Friday, April 10th

1. 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teachers Who Use Technology – article talking about some of the qualities effective teachers have who use technology effectively.

2. Evaluating Technology Use in the Classroom – article talking about how we need to look at the use of technology in the classroom with a focus on how it is affecting student learning.

3. TPACK Explained – article going over TPACK and how we can use it to evaluate our technology use in the classroom.

4. SAMR Resources and Explanation – page created by Kathy Schrock that has many examples and explanations of SAMR, another great tool to help us evaluate our technology use in the classroom.

ESL Tech Tip

Quizlet is a website that allows you to create your own sets of flashcards (including pictures and sound) to practice vocabulary, key terms, or even words in a foreign language. There are four main ways to study the terms plus two different game formats that make studying more exciting. Quizlet even has its own free app that you can download from Google Play or iTunes for study on the go.

Another great feature of Quizlet is that you can study sets created by other users. I know there are several Ames teachers who already use Quizlet. Here are usernames for AHS & AMS ESL teachers so you can see the variety of sets created for students: Kendall Schuldt, Shaeley Santiago, and AMS ESL. If you’ve got a Quizlet user name and would like to share your sets, let us know.

Friday, March 27th

1. Chalkup to Annotate Google Docs – Chalkup is a LMS (lesson management system) that allows you to do many things others allow you to do, but you can also annotate Google Docs by drawing on them to give feedback to students.

2. Add Audio Comments Using Doctopus and Goobric – Kaizena is a great way to leave audio feedback for students but you can also now do this if you use Goobric to leave rubric feedback for students.  You do have to use Doctopus first to create the assignment for students but then you can quickly insert audio feedback.

3. New AHS Student Tech Tips site – I am working on a tech tips site for students.  Let me know if there is anything you want added.  I am going to roll it out to students soon and will even let them add their own tips by submitting them to me to put on the site.

4. Silent Class Discussion Using Google Classroom – Post by Nicholas Provenzano about how he used Google Classroom to conduct a class discussion while he was gone to a conference and even participated during the class.

5. Five Ways Students Can Share Videos Without YouTube – Post by Richard Byrne that shows five alternatives to YouTube for sharing videos by students.

6. Stop Uploading PDF’s and Digital Worksheets – Post by Alice Keeler about alternatives to the cumbersome digital substitution many are doing by just uploading digital copies of old worksheets or PDF’s.

Friday, March 6th

1. Gradebook split screen chrome extension – Post and extension by Alice Keeler that makes it easy to grade digital assignments by automatically opening up your gradebook in another window and resizing both windows for easy entering of grades.

2. Actively Learn – Add notes/questions/resources to digital text to help students as they read, either text that is made available from Actively Learn or upload your own.

3. Customize headers, footers, page numbers in Google Docs – Post by Richard Byrne about the updates to Google Docs that allows for more customization of headers, footers and page numbers.

4. Google Classroom updates – Post by Richard Byrne about the most recent Google Classroom updates which includes the ability to customize the header/theme.

5. AHS Teacher Tech Share Page – Share out how you are using tech in the classroom by using the simple Padlet wall on the AHS Teacher Share Page.

ESL Tech Tip

1. Rewordify – Free website that identifies challenging words in texts or websites and rephrases them for ease of understanding. To see more details about how to use this site to adapt text for students, read this post on the ESL Resources for Teachers website.

Friday, February 20th

1. Send Emails Later with Boomerang – This newsletter was written earlier in the week but sent on Friday using a Chrome Extension, find out how.

2. Homeroom Activities Page with Resources – page on AHS Tech Integration site with resources for Digital Citizenship and cases of poor Digital Citizenship.

3. Real Benefit of Using Google Sheets Add-Ons Like Flubaroo and Goobric by Richard Byrne – Saving time using the Add-ons is something we all can do easily.

4. Flipboards update – Flipboard was updated this week and while we can’t embed on a Google Site again yet, go to the page to click the link and see the new online interface for some curated tech tips.

5. Save Kahoot Quiz Results in Your Google Drive by Richard Byrne –  Save your Kahoot results in Google Drive for viewing later.

6. Top 10 Alternatives to InfuseLearning by Jonathan Wylie – Formative assessment tool InfuseLearning will stop working in April, look at some other great options for conducting formative assessments in the classroom.