Digitize Your Newsletter

Image from www.kimconstable.com

Don't let your parents feel buried under the paperwork sent home.  Allow them to access your information digitally!

Ways to digitize your newsletter:

Send via email - Simply take the newsletter you already create on your computer and send it to parents as an email attachment.  Only print paper copies for students with no parent email contact information.

Post on your blog - Copy and paste your information as a blog entry.  Parents who subscribe will receive the entire contents of your post in their email inbox.

Post on your Google Site - Make your newsletter a "blog entry" on your Google Site or upload a copy onto your "File Cabinet" page.  A blog entry will notify subscribers, while placing it in the File Cabinet will not.  (You can post a link to the File Cabinet location . . . as a blog entry!)

These are all simple to learn, and I would be happy to teach you (or your team) how to do this.  Your parents will love it!

Click here to request help digitizing your newsletter.

Book Creator - Upcoming Training

Click here to watch a 1-minute video describing our upcoming Book Creator Training!

Who should come?

Every single teacher in the Elementary School would benefit from attending because:

Book Creator is on all iPads on the cart

Book Creator is for all subjects

Book Creator is for all ages

Book Creator can be used to create lessons

Book Creator can be used for students to show their learning

Two options:

Thursday, Oct.1, 3:15-3:45

or

Friday, Oct.2, 7:30-8:00

See you there!

Tech Storm!

Image from profalbrecht.wordpress.com

Hey everyone!  This school year has begun with a flurry of exciting and challenging requests for tech integration from many staff members!

I. AM. SO. THRILLED.

Please keep 'em coming!  And please be patient if I don't get back to you the same day.  I guarantee you that your question or project is important to me.  I will happily deliver the amazing tech resources you need, as soon as I can get to it!

Since I am only at school 10 hours per week, the best way to reach me with questions and requests is via email at haglinb@maplelake.k12.mn.us or fill out a request form here.

A quote from the Benchmark Universe Training, September 18th

Video for Teaching Compare and Contrast to Primary Students

Click here to see a cute YouTube Video for teaching Compare and Contrast to primary students.

Global Read Aloud

The Global Read Aloud is a fantastic way to connect your students with the world through reading!

There are no rules other than reading one of the selected books aloud to your students and connecting in some way with a different class about the book.

Last fall, Amy Kosloski's class participated.  They connected with classes in Texas, New York, and Canada through Skype and Kidblog.  Check out some of their Kidblog posts here.

They enjoyed a good book together and became more engaged as they discussed the book with other classes.  They broadened their perspective as they viewed, spoke to, and blogged with students from a different area of the world.  Click here to see a few moments from one of their Skype experiences (this was a Mystery Skype, in which each class tried to guess the location of the other class).

This opportunity is for all ages, K-12.  It officially begins October 5th.  I can help you set up a partnership, teach you and your students how to Skype/blog/make any other sort of connection.  Please click here to let me know if you are interested in learning more about the Global Read Aloud.

Free Books on iPad for PreK-5th Graders

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Your students can each have their own account in this free digital library, accessible on iPads or computers. There are tons of titles available for ages 4-12. 

Why is it free?  EPIC makes their money by offering parents $4.99 per month home subscriptions.  They request that teachers inform the parents about this, however there are NO parent subscriptions required in order for your class to access this all for free when they are at school!

The books are high quality and there is a large variety.  This video is the ad directed at parents.  Check it out to see how the app works.  Educator accounts are completely free.

Click here to request my help in getting your class signed up for accounts.

Selfies for Learning

Image from Techie Teacher

We all know kids love to take selfies.  Why not assign a short project using selfies to demonstrate learning?

Students can use the camera app on an iPad or their own smart phone to take pictures of themselves with any desired learning tools.  Some great ideas for this can be found in Techie Teacher Julie Smith's post here.

Using an annotation app such as Skitch or PicCollage, students can combine and label their photos.  It is easy to upload them to a blog for publishing, or to email them to the teacher for viewing or printing.

Please click here if you would like to learn more about this or to request help teaching your students about these apps.

Smart Board Basics - Upcoming Training

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Upcoming training:

Monday, September 14th

Green Lab

3:15-4:00

*How to use the Smart Notebook program to create lessons for use on your Smart Board

*Features available and how to access them

*How to easily save, organize, and share Smart Notebook Files

*How to access lessons already created by other teachers around the world

*How to use your Smart Board to interact with websites as a class

Hope to see you there!

Using Videos to Pre-teach or Introduce

Image from www.capbluecross.com

If you have a classroom blog and your parents have subscribed to email updates, you can use this as a way to present information you wish families to know ahead of time.

Check out the beginning of the school year video presented on Adam Ronnenberg's blog.  This is a great way for him to remind students about the expectations for Morning Movers as well as get them excited for the start of the school year.

As a blogger, keep in mind that embedded videos (videos placed directly within your blog post) do not show up in email updates.  Parents must either click over to the actual blog post to view the video, or the blogger can include words which are linked to the video (or the post itself), for the parent to click.  Just be sure there is some indication that your post contains a video (such as Adam's invitation to "take a couple minutes and check out the video I posted").

Students love watching videos of their favorite people from school, over and over!  My kids have already watched Adam's video twice!  Consider using this as a way to communicate with families this year.

Inviting Parent Readers and Experts to Your Classroom Through Technology

Image from convertiblesolutions.com

Use technology this year to invite parents into your classroom, even if they can't actually be there in person.

In the elementary school, parents can volunteer to record their voice reading a picture book or one chapter of a longer book.  As suggested in this post by Techie Teacher Julie Smith, a letter can be sent home to interested parents containing instructions for recording.  This recording can be created using any smart phone or device.

At school, the recordings can be paired with QR codes so that students can scan, listen to the recorded voice (i.e. Stripes read by Jack's Mom), and follow along in the book.  What a fantastic listening center!

For middle and high school students, parents can share expertise through a voice recording  of their knowledge about a topic or even making a short video to explain or instruct.  A short survey can be sent out to parents to determine whether there are curriculum-related experts who are willing to share their knowledge.

These recordings can be paired with QR codes for students to access as they learn.

If you would like help notifying parents, creating QR codes, getting books set up for listening centers, organizing information presented by expert parents, or teaching the students how to access the recordings, please click here.