PPS Instructional Technology

When I was in Todd Chappa's third grade classroom yesterday, he was excited to share this new tool he has been using with his students to help them practice taking adaptive online reading comprehension assessments.   Read Theory Read Theory is an online tool that once students are loaded into the program, they can take online adaptive reading comprehension tests.  The tests adjust up if the student is doing well, or down if the student is struggling with the content.  The program then provides the teacher with the ability to track how the students are progressing. Cost: Free Device: Internet enabled device Use in the classroom: Great for getting students reading for online testing with quizzes that are short and sweet.

Are you looking for a new tool or resource to help teach your students the Common Core State Standards?  If so, then Graphite is a great tool for you.   Graphite , a division of Common Sense Media, reviews apps, websites and games for their educational value.  It also provides teacher reviews of the products to give you a idea of how others are using the tool.   Read the article about how Graphite is making it easier for teachers to find Common Core resources here.

Here is the December newsletter from Atomic Learning. http://al.atomiclearning.com/ecard-2013?elq=70e71c0370f74cbda5e44cfc195efea2&elqCampaignId=803

Kids asking for electronics for the holidays? At a recent parent workshop, hosted by the PPS DigitalEd team, parents asked for advice on how to manage electronic gifts.  Visit our page below for helpful tips. http://digitaled.site.portageps.org/electronic-gifts

Looking for a new tool to help differentiate instruction for your students? Want a way to have your students take assessments, then have online lessons tagged for those students based on their own strengths and weaknesses? If so, then MobyMax may be a tool you want to explore.  The free version appears to be very complete with a lot of great features. This post comes to you from guest Blogger, Logan Thomas - second grade teacher at Haverhill Elementary. Thanks, Logan, for sharing this find with us! Logan wrote: I saw this website on Pinterest, and checked it out...it looks like it's similar to adapted mind, etc. There is a place to add your class roster. Students take a placement test in any area (ELA, math, vocab, or fact fluency are available). Based on their test, the website assigns certain activities/lessons to help fill any gaps that were identified and move them forward. There is also a feature that allows you to share/trade students with other teachers...this might be...

Lodge McCammon is a professor whose interests lie in engaging students through technology, video, and music. He has been slowly creating songs depicting the important events in states' histories. Michigan is one of the states that he has completed. Now he is working on kinesthetic motions that follow the lyrics and meaning behind each song. The video below starts with his song about Georgia. This is definitely a YouTube channel I recommend you watch and subscribe too. I see many more engaging videos coming our way.

There are a lot of great resources online for teaching the Common Core.  Unfortunately, it can take more time than we have to slog through all the resources to find just the right one for our grade-level and standard being taught.  Thankfully, Internet4Classrooms has cataloged many great resources.  These resources are organized by grade-level, subject and CCSS.  Check out the activities, games, printables and assessments all ready to go with just the click of a button. Uses in the Classroom:  Great for teachers who are looking for resources to supplement our current curriculum or to provide extra enrichment or remediation on a specific standard or skill. 

http://www.storylineonline.net/ Are you an Elementary teacher looking for some great online resources for listening to reading?  Do you want to expose your students to proficient readers reading great stories?  Then you need to check out Storyline Online.  This site, brought to you by the Screen Actors Guild, hosts videos of great actors reading 25 different stories.  Actors include greats such as Betty White, James Earl Jones and Melissa Gilbert. Check it out: All the YouTube videos have been added to our YouTubeEDU account, so students can access them when logged in with their PPS accounts. Uses in the Classroom: Expose students to quality reading during Daily 5 time, whole class instruction or the lab.  You can play the videos on your TEC, have students watch them individually with headphones in the lab, or set up a center in your classroom with a laptop/Desktop computer and some headphones.  Kids are sure to love listening to some of their fa...

At the beginning of the year many of you who use OneNote regularly ran in to the issue of your files seeming to disappear.  There were a couple temporary fixes for the problem, including copying the files and opening the copies, or moving your files on to your Google Drive.  The Google drive fix works well, except that you can't use your OneNote files on two computers simultaneously.  If you are one of the people we moved to Google Drive, and would like the functionality of using OneNote on two computers again, you can now move the files back to the U drive with no further issues.  If you need help with this process, set up a 15 minute appointment with Jessica or Paul using the following links: https://calendly.com/jwinstanley http://calendly.com/pmurray