PPS Instructional Technology

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...

It is no secret that I love Google Forms.   Paul Murray and I frequently share our love of this easy to use data collection tool with our teachers and others around the state, like in this presentation from miGoogle 2013.  One of the problems I have with data collection, however, is what to do with all the information, and make it manageable, once you have it collected.  I often look at spreadsheets full of Form responses and wonder, "There are 200 responses here!  How am I going to make sense of all this?"  Thankfully, there are some really amazing add-ons and tools that, with little effort on the users part, can make the data come alive. Tool #1: Add-on - autoCrat As a teacher, I collect information from my students/families every year.  Information such as names, parents/guardians names, preferred email address, preferred phone number, best way to contact parents/guardians, etc.  This information can be easily collected with a Form at open...

Are you looking for an easy way to send emails to all your parents/students?  Thanks to the Skyward message center you can easily set emails to all the parent/student emails we have on file for your class(es). Step 1: Log in to Skyward and click on the blue book for the class you want to send the email to. Elementary teachers, I would always pick the same class (ex: Mathematics). Step 2: Go to the Other Access menu at the top left.  Select Message Center. Step 3: If you are an Elementary Teacher you will want to select "Add Message for Current Class".  If you are a Secondary Teacher, you can choose to send your message to multiple classes by choosing, "Add Message to Multiple Classes" or you can send to just the current selected class with "Add Message for Current Class". Step 4: Give your message a Subject by typing in the Message Summary box. Step 5: Write the body of your email in the Message Detail box. Step 6: Click Attach to add at...

It’s that time again for……. The PPS TechnologyTimes! The PPS Technology Department would love for you to check out our winter 2013 newsletter. Featured Articles include: One-to-One Computing: Google Chromebooks  Web Filtering at PPS  Students’ Email Accounts  Google Chrome to Become our Default Browser  Meet the Tech Staff: Our New Building Techs  February/March After School Technology Training Schedule  It is one of our goals to help keep the PPS staff informed on what is going on in the technology department along with sharing wonderful and exciting ways technology is being used right here in PPS. If you have a project/event you would like featured in our next newsletter, or know someone who is doing a great job teaching with technology, we would love to hear about it! Email Jessica Winstanley ( jwinstanley@portageps.org ) or Paul Murray ( pmurray@portageps.org ) to share your ideas. For more information about what is going on in PPS...