Get Organized with Google Keep

Google Keep

If you find yourself writing everything on sticky notes or some random piece of paper only to lose it in the next few minutes, you need to try something new! Google Keep is an amazing tool that provides an easy way for you to keep notes, lists, reminders, and more. The best part is they will never be lost or "misplaced"! Get Google Keep on your smartphone, tablet, and computer. Your information is synced on all of your devices.

Key Features...

• Never lose anything
• Organize your notes by adding a color and labels to your notes (these will help you easily identify different categories within your notes such as, grocery lists, to-do list, meeting notes, how-to's, etc.)
• Share your notes with others- they can add things to the notes too!
• Save images in your notes
• Copy any note to a Google Doc for further editing 
• When making a list, add check boxes so you can check off things as you go
• Create notes using your voice (smartphone app)
• Easily search your notes by label, color, audio, list, image, shared, or reminder
• Jump to a particular label to see all notes with that label
• Works seamlessly with GAFE (Google Apps for Education)

Find out more about Google Keep and try it out for yourself! MEET GOOGLE KEEP

Teaching Tips

Many teachers are beginning to use google keep with their students. Use it for guided notes, a virtual notes binder (use colors and labels to categorize and organize different topics and subject areas). Students can access important information from class, anywhere on any device, no more missing notebooks or lost sheets of paper!

NEWSELA- Keep your students current and connected to our world

We provide our students with opportunities to read various genres and text all the time. Many teachers, of all grade levels, like to have their students connect with the world through current events. Whether that be through CNN Student news, National Geographic for Kids, or PBS LearningMedia, sharing news about our world is important to our students growth. Although, there has been a slight problem with students reading some current event articles; most of the time the articles are not on the appropriate reading level, or teachers may want to add notes or highlight certain areas of the article that they want students to pay close attention to. NEWSELA is here to help!

NEWSELA is a website that teachers can use to access over 1,000's of current event articles in all subject areas to use with students grades 2-12! Some of the best features are that all articles can be searched by subject area, grade level, and/or standard. Teachers can select the article, students select the correct Lexile level, teachers add notes to specific parts of the article that need to be a focus for the students, and add an a short quiz to check for understanding and completion. The NEWSELA binder makes it easy for teachers to assign articles to their classes with due dates, check student progress, and export the results of the quiz to an excel spreadsheet. Be sure to add articles to your favorites by clicking the heart next to any article title. This will allow for easy access to articles you want to assign later. Also, take a look at the "text sets" created by NEWSELA. These are collections of articles on a specific topic. If current events is a part of your classroom routine, you need more nonfiction reads, or more options for close reading, NEWSELA is an excellent resource for you!

Get Acquainted 

Get Inspired To Do More With What You Read

Get Your Students Started

Enhancing Lessons with Google My Maps

Google My Maps allows the user to create and share their own custom maps using any area of the globe. It is integrated with Google Drive so you are able to easily create and share your maps. You can search for places and add pins on your map, outline a specific area on your map with the drawing tool, create icons and labels for your maps, and create layers to show different groups or areas of your map. This is a great tool to explore, it can be used with elementary students through adults and with any subject area!

Language arts students can track the route of a character from a novel and add significant places along the way with a description or thoughts on what makes that place significant. Students can explore some of the details from the story and adding them as pins, images, or video. Social Studies or History classes can create a map of a historical event or persons travels. Science classes can explore the many different land forms of the world, or track the spread of a disease to find reason for increased disease in particular areas, map the different biomes of the world or a particular area. Students can add details and images of life found in each biome. Math students can map the area of real locations to find the area or perimeter, they could map and solve geometry problems. The possibilities are endless. There are so many ways Google My Maps can enhance a lesson, bring in real world connections, and promote problem solving. Try it out today and see what ideas you can create for your students or what ideas they can create!

Help Me Find Google My Maps!

In your Google Drive, choose new and scroll to more

Select Google My Maps 

Creating Lessons with Google My Maps

Click on the image above for great tips and tutorials for creating lessons using Google My Maps. 

Thinglink- Make your pictures worth 1,000 words

Make pictures interactive with Thinglink! Students can use thinklink for any area as a way to present and share information. Find a meaningful image and begin to add tags, which are links to more information, videos, etc.) that open right on your image. This can be a great alternative to an old slide presentation! Student can use map images of historic places to bring an explorors journey to life! Or dive deep into the depths of the ocean and explore the layers of the ocean! The options are endless!

Thinglink 

See some examples below...

Get Moving with GoNoodle!

GoNoodle is a free site that gives you and your students the opportunity to take a much needed brain break! Give your students physical activities like stretching, yoga, and dance to help them focus. Activities are short, easy, and effective. Join the 68,000 schools and 10 million students who are taking time to get refocused with GoNoodle brain breaks.

Click Here To Learn More...

Noisli

I came across Noisli and I thought it could be a really helpful tool for students and teachers. Noisli is a web application that allows you to play various white-noise or background sounds to help your productivity, focus, and stress level. Our school, as many others, has a silent reading time that all students participate in. I have been around the school visiting classrooms during this time and it is DEAD silent! Some students may have a harder time focusing without any sound at all because the silence allows their mind to wonder. Noisli could be a great way to break the silence. Teachers can also use Noisli for the whole class while working on an activity or have students use headphones to select their own sounds. Noisli is a free tool that requires no log in. However, if you do log in using your Google account, Facebook, or email you will have a few more options such as saving your favorite sound mix to a favorites tab and more. To learn more about Noisli check out the video below and visit their site. There is also a Google Extension available in the Chrome Web Store and an iOS app!

Flocabulary

Flocabulary is a web tool that allows your K-12 students access to engaging educational hip-hop videos. Each video is accompanied by interactive activities, and assessments. You can search by grade level, topic, or subject area and each video can be aligned to Common Core Standards. I love that the videos are relevant to today's students and the music is well written and catchy! Even if the kids pretend that they are too cool to sing or listen to an educational hip-hop song they will still remember it because it's so catchy! The interactive lyrics that they offer can be used to create an active listening experience for students. There are also links within the lyrics document that students can click on to learn more about a particular item within the song. The only drawback to Flocabulary is that it is a paid site. An individual teacher can purchase an account for $96.00/year. A 14 day free trial is offered to individual teachers to try it out. There is also an option for school accounts. A school account is $1600/year and there is a 60 day free trial that is offered for schools. Although, this tool is not free, it is still a very valuable and relevant resource that can engage and spark interest in learning for your students.

Schoology

Schoology (skoo.luh.jee) is the worlds leading learning management system (LMS). So what is a leaning management system? An LMS is a software application or web-based tool that is used to plan, implement, teach, and assess a specific topic. Many schools and classrooms that are turning toward blended and flipped classroom models are using a LMS to help manage the course. Schoology is one of the most user friendly and connected learning management systems.

Some of the Features...

• Seamlessly access your documents from Google Drive as a teacher or student
• Enhance your lessons and assignments with YouTube, Khan Academy, and more.
• Create or upload assessments and administer them all from within Schoology.
• View data and feedback from test/quiz results. 
• Comment on student work
• Create class discussions
• Post course updates
• Create and manage a grade-book
• Use the Calendar to manage upcoming assignments and due dates
• Align assignments to Common Core Standards
• Connect with peers

Blended and Flipped Classroom Models

As technology and web tools are being used more and more in classrooms today, so are new ways of instructing. Blended and Flipped learning environments are on the rise and for good reason. The blended learning model allows students to work in a classroom with a teacher in the traditional sense, as well as use computer software, LMS (learning management system), and web tools to personalize learning and work at their own pace. Using the flipped classroom model, students are able to spend class time engaging in meaningful activities because the content was obtained outside of class-time. The teacher is still teaching, using class-time to apply and practice learning. To learn more about blended and flipped classroom models, click here.

Blended Classroom

Flipped Classroom

PBS LearningMedia

PBS LearningMedia is versatile resource for anyone in education. PBS LearningMedia offers access to thousands of digital media resources that are aligned to Common Core and National Standards, engaging, innovative, and free! There are interactive activities, lesson plans, images, videos and more. PBS LearningMedia has a collection of productivity tools that include a Lesson Builder, Storyboard, and Quiz Maker to help personalize lessons for your students. This can be a valuable tool for self-paced learning, and flipped/blended classroom models. The site also offers Professional Development for teachers in the form of webinars, training, and in-person events geared toward supporting 21st century instruction. It is a great way to connect with other professionals, educators, and instructional technology specialist. Join the PBS LearningMedia Community today!

Welcome to PBS LearningMedia. 

Here is a quick guide to get you started.

Edpuzzle- Interactive video lessons

Videos are an excellent way to introduce a new concept, engage students, reteach information, or use with a flipped or blended classroom. With Edpuzzle, teachers can take already existing videos from the web or your own, and use them to create interactive lessons with voice and questions right in the video. Sometimes students can lose interest in a video or get distracted, you can use Edpuzzle to shorten videos to just the right length you need for your students. This web tool allows the teacher to see if students have watched the assigned video and how many times they watched it. Edpuzzle also shows student responses to your questions from the video. Now when you use a video with your classes, you can be sure that students are more likely to be engaged and accountable.

Getting started is easy and free!
Simply go to https://edpuzzle.com/  and create an account. You can log in using your Google or Edmodo account or create a new username and password to access the site.


Check out how Edpuzzle works:

Symbaloo- book marking in the cloud

As educators, we are always searching for the best resources to use in our classrooms and share with our students. Symbaloo is a cloud based bookmarking tool that allows you to create and organize what they call a web-mix that contains visual links to all of your favorite sites. You can create a web-mix for anything! It is easy to use and accessible. Simply log in using your Google account or create a username and password, and begin adding your favorite sites. Symbaloo even offers a Google Chrome extension that allows you to save sites to your Symbaloo web-mix as you are browsing the web for content.

Teaching Ideas

• Use Symbaloo to organize resources for a research project
• Create a webmix for students to use with a lesson and share it on your website or blog  

Guides and How To's

Quill- Interactive Writing Lessons

Quill is an excellent resource for teachers to help middle and high school students of all levels improve their writing skills. All of the activities are aligned to the Common Core Standards and it's free!

• Quill Proofreader- gives students passages with grammatical errors that need to be corrected.
• Quill Grammar- teaches grammatical concepts using sentence writing
• Quill Writer- two students take turns writing a passage together from a shared list of words. 
• Quill Sentence Shuffle- Students arrange sentences in the correct order (Spring 2016). 

Learn More...

1. How to sign up
2. Creating your classes
3. Assigning activities
4. Viewing results