Creating Class Rosters from Hapara

Did you know that Hapara still makes it easy to create a spreadsheet of your students' names and email addresses?  Use this Slideshow to create your own class rosters in Google Sheets with just 10 easy steps.

Adding School Calendars to Your Google Calendar

Would you like more advance notice about interim grading deadlines?  Do you wish you'd known about staff photo day more than 24 hours in advance?  Are you interested in knowing when important after-school activities are happening, so you can attend or talk about them with your students?  

If so, you might want to add the York Academic and/or York Activity  Google Calendars to your own Google Calendar.  

Directions for Adding Shared Calendars

Click the link for the calendar you want to add.

Academic

Activity 

A new tab will open that looks like this:


In the bottom right, click on the icon

A new tab will open to Google Calendar and a pop-up box: 

Click “Yes, add this calendar”

You can toggle the calendar layer off and on by clicking on the colored square to the left of the Calendar title in your Other calendars list.

Guardian Emails from PowerSchool

If you're looking for an easy way to get guardian emails from PowerSchool to input in to Google Classroom, check out this video!  (Only viewable by York certified staff).

Exciting Updates to Google Classroom

Exciting Google Classroom news today!  Several new updates have been released, including long-awaited parent/guardian access and the ability to add topics to Classroom posts for easy filtering and organizing.  

If you’d like to set up parent access in Google Classroom, we’ve got some tips for you.  In the “Students” tab in your classroom, you will see the option to “Invite Guardians” for each student by typing in their guardian’s email addresses.

Parents will need to accept the invitation by clicking the “Accept” button in the email.

Once they have accepted the invitation, the guardian’s email address will be attached to the student in every Google Classroom in which the student is enrolled.  Teachers are able to email all guardians with one click of a button and turn on summary emails which will automatically update guardians on Classroom activities. Guardians have the option to get summary emails weekly or daily.  The summary emails include:

• Missing work—Work that’s late at the time the email was sent
• Upcoming work—Work that’s due today and tomorrow (for daily emails) or work that’s due in the upcoming week (for weekly emails)
• Class activity—Announcements, assignments, and questions recently posted by teachers

You can see a preview of the guardian summary email here and read more about all the new updates  on Google’s blog.

Google Forms Got a Face-lift This Summer!

Just in time for the start of the school year, Google Forms released a new update.  You can now quickly create self-graded quizzes in Google Forms without ANY add-ons like Flubaroo!

Quizzes in Google Forms doesn't have all of the bells and whistles that Flubaroo has, but it's great for informal formative assessments.  Eric Curtis has a great comparison of Google Forms Quizzes and Flubaroo on his blog.  He also included written directions on how to setup self-grading quizzes in Forms.

If you prefer a video tutorial, Shawn Beard created the tutorial embedded below.

ICE Conference 2016: Cloudy with a Chance of Feedback

During the last week of February, thirteen teachers from York were able to attend the ICE Conference.  The ICE Conference is an annual gathering for educators from across the state who want to share and learn more about how technology and innovative teaching can be used to help their students learn.  Throughout this week, teachers who attended the conference will be sharing a bit of what they learned at the conference.  

Katie & I (Jill) also had the privilege of presenting at the conference.  We talked about how to provide digital feedback as part of your workflow.  Check out our presentation here!

ICE Conference 2016: Katie Diebold

The ICE conference is definitely one of my favorite professional learning opportunities of the year.  One of my favorite things about ICE is the presenter resources sections & crowd-sourced notes.  If I wasn’t able to attend a session, I can view both of those resources from the ICE 2016 website.   Even if you were unable to attend ICE, you can check out all of the great resources here.

One of the best sessions I attended over the two days was The Ultimate Photobomb presenter by Candace Marcotte.  The biggest takeaway from the session was the storyboard she shared.  It really outlines the process of video editing and scaffolds the process really well.  I made a couple of tweaks to the original.  Feel free to make a copy of it and use it with your students!  

We all know our students love media in every form.  Candace presented some really interesting ways photo and video can be used to engage students and help them learn.  There are a lot of great ideas in her session resource.  My three takeaways from the Ultimate Photobomb Session are:

1. Student -created “hashtag style” videos, like the Falon/Timberlake example below, to reinforce vocabulary.
2. Having students create animated GIFs to demonstrate a process or cycle.
3. The idea of using Dubsmash videos with students.  I have to admit that I don’t fully know what this looks like, but it sounds fun!

ICE Conference 2016: Jill Heaton

During the last week of February, thirteen teachers from York were able to attend the ICE Conference.  The ICE Conference is an annual gathering for educators from across the state who want to share and learn more about how technology and innovative teaching can be used to help their students learn.  Throughout this week, teachers who attended the conference will be sharing a bit of what they learned at the conference.  

Here were a few tips and highlights that I (Jill) took away from the conference:

• The QFT (Question Formulation Technique) is really catching on.  I first learned about it in January from Mike & Ryan's session at our #YorkShares16 institute day, but it was mentioned in at least 3 different sessions I attended at ICE.  It is a powerful way to structure student inquiry and engage students.

• You can embed Poll Everywhere polls in Google Slides!

• If I was still in the classroom, I'd be all about trying out this way to combine flipped, differentiated, and mastery learning. The flow chart had me geeking out.

• York teachers are doing so many great things with technology, and in many ways we're ahead of the curve.  While I was there, I was thinking of the many teachers here who could have led sessions at ICE about the innovative things they're doing in their classrooms.  I can't wait to see you presenting next year!

ICE Conference 2016: Jessica Weldon

During the last week of February, thirteen teachers from York were able to attend the ICE Conference.  The ICE Conference is an annual gathering for educators from across the state who want to share and learn more about how technology and innovative teaching can be used to help their students learn.  Throughout this week, teachers who attended the conference will be sharing a bit of what they learned at the conference.  

Today we'll be hearing from Jessica Weldon, Department Chair of Research & Social Science and AP Econ (Macro and Micro) teacher.  

"I learned about EdPuzzle which will allow you to create short assessments with any digital video clip and it will allow you to access your students' results.

I also learned about thinking about a culture of change and innovation must be honored by leadership. It was an inspiration talk about the culture of change in leadership is developed through focus, change and community. Embrace ideas, don't say no, say how, and narrow the focus for all educators as much as possible so that we can do the good work we want to do."

If you want to learn more about these things, talk to Jess or an ITC!

ICE Conference 2016, Veena Kaniyaly

During the last week of February, thirteen teachers from York were able to attend the ICE Conference.  The ICE Conference is an annual gathering for educators from across the state who want to share and learn more about how technology and innovative teaching can be used to help their students learn.  Throughout this week, teachers who attended the conference will be sharing a bit of what they learned at the conference.  

In this post, we'll be hearing from Veena Kaniyaly, a biology teacher:

"For common craft videos [and other types of student-created videos], one presenter shared a great outline for a storyboard which we will definitely be using in Biology.

 

The keynote speaker on Friday (Tom Murray) was awesome. I started following him on Twitter. One thing he talked about was learning spaces which I never gave that much importance to. If a learning space is appealing, kids would want to be there! (DUH! So simple). He also talked about learning equity and doing what we can to make sure students have access to internet. For York, I know several students that don't have access to Internet at home. What can we do as a school to better serve these underrepresented populations?"

If you want to learn more about these things, talk to Veena or an ITC!

ICE Conference 2016: Erica Drumm

During the last week of February, thirteen teachers from York were able to attend the ICE Conference.  The ICE Conference is an annual gathering for educators from across the state who want to share and learn more about how technology and innovative teaching can be used to help their students learn.  Throughout this week, teachers who attended the conference will be sharing a bit of what they learned at the conference.  

Today we'll be hearing from Erica Drumm, our librarian extraordinaire.

I walked away from the day with a philosophical boost and a few helpful tools. One helpful tool came from one of the vendors, Scholastic. Here's what they shared:

Among some other resources, this site from Scholastic has some great images to foster brainstorming for creative writing. Click on memoir, fiction, poetry, or humor then Brainstorm.

Memoir Brainstorming Example:

Short Fiction Brainstorming Example:

Poetry Brainstorming Example:

It's a great resource for students who lack inspiration.

If you want to learn more about these things, talk to Erica or an ITC!

ICE Conference 2016: Kristin Bartholomew

During the last week of February, thirteen teachers from York were able to attend the ICE Conference.  The ICE Conference is an annual gathering for educators from across the state who want to share and learn more about how technology and innovative teaching can be used to help their students learn.  Throughout this week, teachers who attended the conference will be sharing a bit of what they learned at the conference.  

In this post, we'll be hearing from Kristin Bartholomew, the pioneering TSI teacher who keeps our students' Chromebooks working smoothly:

"I tend to end up with a single focus when I attend these types of conferences, and since my TSI students are responding so much to class awards and having things on the wall below their photos, I focused on the big surge in gamification in the classroom.

First of all, there is a LOT of front loading that goes on before getting a great system going in the classroom. I thought about doing some sort of March Madness, but with mini awards going to students with self-made badges on the wall for various things (3 screens repaired in a period, fixing a CB without doing anything "magic touch", etc.) Since it is already March and I'm not ready to do this, I'm thinking we can kick it off as just the last 2 weeks. I've already started making badges.

                      

The best session, which was more of a challenge and I'd still have to see how to use it, was the BreakoutEdu session. A box sat on the table with 5 locks on it and riddles and puzzles had to be solved to get them open in a 30 minute time frame (My group did it in 31). The puzzles were a mix of paper clues (like translating hieroglyphics) to clues with YouTube links where a clue was in a video that then led to a math equation to solve. The idea was that the learning process is more important than the end result (think grades).  Once the box was open it was empty! It was a great way of driving home the point that all class lessons should work the same way where the process can be greater than the product. It would be a cool final project for TSI, but I have to figure out how to create puzzles that would be engaging and relevant enough. Stay tuned!"

If you want to learn more about these things, talk to Kristin or an ITC!