PPS Instructional Technology

YouTube has become a household name throughout the country and the world.  According to YouTube , "YouTube has over a billion users — almost one-third of all people on the Internet — and every day people watch hundreds of millions of hours on YouTube and generate billions of views."  That's a lot of videos!  Because of the vast quantity of content on YouTube, people - especially young people - turn to YouTube for entertainment, as well as to learn new skills.  If you ask your students to research how to do a task, the first place they will look is, most likely, YouTube.  I was working with Michal VandenBerg's third-grade class at Lake Center on their Genius Hour projects last week.  The students were researching everything from how to do snowboarding tricks or playing the piano,  to how to design and build a video game.  Each of the students was, at one time or another, on YouTube, watching videos explaining how to do the task or skill they w...

August may seem like years away, but we all know summer will be here before we know it.  So it is time to look at your calendars, dream of long days at the beach, and REGISTER FOR TECH CAMP !!! PPS Tech Camp 2016 When : August 10-12, 2016.  Come for one session, or stay for them all! Where : Portage Central High School Who : All PPS teachers, administrators, and staff, as well as any visiting teachers who want to explore and learn with us. Come dig in, explore, and hone your teaching skills at PPS Tech Camp 2016 . As we prepare to welcome student technology into our classrooms, let's learn and collaborate across grade-levels, departments, and throughout the district to ensure successful integration and maximize engagement and learning. Have fun diving into topics, such as... Blended Learning Formative Assessments Reading Tools/Strategies Classroom Management Online Assignment Management Data Management Chromebook Basics Video Lessons Data Collection PPS...

It didn't take long at the MACUL 2016 conference for our next guest blogger, Katelin Lopez - Central Middle School World Languages, to find her inspirations.  She found her big take-away in the opening keynote by Jaime Casap.  Here is her thought provoking reflection... Katelin Lopez - April 13, 2016  My biggest take-away from the MACUL '16 conference was not from a workshop, although they were great too, was actually from one of the keynote speakers, Jaime Casap.  Jaime Casap is part of the Google for Education Team and works with organizations, helping them find ways to improve the quality of education by using and enabling technology capabilities. As Jaime spoke, I kept thinking, "WOW. This guy thinks outside the box. He is so right!" And “I wish my brain worked like his.” Everything he said made total sense to me, but I never would have come to those conclusions on my own. This sheer epiphany in and of itself is exactly what Jaime spoke to. I never ...

As promised, here is Part Two of Collin Nuismer's - Central Middle School ELA - MACUL 2016 reflection: Iteration and Student Expectations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDCA Iteration . I did not know what this word meant before going to MACUL. Now, 3 weeks later, I think this word might define the future of educational design. Iteration consists of success and failure. It’s a techy word used most often to describe endless variations of code, but my favorite definition of it comes from Jamie Casp’s keynote address at MACUL, “[With iteration] there is no end point. There is no final. Do it, learn from it, do it better, keep doing it.” It sounds so simple, right? Do something, learn from your mistakes, do it better next time, learn from those mistakes, do it better again, repeat for infinity.  In a nutshell, that is the formula to being successful at anything in life. Even babies understand iteration. For example, I’m a tremendous walker. I bet you are too. But, you wouldn’...

Our next guest blogger, Collin Nuismer - Central Middle School ELA, has written an excellent two part MACUL reflection which I am very excited to share with you all. Below is the first part is his series - Common Ground. What was my big takeaway from MACUL?  To answer that, I want to start with a conversation I had a few weeks after MACUL. After school, I was out enjoying some beverages with a few colleagues and myself and a colleague started an in depth conversation on the role of technology in the classroom and how its role impacts the role of the teacher. My colleague is an over 25 year veteran of teaching, and, seeing as I’ve only been alive for 27 years, you can imagine that we might have had some differing opinions on the role of technology in the classroom. And, for the most part we did. When I mentioned the word “facilitator” instead of “educator” or “instructor” I could see my colleague cringe, as I did when they mentioned teachers being “replaced by technology.” Bu...

Now that we are entering into the fourth quarter of the school year, many of you may notice that your third quarter is no longer visible in Skyward.  This may be a problem if you are trying to finish up your third quarter grades.  Fortunately, it is very easy to adjust which quarters you want to view in your online gradebook. Step 1: Open the Gradebook for which you want to see the previous quarter. Step 2: Hover over the Display Options menu. Step 3: Click on Grade Period Display Step 4: Check the boxes for the quarter you wish to view.  Make sure you click Save when you are done. NOTE: You can un-select the quarters using the same method.  Just uncheck the ones you no longer wish to see.

In Portage, we are rapidly approaching our district-wide 1-to-1 implementation.  As part of our preparation for this implementation, we have been diligently training our teachers on integrating tech into their teaching and blending their instruction.  It has been very exciting watching the teachers rework their instruction and engage their students in new and exciting way.  Our next guest blogger, Darcee Thomas, fifth grade teacher at Moorsbridge, took her MACUL experience to reinvision what her classroom will look like with consistant access to technology tools for her students. I enjoyed attending MACUL this year.  It had been several years since I had been to this conference and it was a great way to get energized about technology in my classroom, especially as we get closer to 1-1 devices in our classroom.  One of the sessions that stood out to me was the “ Breakout EDU ”.  I loved the activity and immediately began thinking of topics/themes to use th...