PPS Instructional Technology

  Last week I had the opportunity to attend the 2020  Learning  Forward Conference . One of the sessions I attended (virtually, of course) was "Engagement by Design: The impact of relationships, clarity and challenge" with Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey . They shared amazing ideas and resources with the 300+ people attending. Below are two of my take-aways that focus on student engagement and building community. VIRTUAL  CLASS JOBS Class jobs help build community and provide students an opportunity to demonstrate responsibility and feel valued in the class. Why not bring the idea of class jobs into the  virtual  environment? Having students take on the role of chat monitor, co-host,  tech-support,  DJ, or movement monitor  can  give them another reason to show up for your  virtual  class, engage in the Meet, and add to their sense of belonging.  Below are a couple great examples of potential  virtual  class jobs. Cla...

  USING BREAKOUT ROOMS IN GOOGLE MEET So what are Breakout Rooms? Simply put, Breakout rooms are the ability to section your students into smaller groups within your video-conferencing software. Basically small groups in digital form! But… how can you do it? CREATE BREAKOUT ROOMS On your computer, start a Google Meet.  In the top right, click Activities     Breakout rooms. In the Breakout rooms panel, choose the number of breakout rooms. You can create up to 100 breakout rooms in a call.  Students are then distributed across the rooms. To manually move students into different rooms, you can: Enter the participant’s name directly into a breakout room. Click the participant’s name. Hold down the mouse, drag the name, and then drop it into another breakout room.  To randomly mix up the groups again, click Shuffle  . In the bottom right, click "Open rooms". EDIT, JOIN, or LEAVE BREAKOUT ROOMS Once you’ve created breakout rooms, you can make chang...

We are all spending a lot of time presenting in Google Meets these days. Check out this doc for tips on the following topics: Increasing Pointer Size Highlighting your Pointer Increasing the size of your Doc Split Screen Extended Screen Join a Meet only to Present

As we use Google Meet more and more, there are little quirks that it helps to be aware of when working with your students.  Here are a few helpful Meet tips. A Student Can't Get Back into the Meet If you remove a student from a Meet for any reason, then you will need to invite them back at your next meeting, otherwise they will not be able to participate. To invite students back into the meet follow these steps: On the right, click People > Add people . Enter the name or email address Send invite. Here is a quick image to help you with this process: Google Meet Breakout Rooms Error When using the Google Meet Breakout Room feature and a student gets an error about an unsupported device or personal account or it just kicks them out when they try to go to the breakout room, then they are likely attempting to use the Google Meet Android App on their chromebook. Breakout rooms are only supported in the web-based version of Meet. The solution is to uninstall the android app...

Learning   is a social activity and relationships matter. Whether you are in your physical classroom face-to-face with your students or interacting through Google Meet during a   virtual   lesson, maintaining positive relationships with your students in key to their success, especially during these uncertain times. Here are  5 tips from Matt Miller and Paulino Brener  on how to build and/or maintain relationships with your students even when you aren't in the same physical space. The secret is you , the teacher, and what you bring into your classroom in person. Be that genuine voice and show that genuine interest that you have for your students. Your human self is the best gift you can bring to your students.  Use what works best for you . Talk about topics in a Google Meet. Write and share ideas and resources with your students. Share a Bitmoji of yourself to bring some personality. Create videos using screencastify or flipgrid . Share print ma...

  Screencastify has been an essential tool for us this school year. Creating screencasts with this tool is easy. And best yet, they load right to Google Drive for simple sharing! However, this tool (as with many others) may require some tweaking. Let's look at a couple of ways to get better results. Understanding Screencastify In order for Screencastify to record videos in the way it does, it must record using the hardware on the device until the recording is complete. Once the recording has finished, the video is automatically uploaded to Google Drive and removed from the device. This process means that Screencastify will never fill up the hard drive on your device. Of course, it also means that your device has to have enough space available depending on the length of video you intend to record. The best thing you can do is to keep your Chromebook's hard drive clear of any files that are not essential. Generally, you just need to keep your Downloads folder empty . Speed and S...

As educators, it is extremely important for us to maintain a safe environment for our students. That importance applies equally to their physical AND mental needs. For those reasons, I was ecstatic when Google Meet developed its Host Controls and Meeting Security features. Today, we will learn how to use the controls to allow participants to join a call as well as how the host can remove users for any reason necessary. Ok, how do you get to the Host and Safety controls? From within Google Meet, navigate to the bottom to the Meeting Controls and Menu toolbar. Locate the Blue Security Shield. Click on the Shield to open the Host and Safety controls. Limiting Access to Your Meeting The topmost option is Quick access . The default is to allow anyone to join your Meet. (Note that Nicknamed Meet sessions will only allow participants from inside your organization to enter automatically. Anyone calling* in or with an email address outside of Portage Public Schools must be admitted manually.) T...

Virtual learning is hard. Both for the teacher and the students. Students are not used to sitting all day on the computer. Teachers are not used to being locked in one location for instruction. It can be exhausting!  So here are some tips, tricks, and ideas to get your students up, moving, and engaged in the learning. RESPOND WITH MOVEMENT : Have students stand up and do different motions to share their thoughts. Example: Put your hands on your head if you think the answer is X or When you know the answer do jumping jacks. See other examples in this blog post from Lessons for Little Ones Music photo created by freepik TRANSITION MUSIC : Use " go noodle " or other music for transition time. If you need students to get out new materials, put on a go noodle and challenge them to complete the task before the Go Noodle song is done. Those that are able to do the task quickly can participate in the Go Noodle until it is done. INTERACTIVE SLIDES : Use Pear Deck to make your slides ...

As you are working through teaching virtually, having a system where you can easily do tasks on the computer is key. Here are some helpful tips and shortcuts to make your life easier. QUICK 1 PAGE PRINTABLE VERSION HERE Split Screen Having a split screen means you have one window on one side of your device monitor and one window on the other. This allows you to see two things at once. Example: Your Google Meet and your presentation. On a Chromebook, you can quickly do a split screen by using the shortcut:  Alt + [  to move left Alt + ]  to move right . To learn more about how to do a split screen on Chromebooks, Windows 7 or 10, or a Mac, head to the  PPS Family Tech Tips site in the Online Learning Tips  section. Open a Closed Tab If you have ever accidentally closed a tab you were working on, then this shortcut is for you! This shortcut will reopen the tab you closed most recently. If you closed multiple tabs, just keep using the shortcut...

This week Google is rolling out several new features for their Enterprise for Education customers. These much awaited features include Breakout rooms and Google Meet Attendance. To learn more about the updated features coming to Google Meet, check out this 30 minute webinar . If you want to jump into Breakout rooms, check out this guide from Google . It outlines how to create Breakout rooms, join/edit rooms, leave rooms, and end the rooms. Google Meet attendance is also slowly rolling out to our staff. Google launched this resource last week, then paused the rollout to address some bugs. Over the past week, our staff have been noticing this feature becoming active in their meets. If you don't have it yet, don't worry! It is on its way. Attendance will work automatically for any Meet with more than five participants. To learn more about how Attendance works in Google Meet, check out this post from Google. Please be aware, if you have an extension that does attendance in your Me...