Remote Learning from the student view

A special thank you to some of my third-grade friends for using their technology skills to express their feelings.  Students in Mr. Dye/Mrs. Iwrin’s class and Mrs. Swierczek’s class used Storyboardthat to show a student side of remote learning.  These students had not used the application before and all work was done remotely.  Please click here to see their work.

Google Meet and Jamboard

Google recently announced the integration of Meet and Jamboard (please see here for the details).  It will roll out over the next 2-4 weeks.

Creating moveable drawings (in a Doc)

Jonathan Frye recently shared this blog post on how to create moveable drawings within a Google Doc.  Please see his post here.

Suggestions for high expectations online

Here’s a quick article to help you raise expectations with your students online.

Thinking about Breakout Rooms

Here’s an article, albeit it is Zoom related, that outlines what works and what doesn’t work in virtual breakout rooms.

The Man who Walked Between The Twin Towers ala Jamboard

Karen Swierczek read this story to her class last week and invited her students to share their reactions on a Jamboard.  Special thanks to Emmy for allowing me to share her work.

Here is the link to view the Jamboard (will only work with your Sayreville Account).

Jamboard and the math lesson

Dawn Schwartz shared her recent experience using Jamboard to teach her online math lesson.

This is for my math lessons.  In Jamboard, I am using the snipping tool and cutting and pasting the parts of the workbook that I want to teach.  I am then adding them to jamboard slides.  I make two copies of the lesson, one to use with each class, so that the responses and notes we make during the lesson will always be there for the students to refer to.

Then I post the link for the Jamboard to my google classroom, and they use that and their workbooks throughout the lesson.  The laser tool is great...it directs their attention to what I want them to look at, I can type notes for them to write down.  Then I give them three or four problems to do in their workbooks, and then ask them to post all four answers on a sticky note with their names...very important, BTW...make sure they write their names on the note!  You can also make a game out of it and have them all post at the same time if you are worried about students just copying answers.

Then I move the notes around based on correct and incorrect answers.....and that is how I can tell who I need to work with.

Digital Interactive Notebooks

Here is an innovative way to push content to your students via interactive notebooks thanks to Jessica Wilding (here is her channel).  I think it could even be called game-changing!

There is an issue with tabs- so please watch her second video for the workaround. Video one is linked here, the workaround here.

STEM Coalition

Check out the Discovery Education STEM site here- lesson plans and career profiles and more!

Virtual Manipulatives

While I think I have shared this site before, in these times, it bears repeating.  It is suggested for grades K-6.

Click here for a wide variety of online manipulatives.TeachersFirst has its review here.

Google Arts and Culture

There is something for everyone at the Google Arts and Culture site. From museums to games- I could wander there for hours.  Please see the review in TeachersFirst here.

Where is Carmen?

Google Earth has another Carmen Sandiego caper here.  You can read the review on TeachersFirst here.

Looking for ideas?

Check out Google’s Teacher Center here. Training classes, resources, and more!

Create a Virtual Bulletin Board!

 (Special thanks to Meredith  Pisaeno  for this guest post)

No bulletin board to share student work?  No problem!  A virtual board can be created in slides with links for each student to share a piece of work that they are proud of. 

1. Create the board in slides and save the image as a jpeg. 

2. Use it as a background in a new slide and add student names with text boxes.

3. Link the names to the work they would like to share.  Voila!  You have a bulletin board or virtual hallway display.

Financial Planning for Middle and High School students

From Discovery Education- here’s part of their message:

September is College Savings Month, and it is more important than ever to prepare today’s students with the financial education needed so they can plan for their future success if that includes higher education. This month, help high school students get ahead with no-cost digital resources from Pathway to Financial Success focused on planning to pay for college. Developed in partnership with Discover, this program features a full suite of resources to help students build financial literacy and plan for the future.  

Explore more financial literacy resources high school and middle school students in Experience on the Pathway to Financial Success Channel.

Jamboard and student expectations

 Gail Komm shared their recent Jamboard experience as her students created classroom behavior expectations.

Gail with her seventh students:

1. Students used sticky notes to write down appropriate class behaviors during virtual learning that could also help earn them reward tickets for good behavior. 

2. I grouped the students by birthdays. So if a student had a January birthday they worked on slide 1. 

3. After 5 minutes of contributing behaviors, students then had to categorize the behaviors under Respect, On Task, Responsibility, and Teamwork.

4. After all the classes, I plan on making a master list.  (her pdf download of the activity is linked here)

Jamming with Jamboard

Google’s Jamboard is one of my new favorite products.  Matt Miller gives a nice overview (as well as classroom suggestions) in his blog post here.  I’ve been saving suggestions as well in a Wakelet here. This is an easy way to collaborate with your students using a virtual whiteboard.

Choice Boards

In a recent Matt Miller post, he shared this article on choice boards from Michele Haiken. She compares them to the Pelton business model and philosophy.  Her examples are interesting and diverse.  Please see her post here.

Money makes the world go round...

And our students need strong financial literacy skills.  This week, TeachersFirst shared their Understanding Economics and Money.  It includes a variety of resources for all ages. One of my favorites for grades K-6  is from Discovery Education- Cha-Ching Money Smart Kids.

Jamboard- Part 1- Third Grade Weekend News

How about using a Jamboard to allow your students to share their weekend experiences?    Karen Swierczek shared her recent experience. 

Karen with her third-grade students:

1. First, I created my own Jamboard about my Weekend News by going to the waffle house and  clicking on Jamboard hitting the + sign(making sure to change the permissions to editing)

2. Then I shared it in google classroom for the students’ access. 

3. Then, I cleared the page and modeled how to use the tools on the left side of the slide and created another slide so kids could watch how I did it. I asked the students to pick a slide and start to create one of their own about their weekend news using the tools that I just modeled for them.

4. When we are done, I’m going to have the students present their page to the class.

Next time I will label each slide with each child's name because some of the kids started to work on someone else's slide. 

(Remember, you can access Jamboard from the App Launcher (Waffle House for foodies like me!) in your school Google account.)

Visit the Royal Academy

 

With the new collections in the Google Art and Culture site, you can view the material in the Royal Academy.  Please see Richard Byrne’s post here.

WW II in posters

Google recently announced they have partnered with the Smithsonian to share their collection of World War II posters.  Here’s part of the statement:

Is a picture truly worth 1000 words? History answers yes, as posters of political imagery help shape worldviews and educate the public on the past and present. On this day commemorating the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, we are proud to launch the collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History on Google Arts & Culture, making more than 15,000 posters available online to everyone for the first time.

Teaching with Hamilton

While I have not seen the Broadway production live, I’ve listened to the soundtrack (and watched the film version).  The music is engaging and makes me think about history.  At the Teaching History with Hamilton site, you will find a variety of suggestions.  For a complete review, please see the Teachers First site here.

Time-saving tips from Google (part 2)

Here are a few more Google tips (though I think the share to classroom tool is no longer valid).

Time-saving tips from Google

This brief video offers several time-saving tips- since we don’t use Gmail, you can ignore those (two toward the end).

New Google Features (Part 2)

Here’s Google’s take on their new offerings- but just a reminder that we don’t have the Enterprise version of G Suite-so many of the new features will not be coming to us.

New Google Classroom Features

Google has announced a few updates in Google Classroom including invites, a review tool,

as well as a knock feature in Google Meet.  Please see Richard Bynre’s description here.

3 ways to sign into Google Classroom

Google recently added an invite link for students to access Google Classroom.  Please take a look at this video from Richard Byrne to see which one would work best for you.  His complete blog post is here.