get the option of totally controlling what slide your students are looking at or you can set it up so that they can go at their own pace. I have seen it used at conferences before and think it can be a very powerful tool to use in the classroom. There are lessons that are already created, too. It can also be used on any device. Tip: Create a FREE account, get your computer and iPad out and play the role of the teacher and the student to get a better understanding of how it works before you just try it with your class. DID YOU KNOW? In the Google Drive suite, you can retrieve revision history to restore work that you “lost”. Click File, See Revision History. When you look at the different changes that were made, you can click on Restore This Revision. Here are two tools that can be used to facilitate conversations and discussion in the classroom.
Padlet An easy free tool that provides instant collaboration because you can see everyones activity on the wall intstantly . It has privacy settings, which makes it a great tool to use in the classroom. Multimedia can be pasted up to the board and there are several fun layouts. You have the option to embed a wall onto your blog or website. Today’s Meet A way to connect with your audience through the use of a backchannel. This is a free tool and it allows audience members to ask questions and discuss. It is nice to use this in class because it may bring out voice in your more reserved students. I have used Padlet as a form of an exit ticket, informative assessment, for brainstorming, etc. in the classroom. I embed all my pads onto my blog so that we can revisit them later. You can also change the editing permissions on them so that students can only submit when the editing feature is on. Tip: One way to hold students accountable is to have them put their name on their note. DID YOU KNOW? In Google Chrome, you can use the keyboard shortcut ctrl+shift+T (command+shift+T for mac users) to reopen the last tab you’ve closed. Chrome remembers the last 10 tabs you’ve closed. Just one tool for you this week.
Scholastic Story Starters are a fun way to do some creative writing with students. It has plethora of appropriate prompts for grades K-6. Students can spin the wheels to generate different prompts and mix it up. This could also be used for a fun writing activity students can do when they finish their other work early. It could even be a short start to their day and can be used for morning work. The other great thing about it is that it is FREE! I just did this with my first graders last week. We wrote some blogposts based on different prompts. The kids enjoyed writing, reading, and commenting on each others work. Did you know? When you sign into Google Chrome, your history and bookmarks are remembered. You can log into Google Chrome on any computer and your same browsing history and bookmarks are there! The tech tool for this week is Voxer and Twitter. These are two tools that I use frequently to connect with my PLN (personal learning network). I highly encourage you to get on Twitter at least and connect with other educators. This is an easy way to stay globally connected, learn the latest trends in education, and more. You can participate in educational chats such as #edchathi or #miched to see what other educators are doing. You don’t even need to be a participant of a chat but can learn a lot from just reading. If you already have an account, great. I challenge you to be more active on twitter then!
Voxer, is a walkie talkie app. It allows you to send pictures, leave voice messages, and send texts. So how is it repurposed for education? It is great mobile messaging for teams. I personally use it to stay connected with my PLN. I have group messages with educators from Michigan and my colleagues from MSU. I also have private (between me and one other person) messages going with single educators and for personal use with family members. Did you know? You can just type into the Google search bar, “set a timer for 10 minutes” and it will pop up. No need to go to another website! Tools this week are organization and scheduling tools.
Sign Up Genius A website that lets you create online sign up sheets for volunteers. It allows you to assign tasks and responsibilities. This tool helps alleviate overlap or confusion with scheduling. Email and text reminders and also a great feature that this tool offers. You Can Book Me Is a similar online tool that helps you with scheduling. It does the same thing but it also connects with your Google Calendar. You can embed or share your available times. Great for parent/teacher meetings. Both tools offer free accounts! The tool I have for you with week are Google Chrome Extensions. When you open Chrome, if you click on on the Apps on the left hand side at the top (the favicon looks like colorful tiny squares) and click store you can find Chrome Extensions. Thanks to John Sowash (@jrsowash), one of my favorites that I find to be very practical is the goo.gl URL shortener (and its FREE). When you add the extension, it shows up right next to the omibar. When you click it, it automatically gives you the shortened URL for the page you are on and a QR code. Explore other extensions, too! Which one is your favorite? I'd love to check it out.
Just a quick tidbit about Google Chrome. For those of you who may be "tab happy" like me and accidentally close tabs that you didnʻt want to close, I have a solution! If you right click (two finger click) on the tab you can "pin tab". It removes the little "x" to prevent you from accidentally closing it. If you want to "unpin tab", just two finger click the tab again and choose "unpin tab". A shortcut to get an accidentally closed tab back is "Command Shift T". Also, check this one out ----> Googleʻs Search Education site is awesome! I encourage you to do a Google a Day Challenges in your classroom! I’d like to remind you of some Google tools this week. You may already use these but I’d like to challenge you to use them more! One great extension for educators is Flubaroo. It is a great assessment tool you could be using in your classroom.
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The tools of this week are the various tools we have been using for coding aside from Code.org.
How does this relate to the classroom? Students are reading, sequencing, writing, scaling, counting, measuring, giving directions, following directions, and problem solving when they code. It’s not just a technology thing! Below you will see how I scaffolded coding at my school. In the end, it's all coding. Please do not think these tools are exclusive to the grade I taught them too. Anybody can code using any tool. Explore them all! Kindergarten-Bee Bot First Grade- Kodable Second Grade-Daisy the Dinosaur and Lego Fix the Factory Third Grade- Scratch Jr Fourth Grade-Scratch and Hopscotch Fifth Grade-Mozilla Webmaker, Codecademy, and Cargo Bot I wish you all a safe and happy break and holiday season!! :) Code for the holidays using Made with Code by Google |
Tools & Tips Tuesday!You can learn about and access new tech tools I share with my colleagues every week. Archives
August 2015
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