PPS Instructional Technology

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 ...

The beauty and the burden of Google is that they are always making changes and improvements.  The latest updates to Google Classroom will definitely fall into the beauty category.  Yesterday, Google announced the ability in Google classroom to assign work to individual students instead of just the whole class.  WOW!  We've been waiting for that feature.  Now when you are doing small group work, you can assign the post to just the students in that small group.  Have a student who needs extra, targeted practice?  No problem, post an assignment and assign it to just that student.  I can't wait to start using this feature.  To learn more, check out this post from Google's Keyword Blog .

Are you using Google Classroom? Are you finding difficulty managing your email from assignments and posts from Classroom? Then check out below this simple, yet highly effective strategy! Disclaimer: I cannot even pretend to take credit for this one. The original post is from Alice Keeler: Teacher Tech , but I heard about it from our own  Malena Schrauben  through this incredible Professional Development tool called  Twitter . The idea here is to use a hashtag in the title of each of your assignments. Then in gmail, filter messages out of your inbox based on that hashtag. Genius! Examples... Math Class: #alg1 #extsn Exponents Power Rule Social Studies: #SS7th #discuss Civil War Causes Science: #sci8th #insectcollect Pinning a Butterfly Notice that I tried to create examples that could group email by class, grade level, assignment type, or project.  Hopefully, these examples will get you thinking. I am certain you will develop better uses on your own. Als...

Clone From Existing Gradebook:  Allows you to copy one or more assignment from a current year or historical Gradebook of your own or copy an assignment from another teacher’s Gradebook. When selecting this option, you must be in the Gradebook where you want the assignment created. Step 1  Select the Gradebook with the assignment you want to clone. You can select from a  prior year Gradebook  (ex: 2015), current year Gradebook (ex: 2016) or another teacher’s Gradebook (You would need to click the Select Different Teacher button).  After selecting the Gradebook, click the Next button. Step 2 Select the assignment(s) you want to clone; all assignments are defaulted to selected. You can click the "Uncheck All" button to select individual assignments. You are able to clone an assignment only when you have the identical category assigned to your class. After selecting the assignment, click the Next button. Step 3 Select the class(es)to whic...

Secondary Teachers, Are you having having difficulty with your gradebook calculating E's for all your students? This tip discusses... How to Configure Categories 0% Weighted Categories No Count Assignments Configure Categories Prior to entering assignments, it is good practice to configure your categories in each of your gradebooks; however, categories may be changed at any time prior to the end of the first marking period. (It is recommended that you inform students, parents, and administration of how you intend to make use of categories in each of your classes.) Here is a video that describes the process for configuring categories. Zero Percent (0%) Weighted Categories Should you choose to use a 0% weighted category for recording pre-tests and the like without impacting the overall grade, know that if you use only that 0% category for all your assignments, all students scores will be listed as having a 0% (E) for the class. This only occurs if you have n...

As we get into the school year and begin entering grades for our classes many of us are finding that we need a refresher on how to enter grades in Skyward. The following videos breakdown the process of entering grades into bite size pieces providing us with only the information we need. (Please keep in mind these videos explain using the secondary gradebook.) Display Options (3:26) Categories (3:39) Adding Assignments (5:11) Editing & Scoring Assignments (7:14) Quick Entry (2:13)