Tech Lessons for the Week of Sept. 10-14

Happy Monday everyone! I hope everyone had a great weekend!

Along with our great teachers sharing awesome ways to utilize technology in the classroom, I will try to provide some various resources each week as well.

Alice Keeler has a great resource for Google Classroom. This link provides ideas for how to utilize Google Classroom in several ways!!!!👍

This week some teachers used GSuite apps, Screencastify, Kahoot, and Hoopla. Google Slides, Forms, Drawings and Docs were all utilized for different classrooms. Kahoot (a fan favorite for fun assessments!), Hoopla (an ebook site that is accessible with a library card), and Room Sketcher (roomsketcher.com) for designing a room.


Mrs. Rogers uses Google Forms & Slides for "Bell Ringers" in her reading class. She has students fill out a form or has a slide presentation with everyone having access to provide input, thoughts, analysis, etc.

 


Mrs. Swales had her students use Google Drawings to create a template to track text evidence and analysis while reading their novel. This allowed for connections to be made and questions to be answered. This picture is just of one student's template. Students were able to use the many features that Google Drawings has available.
Mrs. Swales also uses Hoopla in her class so students have access to ebooks to read for leisure or accelerated reader points. In order to use Hoopla's site, you must have a local library card to access the ebooks.

Mrs. Brown's math class was completing a Kahoot when I came into her classroom, and they were competitive and having fun at the same time! The Kahoot was a review of that day's lesson. It was really neat to see how they had paper and pencil on the side so they could work the problems out to get the correct answer. To say they were excited to see that they were correct and they were in the top 5 overall points leaders, would be an understatement! 😂😂

 


Mrs. Brooks's choir groups use Screencastify to assist with seeing their performance and breaking down that performance. This picture shows a video replay and students are watching this video to critique themselves to be better for their final performance. 👌

Mrs. Radcliffe's science classes used roomsketcher.com to create a "middle school dorm" room for their "Design a building" unit. Students were able to quite a few things within this site which made the creativity stand-out even more. Here are some student samples of their "middle school dorm".

 



Teachers, thank you for sharing those technology integrated lessons with us! These could very well spark some thoughts into something special for our classrooms and students. I hope all of you have a fantastic week!


Joshua Benjamin
Technology Integrated Specialist
Phone extension: 12918
Email: jhbenjamin@sunmandearborn.k12.in.us
Twitter: @coachjb4 and @sdmsdropzone
"Be the change that you wish to see in others."

Tech Lessons for the Week of Sept. 4-7

Hey all,

I hope everyone is having a great week and day so far! We have some great things going on in our classrooms and sharing what you know and what you do....is wonderful! This provides a "PD" side of things for all of us as well, so keep sending those great ideas to me!


Collages + Chromebooks + Collaboration + Cross-curricular Connections = Great Learning!!!
Mrs. McAdams and Mr. Theising, Art and P.E. teachers at North Dearborn Elementary are currently working on a collaborative project with second graders and searching Google images. Students are working in groups creating large monochromatic collages of fruits & vegetables, researching their healthy benefits, and designing informational posters. Mr. Theising is extending the lesson by discussing the importance of eating a colorful plate of food in addition to staying active.

 



Mr. Durham's, Science - Computer Coding class had a project where groups had to create an app that would be beneficial for people to utilize in the real world. Students had to have several pieces of criteria answered prior to presenting to the class and to the "sharks". Groups used Google Slides to "show off" their hard work and they were impressive. Students used different transitions, themes, fonts, pictures, and animations to create their presentation to "sell" their app to us "sharks".

 



Mr. Dawley gave his science classes the chances to use Google Forms. His students prepared themselves for an assessment by creating "test" questions for each other and turning in their form for an assignment. Within Google Forms, students created different types of questions, included photos and videos, and even used the "Quizzes" settings to apply an answer key and points to questions.

 



Mrs. Rogers used Google Classroom and Google Slides together! She posted an assignment in Google Classroom with a Google Slide template for a lesson on inferences and included videos within that template as well for students to watch on their own pace. She made the template available to copy for each student so students could put in their own comments on their own slides.

 


Thank you to all that have sent in pictures and lesson/project descriptions! Teachers, keep making a positive impact on the future with your students!

Have an amazing week everyone!

Joshua Benjamin
Technology Integrated Specialist
Phone extension: 12918
Email: jhbenjamin@sunmandearborn.k12.in.us
Twitter: @coachjb4 and @sdmsdropzone
"Be the change that you wish to see in others."

Tech Lessons for the Week of Aug 27-31

I hope everyone had a great 3-day weekend!

The best part about this post is there is more variety! We have some different ideas to share that others are utilizing right now!

In the middle school DropZone, we conducted a "Tech Challenge" (using Google Forms Quiz version) that involved some Chromebook questions for students. Any student that got a 100% on the form, was automatically entered into the drawing to the win....THE PRIZE!!! It was a Cross Country shirt! Thanks CC! Once I closed the ability to receive responses, I opened the Google Sheet of responses and sorted by their score. I took those students that received 100%, put them in a new sheet, and they were associated with the cell number (which is on the left side of the sheet). I went to Google and searched "Random Number Generator" and then Google gave me the ability to chose my minimum and maximum numbers (screenshot below). Once those have been chosen, just click "Generate" and there was our winner (again, according to cell number in sheets)!

We all utilize Google Classroom in similar and different ways. Mrs. Beck uses Google Classroom by sending out "Bell Ringers" in her health class (videos, accessing prior knowledge, etc). I took a few pictures of students getting on to Google Classroom to access those "Bell Ringers." A great way to incorporate Google Classroom in an efficient and useful way!

 


The NDES fifth grade is working hard in their weekly computer lab time learning as much about the Google Suite apps as they can! In order to prepare for the 1:1 environment in the middle school, Mrs. Cheek's students are practicing editing documents, effectively organizing their new email accounts and google drives, and becoming more familiar with Google Suite (GSuite). With the help of the fifth grade teachers, Mrs. Cheek is able to use subject material and classroom topics in the computer lab assignments to not only teach the students all they need to know about Google, but also reiterate what is being taught in Language Arts, Social Studies, Math, and Science.

In a photo below, a student is working on editing a Google Doc by following the editing instructions on the original doc and learning how to share and comment on that document. In the other photo, a student is embedding a video on the Pueblo people into a document, and editing that document for better presentation. This is helping them to also learn more about the Pueblo history that they are studying in Mrs. Sopcisak's Social Studies class.

 









Mrs. Ritzi utilized Google Slides (inserting pictures, themes, and videos) for students to create different presentations on "Strategic Searching". Students showed their searched topics and created presentations on how they strategically searched.

 


Mrs. Sohns had her students read a picture book in groups. As they were reading, they had to identify and explain any signposts they noticed as they read. For example, as they were reading, they may have noticed another character (maybe older and wiser) giving the character advice. They then had to explain how that contributed to the plot and theme. Here are some pictures and there is a link of the document they worked with.  Signposts Practice

 

 

Take advantage of sending those pictures and summaries of those tech-filled classrooms!!!! 

Have a great 4-day week everyone!!!

Joshua Benjamin
Technology Integrated Specialist
Phone extension: 12918
Email: jhbenjamin@sunmandearborn.k12.in.us
Twitter: @coachjb4 and @sdmsdropzone
"Be the change that you wish to see in others."