The End is Near!

I hope you all have plans for some amazing sleep, rest and relaxation in the coming weeks!  You have certainly earned it!  

No one quite understands the toll that this time of year takes on a teacher better than other teachers.  

Once you have completed a little recovery therapy and you find yourself thinking about the coming year again, may I make a suggestion to get your year off to a great start?

Do you collect student information at the beginning of the year? Do you have sign-ups for class parties or supplies? Would you like to have an online method to have parents sign up for conferences? Would you like to have Reading Logs submitted online? How about a method to quickly administer a formative assessment or exit ticket? Want to survey your students on various topics? Would you like a quick and efficient way to crowdsource information to use in your lessons?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, Google Forms just might be your dream come true! Here is a great collection of other possible uses of Google Forms in the classroom.  

So I'm sure you are thinking to yourself right now "Dawn, this sound great!  How do I get started with this?"

Well it all begins with learning more about Google Drive.  Keep an eye out for a couple of summer training dates through Eventbrite.  

If you are already familiar with Google Drive and you find yourself unable to attend the summer trainings because you are stuck in Fiji with nothing to do or bored in Barcelona,  you can access training online at the following site:  Google Forms Training

More trainings will also be offered throughout the next school year as well.

Enjoy your summer!!

Guest Blogger Issue - CUE Conference

CUE (Computer Using Educators) recently held their annual conference.  Several VUSD teachers attended the event.  Monica Buescher, from Buckingham High School, attended and was inspired, motivated and excited to incorporate what she learned into her classroom. In this issue of the Digital Cafe, Monica is sharing what she learned in one of her sessions.  

Kahoot is a highly-customizable website where you can make quizzes to review any topic with your class. It requires a smartphone, tablet, or computer with an internet connection for each student. Students don’t need accounts -- they just log into the website, put the game code and their name in, and are ready to go! Their devices work as personal “clickers” to answer multiple-choice questions posted on the screen. There’s a time limit for each question, and students receive points for answering quickly and accurately. Overall, it’s a fast-paced, engaging, colorful, and musical way to make the learning fun.

Kahoot is a wonderfully versatile tool for students of all ages and grades. At first glance, it seems to target elementary school students, yet high schoolers find it just as exciting and engaging. It’s great for formative assessments in the shapes of quick, fun reviews. Not only that, but it adds an edge of competition by ranking students by how quickly they answer correctly, which makes it more of a game than a tedious review session.

Teachers can create their own quizzes for highly specific and customized content, or they can search through the thousands of public Kahoots to find one to suit their needs. They can include pictures or videos specific to each question, can have multiple correct answers, and provide constant feedback on every single question. Teachers and students instantly see the correct answer as well as how many people chose each answer choice, which can allow for immediate re-teaching if needed. For the data nerds out there, at the end of each session, a spreadsheet of results is available to download; it contains a list of each student participant, his or her answers to each question, and color-coded questions and answers to easily identify struggling students or particularly challenging questions.

Kahoots can also be used as “brain breaks” -- there are some “Most Played” public quizzes that are full of fun trivia, including pop culture knowledge, Disney character identification, logo identification, and other random topics. So, whether used for learning or laughter, Kahoot is a versatile, engaging tool worth adding to any teacher’s arsenal.

Digital Learning Day and Pi Day in the Same Week!

This Friday the 13th is Digital Learning Day!

What happens on Digital Learning Day?  Hopefully a whole lot of Digital Learning!  Check out this Great Website that is tracking and listing different Digital activities being taught across the world.  You can browse other teachers' activities to get some ideas for your class, or add your own awesome activity for others to browse.  The goal is to get teachers and students online and learning!

I have my own personal favorite online sources of course.

Open Ed has always been a favorite source of mine.  They have the world's largest collection of videos aligned to the Common Core and other standards.  Many of these videos are also matched with assessments to measure student mastery.  Check it out and perhaps set something up for this Friday.

PBS Learning Media is another incredible source of lessons, activities, interactives, and videos.  Think your Kindergarteners are too young for Digital Learning?  Check out the site link for a direct link to a Kindergartener Digital Lesson Model.  Click the "Browse by Option" button to find lessons and resources directly related to your grade or subject area.


Saturday the 14th is Pi Day!

Pi Day is not just a celebration of that never ending set of digits, but a celebration of Math in general.  This year's Pi Day is especially epic in that the date, 3/14/15, represents the exact first 5 digits of Pi!  Oh my!

The NEA has put together some activities for teachers who would like to build some excitement and interest in this Mathematical Phenomena.  Check it out here.

National Pi Day.org also has some great resources, videos and activities related to Pi.

My Top Ten Edtech Sites for 2014

2014 was a great year for educational technology.  There was something for everyone!  In this episode, I'm going to highlight ten of the Top EdTech sites for 2014.  Perhaps you can give one or two a try in 2015.

10.  SciShow & Veritasium YouTube Channels

• These YouTube channels offer short, and engaging science videos on various topics.  My students LOVED these videos.  Full of information and presented in an entertaining format.  Just a note however, you MUST view the videos first as some content is not appropriate for schools.

9.  KidBlog

• This is a great place for students to write their thoughts, book reports, etc and share their work with their classmates as well as their teacher. No email address is required.  Geared more toward the elementary and middle school student.

8. Smithsonian Education

• Education resources and information, lesson plans, field trips, and interactive activities based on Smithsonian museum collections and research.

7. Storybird

• Storybird lets anyone make visual stories in seconds.  They curate artwork from illustrators and animators from around the world.  Aspiring writers of any age turn those images into fresh stories.

6. Hstry

• Create interactive timelines that include images, videos, text, audio and quizzes.  Create your own timelines or choose from the library of timelines available.

5. OpenEd

• OpenEd is the largest K-12 education resource library, offering over one million free assessment, homework assignment, videos, games and lesson plans for every Common Core Math, Language Arts, Literacy and Next Generation Science standard.

4. Educanon

• EduCanon is an online learning environment to build and share interactive video lessons.  Teachers begin with any YouTube, Vimeo, or TeacherTube video content (screencast, Khan Academy, Minute Physics, TED, NOVA, etc.) and transform what is traditionally passive content into an active experience for students.  By time-linking activities that students engage with as the video progresses the content is segmented into digestible components.

3. Learn Zillion

• Learn Zillion offers a free and growing set of Math and ELA resources and presentations for grades 2 -12 that have been developed by expert teaches directly from the CCSS.  More than 1,300 teachers and administrators submitted nomination and LearnZillion made the short list of products and services that have proven to be effective in the classroom.

2. Khan Academy

• What doesn't Khan Academy do?  They offer practice exercises, videos, and a personalized dashboard for students to learn at their own pace.  Subjects include math, science, computer programming, history, art history, economics, physics and more.  They have also partnered with NASA, The Museum of Modern Art, The California Academy of Sciences, and MIT to offer specialized content.

1. PBS Learning Media

• This is my new favorite site!  PBS LearningMedia is your destination for direct access to thousand of classroom-ready, curriculum-targeted digital resources.  PBS LearningMedia builds on the strength of public media and is designed to improve teacher effectiveness and student achievement.  Resources are aligned to CCSS and include videos and interactives, audio, documents, and in-depth lesson plans.  You can also "favorite" and "share" resources with your class and colleagues.  The Basic service is free for PreK-12 educators.

Do you have your own favorite Edtech sites?  Feel free to share in the comments below.

"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" - P. Steiner

We live in an incredible age of technology and information.  The Internet is a wonderful resource that provides a wealth of information, however, just about anyone can post to the web and for the most part, the information posted is unregulated and unmonitored.  Students must learn how to identify valid sources and eliminate questionable ones. I am including a couple of resources this month that I hope will be helpful to you and your students.

First of all, I would like to include the following link to a very nice outline from UC Berkeley that helps students identify proper and trustworthy sources.  The full tutorial can be found here. In Brief, this tutorial outlines the five most important components in identifying reliable sources.

1.  What can the URL tell you?

• Is it someone's personal page?
• What type of domain does it come from and what are the differences?
• Is it published by an entity that makes sense? Have you heard of them before

2.  Scan the perimeter of the page looking for answers to these questions.

• Who wrote the page?
• Is the page dated? Is is current enough?
• What are the author's credentials on the subject

3.  Look for indicators of quality information.

• Are sources documented with footnotes or links?
• If reproduced information (from another source) is it complete, not altered, not fake or forged?
• Are there links to other resources on the topic?

4.  What do others say?

• Who links to the page?
• Is the page listed in one or more reputable directories or pages?
• What do others say about the author or responsible authoring body?

5.  Does it all add up?

• Why was the page put on the web?
• Might it be ironic, satire or parody?
• Is this as credible and useful as the resources (books,journal aritcles, etc) available in print or online through the library?

Let Me Google That For You

Google Search also provides some helpful tools to find quality and current information.  When conducting a Google Search - notice the "Search Tools" options that can be found above your search results.  Click on this option to narrow down your results by recently published and reading level.

Many students look for images to include in their research or reports to add visual appeal and impact. Google also provides special tools when doing an image search. It is extremely important that our students understand and respect the usage rights of images found online.   The "Search Tools" option appears again when searching for images but this time you can filter by size, color, type, time, and usage rights.

Google Advanced allows you to narrow your search by specific words, region, recently published, file type and usage rights.  Looking only for Powerpoints or PDFs?  Google Advanced will narrow your results for you.

Many of our students use the classroom computer for searches.  You can set your Google Search to a SafeSearch setting by going to the Search Settings and check the box for "Filter Explicit Results" and then click on the blue "Lock Safe Search" and remember to click Save at the bottom of the page.

Finally, here's a little cheat sheet with 20 Tips to Using Google Search. The more you know, the more efficiently you can search!

Science Edition!

Never Trust an Atom - They Make up Everything!

A New Year - A New Format                              

Several teachers have requested that the information and resources that I share in Digital Cafe be available for retrieval at later, more convenient times.  For this reason, I've decided to give the blog a try. It has an archive feature on the right where you can access older posts (Once there actually are older posts). I would also like this to be a place that teachers can use as an interactive tool.  If you know of additional or helpful information, please feel free to share in the comments below. 

This month's Digital Cafe is dedicated to Science!  Who doesn't love to learn the reasons behind the many mysteries of the universe?  Well, unfortunately, studies show that far too many of our students do not enjoy science.  This is especially true for girls. Let's change this!

There are many online resources that educators can utilize to make science more engaging and approachable for all students. Here are just a few. Please share your favorites in the comments below.  


Elementary Level:
Free Science Powerpoint Presentations - This is a site to access presentations of just about any Science topic you can think of.  Browse the collection to find just what you need. 

UEN (Utah Education Network) has put together an impressive collection of resources for grades 3-6 on a variety of topics.  These are interactive activities which engage the learner.

Secondary Level:

Scitable currently concentrates on genetics and cell biology. Scitable has a free science library to browse and explore

The Chemcollective is a collection of virtual labs, scenario-based learning activites, tutorials, and concept tests.

Edheads is an organization that provides engaging web simulations and activities for kids. Current activities focus on simulated surgical procedures, cell phone design (with market research), simple and compound machines, and weather prediction.

Just for fun, Symphony of Science  is a site where scientists become Rock Stars!  By remixing ordinary science lectures and documentaries with uplifting and exciting music, the series puts a new spin on science, appealing to students, teachers, and laymen.

I hope you have found something to peak your interest.  Remember to share your favorites in the comment section below.