Learning Together at MACUL: Using Inforgraphics in the Classroom and Supporting our Readers

Our next post in our Learning Together at MACUL series, Sheila Clothier shares her MACUL experience as well as some great tech tools for supporting our readers.

Sheila is a fourth grade teacher at Central Elementary School and is one of our Chromebook 1-to-1 Pilot teachers. When you talk to Sheila, she will be the first to tell you that teaching in a 1-to-1 environment was a huge leap of faith for her. She is an amazing, gifted teacher, but has never claimed to be on the bleeding edge of the tech world. Anyone who states that they can't use technology in their classroom only needs to sit down with Sheila for 10 minutes or walk through her room and you will soon realize that tech isn't all that scary after all! Here is Sheila's blog post on her MACUL experience. Thanks for sharing, Sheila!

I was amazed with all the possibilities of using technology in the classroom with language arts. During the conference, I refreshed my understanding of Google Classroom, learned about infographics, listened to a teacher that uses digital literature circles, and watched a presentation on supporting writing with technology. My favorite presentation was one on combining technology and your students' passions. I plan on spending some additional time with the infographics. I already started the students writing on the chromebooks using Storybird and Write About. I have never seen such excitement to write! Here is a list of some of the resources:

“Using Infographics in the Classroom" http://tinyurl.com/infogr15

How can we use technology to support our readers?
Apps/Websites for Reading

newsELA

ReadWorks

Tween Tribune

Bookclubs w/ Edmodo

myON

Tweet deck

GoodReads

ReadTheory.org

For Writing

Storybird

Write About

Tagul

Comments

Google Docs: Fonts for Early Elementary

Sample of search results from fonts.google.com A couple weeks ago, I was sitting in a training with a bunch of my favorite lower elementary teacher friends, and several of them were lamenting the fact that it is hard to find "good" Google fonts for the little people they work with on a daily basis. Specifically, it is a challenge to find the single story lower case a and the open 4 . This conversation, of course, sent me out on a mission to remedy this for these fantastic people. So, the next day I put on my headphones, turned up the tunes on Spotify, and dived into the website fonts.google.com . This website lists all the Google fonts available. It also allows you to type in your own letters and numbers and see them in all the various fonts. For my purpose, I typed in "abckgy 1234 This is the font." From here I could see all 877 fonts, and look specifically for the a and the 4. It was quite an adventure, and I came across a lot of really awesome font

It's time to change your password!

There are several times a year when it is important to change your password. Your password will expire every 90 days. When your windows computer informs you that your password will be expiring soon, CHANGE IT THEN! It is also always a good idea to change your password before going on break so that you do not get locked out of your computer, email or gradebook. Here is how you change your password from the school windows computers. On your Windows desktop/TEC computer , press the Alt, Ctrl and Delete buttons at the same time. Click on "Change a Password" on the menu below: Enter your username, if needed, and follow the directions on screen. If you are off site or working solely on a Chromebook , you can use the VDI (Virtual Desktop) to change your password. Simply go to vdi.portageps.org. Click "VMware Horizon HTML Access." Click "Accept." Login with your portage username (leave off the @portageps.org) and password. Click "Login." Cli

Skyward Tech Tip: Unlocking a Closed Grade Period

Have you recently attempted to change a grade from last quarter only to be met with the statement “ This Grade Period is closed for Grade Entry “? This occurs because the date for the end of a marking period or quarter has past and that grading period has been locked in the Skyward Gradebook. Below you will find the process for changing term grades, assignment scores, and other information from past grading periods. Google Docs Version Go to your gradebook Let’s start with the gradebook for the class where you need to make a change. In this example, we will be adding a score to a missing assignment and removing the incomplete grade from the quarter grade. (Note: The process to open or unlock the gradebook is the same regardless the change you need to make.) This change will be made for marking period three, Q3. In that marking period column, click on the “Options” dropdown button. From the Options dropdown, choose “Grade Posting Status for Term QX”, whe

PPS Instructional Technology

Search This Blog