Skip to main content

Posts

Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr - January 18, 2021

By Jessica Winstanley
The 2020-2021 school year has presented us with many challenges and opportunities. By necessity we have become experts on pandemic teaching. We have learned how to embrace and connect with our students no matter where they may be physically. We have caught glimpses into the lives of our students that we may not have had before this year. We have helped our students process intense issues from isolation, illness and death to protest and civil unrest, all while trying to maintain our own social-emotional and physical health and wellbeing. As we approach the half-way mark and continue to persevere in this unique and challenging school year, the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. loom large in my mind. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction. The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically...We must remember that intelligence is not
Post a Comment
Read more
Recent posts

Virtual Learning Tip: Virtual Class Jobs and Where in the World is...

By Jessica Winstanley
  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. Class Jobs for Elementary Students . Class Jobs for Secondary Stude
Post a Comment
Read more

Virtual Learning Tip: Google Meet Breakout Rooms

By Jessica Winstanley
  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 changes to the rooms or join each break
Post a Comment
Read more

Virtual Learning Tip: Presenting in a Google Meet

By Jessica Winstanley
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
Post a Comment
Read more

Virtual Learning Tip: Common Google Meet Fixes

By Jessica Winstanley
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 and resta
Post a Comment
Read more

Virtual Learning Tip: Maintaining Relationships

By Jessica Winstanley
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 materials in PDF or Google doc / slid
Post a Comment
Read more

Screencastify: Record Smaller Files, Get Better Results

By
  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 St
Post a Comment
Read more