Preparing for Summer: Schoology, Seesaw and Gmail

Preparing for Summer 

Schoology: Save Your Courses (Grades 3-12)

Just a friendly reminder that your current Schoology courses will expire at the end of
the grading term, and you will soon see a warning banner on your Schoology pages.

About two weeks after the term ends, these classes will no longer appear in the course
drop down list, but you will still be able to access these courses in Archives. Here are
video directions for how to access your courses once they move to Archives.

Before your courses move to Archives, you can save the course content to your
Resources area. You can then work on your courses from within Resources over the
summer. In the fall, you will import the materials from Resources into your new
courses. See below for directions:

• Saving Current Term Materials & Importing Saved Materials into New Term 
  (2 min Video Directions)
• Spring: Save Materials from Current Term Course(s) to Resources 
• Fall: Import Materials from Resources into Your New Course(s)

Note: If you miss saving your courses this spring, you can still retrieve them from your Archives in the fall. It just takes two more clicks, so no worries! 

Seesaw: You don't need to do anything (Grades E-2)

The district technicians will prepare your Seesaw account for next year. You don't need to do anything, but it is important that you do not delete the students or the class!  We anticipate your current classes will remain active until about mid-August when they will be replaced with next year's classes. If you want, you can continue to use your Seesaw classes to communicate with this year's students & parents until then.

Helpful FAQs    Do NOT remove students from your class, delete your class or archive your class. If you haven't connected families to Seesaw yet, it's time! Learn how! Connected families will continue to have access everything in the Seesaw and are able to export a .zip archive of their child's work. Learn more! For more fun activities to end the school year, watch this webinar.

Gmail: Set Your Vacation Responder 

Setup Gmail's Vacation Responder to send automatic replies to incoming emails to notify senders that you will be out of the classroom/office during summer break.

Stop Motion with Google Slides or Seesaw

Google Slides

Google Slides can be used for much more than presentations. One fun way to use slides is to create stop motion videos. Essentially, each slide becomes a frame in the video. When the slideshow is set to automatically play at a fast speed, it looks like a stop motion video. Another option is to create a screencast of the finished slideshow presentation. Screencastify is a great Chrome extension for creating screencasts.

Integration Ideas:

• Tell/retell a story
• Animate a map to show historical changes/movements
• Illustrate a science concept like cell division
• Illustrate changes to an environment
• Define a vocabulary term
• Illustrate or explain a math concept
• Create a music video (by screencasting the slideshow and adding audio)
• Retell a historical event (or reflect on how it "could have happened")
• Animate notes on a music staff (optional: screencast and record yourself playing along)
• Show the steps in creating a piece of art (like a time lapse)
• Many more!

How do I do this?

• Blog post from Control + Alt + Achieve with detailed directions and ideas.
• Video Tutorial (7:47)

Seesaw

If Google Slides is too complex for your younger learners, you could have them to use Seesaw to create stop motion videos. To do this, you would want to mount your iPad on a stand or set it on a shelf with the camera hanging over the edge. It needs to be set up, so it doesn't move between frames.

Students could then use the video feature and record a sequence of images. They could arrange the objects in front of the camera and move items slightly for each image, recording for just a second and then pausing the video between each frame. When they click the checkmark to submit their video, it will play as a stop motion.

Here is an example:

Google Earth

Google Earth Google Earth was one of the few tools I was sad to give up when moving from laptops to Chromebooks in my previous district. Students were highly engaged in using Google Earth to explore their own community as well as the world around them. So I was super excited when Google recently announced the release of a web version of Google Earth that works on the Chromebooks. There is also an App for Google Earth for the iPads.Google Earth is a great tool to use for grades K-12. Overview Tutorial | Google Earth Help Site

Integration Ideas

• Virtual Field Trips: Locate and bookmark locations and "play" them back as a presentation to your students. Students can also create a list of bookmarks to
  share with their classmates.
• Google Earth Walks for Math, Social and Science: Download teacher-made
  trips that have students solve problems as they travel a virtual field trip. The
  placemarks on the trips engage students to apply what they are learning. 
• Google Lit Trips: Map the location of events in a book and plot them on
  Google Earth and share the virtual trip with others.  See GoogleLits.org site to download trips already created by others that include text, images and video
  related to events and details in the books.
• Google Earth Scavenger Hunts: Give students clues to locations and have
  them submit screenshots of their answer/location.

Ed Camps

What is an Ed Camp?

Ed Camps are not ordinary staff development days. They are social, collaborative and differentiated. Instead of attending predetermined sessions with formal presentations, Ed Camp attendees build their own schedule for the day through a collaborative brainstorm and hands-on session.

Once the large group determines what they want to learn about, someone volunteers to be a facilitator for each session, and attendees sign up for sessions they want to attend. The facilitator does not need to be an expert on the topic. He or she just needs to be willing to ask questions and keep the conversation going. Each session becomes a collaborative sharing, brainstorm, discussion session about the designated topic.

Benefits of an Ed Camp

• Topics are generated by the interests of the group.
• Attendees have differentiated choices.
• Attendees are active participants rather than passive receivers.
• Attendees network and make connections with other professionals.
• Best practices and experiences are shared. 

A common statement at an Ed Camp is that "The smartest person in the room is the room." In other words, we all have areas of expertise. Together, we can be amazing, so let's get together, share what we know and learn from each other!

How can I attend an Ed Camp?

There are two great Ed Camp opportunities this summer.

• ISD 728 Ed (Tech) Camp

• DETAILS 
  Wednesday, August 16, 2017 
  8:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. 
  VandenBerge Middle School 
  CEU certificates & 4 On Demand hours awarded to all participants
  
  Deadline to Register: August 1, 2017 

• Mid Minnesota Ed Camp

• DETAILS 
  Wednesday, June 14, 2017 
  9:00 a.m.- 4:20 p.m. 
  Dr. S.G. Knight Elementary, Randall, MN 
  More information available on the Mid Minnesota Ed Camp website
  
  Registration is Free

Using Digital Boards to Give Students Choice

We can build student engagement, support differentiation and provide more authentic
assessments when we offer students opportunities to have voice and choice in their 

learning. Using boards like Bingo and Tic Tac Toe is one way we can provide students 

voice and choice. On these boards, we can offer students a variety of ways to use 

technology to process and demonstrate their learning. Students can pick their path

to complete a line across the board.

Elementary Example

Designed by Stephanie Harding @ Meadowvale
Special thanks to Stephanie for sharing one of her first creations! Great Work!

Secondary Example

Source: https://adjustingcourse.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/connected-bingo.pdf

You and your students do not have to be experts on the tools offered on the 

gameboards. Part of the learning experience can be for students to develop their skills
for self-learning as they learn to use new tools to complete projects that interest them. 

These digital boards provide students the opportunity to develop their technical, 

creativity and problem solving skills.

To learn more, please see this short article: Design Your Own Choice Board by
Catlin Tucker that includes tips and other examples. 

Note: Google and Pinterest are also great places to search for more board templates

and examples. Use keywords like "student choice boards," "digital choice boards," and 

"learning menus."

Drawing Tools: AutoDraw, QuickDraw & Ziteboard

Google has released a couple fun artificial intelligence tools for drawing. Use them yourself or have your students try them out!

AutoDraw
You can use traditional pens and colors to draw pictures on your own, or if you need help drawing, you can use the AutoDraw feature. Simply press the AutoDraw icon, start drawing and thumbnails of professional drawings similar to your sketch will appear. Click on a thumbnail to magically change your sketch into the professional drawing! Add fill color, text, etc. if you wish. Your finished images can be saved or copied.

Quick, Draw

This is more of a game. It's like playing Pictionary with the computer. The computer gives you a word to draw, and you have 20 seconds to draw it well enough for the computer's artificial intelligence to guess what you are drawing. See how well you can do!

If you want to learn more about either of these tools, check out this 5 minute tutorial video.

Ziteboard

This is a Chrome extension that gives you a collaborative drawing board. You can draw, add text, insert images or pdf's and then export your finished work as an image. The board can be shared via email or link to promote collaboration. Add the extension to your Chrome browser!

Create Graphic Organizers with Google Draw

Graphic organizers are a great way for students to see the relationship between the
facts and ideas they are learning, and Google Draw is an easy tool that you and your
students can use to create them.

A team of teachers met last week and quickly designed a nice variety of samples.
Please feel free to copy and tweak these samples to meet your learners' needs.

To learn how to use Draw, here is a short video tutorial.