PPS Instructional Technology

As many of you know, this is a special week in the edTech realm.  It is  Computer Science education week , which is often highlighted by the " Hour of Code ".  In order to cap off this special week, below are some great activities to engage your students in coding and build their love of computer science.   You may be saying, "I don't know anything about coding. Can I still participate?" Of course you can! For the most part, Hour of Code activities are self-guided. All you need to do is choose an activity and let your students create and learn. They have options for every age and experience-level, from kindergarten and up. Check out the wealth of resources on the  Hour of Code  website. Some of Jessica's top picks: Made w/ Code : This great site, brought to us by Google, was created to encourage young women to step into the world of computer science and coding.  Check out some amazing coding mentor videos and code some great beginne...

Go to reports menu and select Custom Report Card . Setup Select Add a new Template . NOTE : If you have templates already created, you could click your Q1 (or Q2, Q3, Q4) template and then choose Modify Template .  If you do this, you won't end up with a long list of irrelevant templates. Give it a name (Ex: Marking Period 1, Marking Period 2, Marking Period 3, Marking Period 4). Click  Save . Select your options: Select term for that card (Ex: Q1). Report Card: Select your grade level for this year’s graduation year (ex: if it is the 20-21 school year choose 2021 RC). Select For All Students. Don’t check any of the boxes. Print for All Families. Print in English. Save. Repeat for the other three quarters.

This tip goes out to all my elementary friends out there!  In our never ending quest to find "good fit" reading material for our students, we are always looking for new resources to engage our kids.  Many of you have already explored  Epic Books  with your students.  Even though physical books are still my favorite go to for reading,  Epic  is another resource to give your students a chance to read a wide range of books on their chromebooks and expand your classroom library.   NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC New this school year,  Epic  just announced that they have added over  400 National Geographic Kids books and Videos !  Great for supplementing our Non-fiction reading! VIDEOS Also, as I was digging around in Epic, I noticed that they also have some great short videos for getting our kids hooked into the learning target for the day.  For example, I really like this one on  Plot  for when we are teaching...

In Michigan, the week before Labor Day is usually the week when all teachers report back for work.  We attend countless meetings and hours of professional development before heading into our classrooms to make sure everything is just right before the students walk in the doors.  As we approach the end of the week and head to our rooms to knock out the last few items on our to do lists, here are a few tools you may or may not know about that can make your life easier this school year. Classroom Screen Looking for a great web toolbox for your TEC screen?  Classroomscreen.com is a one stop shop for tools like... Random Name Picker Classroom Noise Level Monitor Quick QR Code Generator Drawing Tools for your Screen Type of the Screen Symbols for Voice Level Desired Traffic Light Timer Clock You can set the background image and leave the tab open on your TEC (Technology Enhanced Classroom) computer and leave it as your main "Homepage". Noisli : "White ...

Google has made several changes to Classroom that will affect teachers' workflow. These changes are welcome but do cause us to take pause as we learn the best ways in which to navigate its use. Here, I will list out and briefly explain those changes while also providing a few resources that you can use as you dig in. Major Updates New Classwork Page Assignments and Questions are now created and posted here. By making this change work is now separated from communication . The Stream is now strictly for announcements and responding to student posts. As you post assignments on the Classwork page, an announcement of that post is made in the Stream. Topics, Classwork Page Additionally, topics reside on the Classwork page, too. Topics have been around for a little while, but the beauty now is that assignments and questions can be organized within Topics. Alice Keeler has a lot to say on this in her blog post,  Google Classroom: Topics as Dates . I HIGHLY recommend you ...

Let's start with the FACTS! Your U Drive is here to STAY! (No worries about that tool going anywhere) Some buildings will get a TEC Refresh (Your Building Techs will let you know if that's you) Google Drive provides UNLIMITED storage space (No file too large!) You have a NEW storage drive on your Windows Desktop or Laptop... the Y Drive! All of these facts are very important to you! Why? Well, our files are precious. We invest enormous amounts of time into developing documents for educating our students and for managing our day to day operations at each of our schools. Files are important. Read on to learn about your NEW Y Drive and the TEC Refresh (at the end of this post) ... To start, Jessica sent an email out titled "Google Drive is now a Drive on your Computer". (You can search your inbox here if you wish to read it.) That email discusses your NEW Y Drive. Officially, Google calls this new service the Google Drive File Stream. We have already installe...

It's the end of yet another school year... So many happy moments! Our seniors are graduating. Our retirees, who have given us so much, are preparing to leave. Each person leaving Portage Public Schools is stepping into a new adventure. For many of you who will depart from our ranks, it will be important that you are able to take with you some, or all, of the products you have created. Most of these items live in the Google-sphere and you need to know how to pack 'em up and ship 'em out. So... today's post is about How to Take Your Files Stored in Google With You When You Leave . Quickly, let's mention your U Drive files. Simply grab a flash drive or log into your favorite cloud storage service and drag-n-drop or upload those files. Done. DISTRICT EMPLOYEES: Make sure you work with your supervisor to transfer ownership of any files critical to the success of your team. See how to transfer ownership in this article . With Google, there are three ways to t...

Many teachers over the last year have used Adobe Spark with their students to create great projects to demonstrate learning.  Now Spark has made it even easier for teachers and students to create amazing projects with Spark for EDU. Portage students and teachers now all have Spark for EDU accounts.  Help your students create professional looking graphics, web pages, and videos in minutes with this simple but powerful creativity, presentation, and storytelling tool!  If you’re looking to create narrated videos, printed materials, graphics, or writing assignments that students can quickly and easily turn in, you want Spark. Learn how to get your students logged in and creating with this getting started guide .

Google has been busy in the last month updating both Gmail and the look of Google Drive.  Many of you may have already noticed and explored the changes, but for those of you who would like the "cliff notes" on the updates, this tip is for you! Gmail The most significant of the changes have been happening with Gmail as Google rolls out a new look, and updated features.  The "new Gmail" is not on by default.  To switch to the new Gmail, click the gear in top right hand side and select "Try the new Portage Public Schools Mail".  This will switch you over to the new mail.  No worries if you don't like it once you are there, for now you can switch back to the "classic" style without issue. Now that you have switched over, you are probably wondering, what are some of the new features to check out?  Here is a rundown of some of my favorite new features that will help make your life a little bit easier. Take action on an email by simply ...

I’m here to tell you… you do not have to live in a mess! Break free! Find joy in cleaning out the clutter that is Google Classroom. If you have spent more than a year or two using Google Classroom you may have noticed your Classes beginning to pile up. Tripping over those classroom tiles is no fun. So, this tech tip is focused on clearing your Classroom home screen and managing your active classes. Let’s focus on two important ways to clean things up… Organizing Classrooms Archiving Classrooms And one optional way to help things run faster... Delete, if Not Using (Optional, of course) First, when teaching multiple classes, if you’re like me, they had better be listed in order and in the same place every time I want to get into one, any other way just won’t do. Good news, you can MOVE Classroom Tiles? Yep, drag-n-drop. Woot! Here’s a tip on how to Rearrange Class Tiles from one of my favorite bloggers, Alice Keeler . (If you don’t already follow her , here’s your chance ...

Logging into computers, and learning passwords can be an annoying, frustrating, but critical aspect of using technology with our students.  Setting up accounts, and deciding what passwords to use for students on outside sites can also be a challenge. We know we should be using strong password protocols , but we also need students to be able to remember the passwords and be able to get into the sites in a timely way.  Whenever you can find a site with the “Login with Google” button, that is the best bet.  However, even though we all love the "Login with Google" button for its ease and security, that isn't always an option.  So, what do we do? Use a password that is NOT their PPS password.  Why?  Students' PPS passwords should not be shared, even with other websites.  Students' passwords are the keys to all their personal data within Skyward, our PPS network, and Google.  By entering their PPS passwords on sites outside of PPS, you are giving ...

How many ugly looking presentations are you going to have to look at again at the end of this project? I mean, just look at this example at the right. His picture (although ruggedly handsome) is sitting right on top of the Eiffel Tower and it has all this horrible background clutter distracting from the tower itself. Not to mention the I “heart” Paris image with that unappealing square, white background. Ugh. So, how can we fix it? How can the student keep the images he has so carefully selected, but get rid of that white background and the image clutter? Enter... EditPhotosForFree.com has an EASY TO USE background removal tool that makes this quick and painless for teachers and students. Every time a student visits the Background Remover the set of instructions below appears to remind users of the four simple steps. Select an image Use the edge (boundary) tool to define the areas to keep and to remove Mark the areas to keep (foreground) with the green ...