PPS Instructional Technology

It is one of Google's goals to constantly be working to make their products better.  Their philosophy is to "Launch and Iterate". In the spirit of constant improvement, Google Classroom is getting a new look and some great new features for the New Year.  Some of these features include... New look—Fresh new design and 78 new themes. Drag-and-drop classwork—Quickly organize entire topics or individual posts on the Classwork page. Quickly see and share a class code—Class codes now at the top of the Stream page for each class. So if you and/or your students open your Google Classroom over the next couple days, don't be surprised with the new look.  Google is just working on making the product better. To read about the new features, or see a short video (about 1 min), check out the Google blog post at: https://www.blog.google/outreach-initiatives/education/new-year-new-classroom/ Enjoy!

As many of you know, this is a special week in the edTech realm.  It is  Computer Science education week , which is often highlighted by the " Hour of Code ".  In order to cap off this special week, below are some great activities to engage your students in coding and build their love of computer science.   You may be saying, "I don't know anything about coding. Can I still participate?" Of course you can! For the most part, Hour of Code activities are self-guided. All you need to do is choose an activity and let your students create and learn. They have options for every age and experience-level, from kindergarten and up. Check out the wealth of resources on the  Hour of Code  website. Some of Jessica's top picks: Made w/ Code : This great site, brought to us by Google, was created to encourage young women to step into the world of computer science and coding.  Check out some amazing coding mentor videos and code some great beginne...

Go to reports menu and select Custom Report Card . Setup Select Add a new Template . NOTE : If you have templates already created, you could click your Q1 (or Q2, Q3, Q4) template and then choose Modify Template .  If you do this, you won't end up with a long list of irrelevant templates. Give it a name (Ex: Marking Period 1, Marking Period 2, Marking Period 3, Marking Period 4). Click  Save . Select your options: Select term for that card (Ex: Q1). Report Card: Select your grade level for this year’s graduation year (ex: if it is the 20-21 school year choose 2021 RC). Select For All Students. Don’t check any of the boxes. Print for All Families. Print in English. Save. Repeat for the other three quarters.

This tip goes out to all my elementary friends out there!  In our never ending quest to find "good fit" reading material for our students, we are always looking for new resources to engage our kids.  Many of you have already explored  Epic Books  with your students.  Even though physical books are still my favorite go to for reading,  Epic  is another resource to give your students a chance to read a wide range of books on their chromebooks and expand your classroom library.   NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC New this school year,  Epic  just announced that they have added over  400 National Geographic Kids books and Videos !  Great for supplementing our Non-fiction reading! VIDEOS Also, as I was digging around in Epic, I noticed that they also have some great short videos for getting our kids hooked into the learning target for the day.  For example, I really like this one on  Plot  for when we are teaching...

In Michigan, the week before Labor Day is usually the week when all teachers report back for work.  We attend countless meetings and hours of professional development before heading into our classrooms to make sure everything is just right before the students walk in the doors.  As we approach the end of the week and head to our rooms to knock out the last few items on our to do lists, here are a few tools you may or may not know about that can make your life easier this school year. Classroom Screen Looking for a great web toolbox for your TEC screen?  Classroomscreen.com is a one stop shop for tools like... Random Name Picker Classroom Noise Level Monitor Quick QR Code Generator Drawing Tools for your Screen Type of the Screen Symbols for Voice Level Desired Traffic Light Timer Clock You can set the background image and leave the tab open on your TEC (Technology Enhanced Classroom) computer and leave it as your main "Homepage". Noisli : "White ...

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 ...

Let's start with the FACTS! Your U Drive is here to STAY! (No worries about that tool going anywhere) Some buildings will get a TEC Refresh (Your Building Techs will let you know if that's you) Google Drive provides UNLIMITED storage space (No file too large!) You have a NEW storage drive on your Windows Desktop or Laptop... the Y Drive! All of these facts are very important to you! Why? Well, our files are precious. We invest enormous amounts of time into developing documents for educating our students and for managing our day to day operations at each of our schools. Files are important. Read on to learn about your NEW Y Drive and the TEC Refresh (at the end of this post) ... To start, Jessica sent an email out titled "Google Drive is now a Drive on your Computer". (You can search your inbox here if you wish to read it.) That email discusses your NEW Y Drive. Officially, Google calls this new service the Google Drive File Stream. We have already installe...