Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

I just noticed some schools are preparing to start their staff Secret Santa. Last year our supervisor organized our departments Secret Santa using https://www.elfster.com/. It was a nice technology twist on something that typically is done, in a very confusing manner, by paper and pencil. The site is free to use and participants sign up, if they are participating, and they can add what they like as far as drinks, snacks, etc. to help out the person they get paired with. The system then randomly pairs people up so you don't have to do it. It is pretty cool and something you might want to pass on to whoever handles your school's Secret Santa sign up. My supervisor has a large extended family and she uses it with them as well. It is very easy to use and would save your organizer man hours as well as help keep the copies down at your school. Have a great holiday season everyone!

If you are looking for a techie way to schedule parent/teacher conferences, instead of sending home slips of paper asking parents to choose a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choice, try using the free site  https://calendly.com/ .  The site (which I only use for this purpose) lets you adjust your time in whatever increments you want, as soon as parent books a spot they get an email confirmation, and then the time slot disappears so other parents can't see it.  I made a 6 minute video (above and linked HERE ) walking you through how to set up an account, create a parent/teacher calendar, what the parent sees and what you see when your times start booking up.  I shared this with our teachers but I thought it might help others as well. 

This week I have been working with several schools as they start putting together their morning news program for the school year. Almost exclusively schools are using Touchcast to produce their morning show. It is super cool free software with lots of templates and green screen capability (plus so much more...really I need to apply to become an ambassador!). The only downfall is that it is an app and software only for Apple devices (most schools have bought an iPad to record their shows...it is that good!). We have one school that just started their morning show and the person in charge (Mr. Blaine Peltier at Robert Smalls International Academy)  has done an OUTSTANDING job. I went in to see how he is doing some of his graphics and learned he has been doing them on his personal Mac at home (which, sadly, I do not have). My favorite effect on his video is the Pledge of Allegiance where he has a two video overlays with words scrolling on the screen. I was determined to fi...

The Planetary Society has partnered with the U.S. National Park Service to create an Junior Ranger Eclipse Explorer activity book. You can download the PDF for free of the book. It is pretty colorful so you may want to print it in black and white. If you have classes tomorrow (Monday, August 21st) you might want to consider that as an activity for the day. Parents can then take their child to the nearest National Park to get their badge for completing the activities in the book. Definitely call ahead though to make sure they have badges. The program is only offered at NATIONAL parks not STATE ones (I called our State Park without thinking but they pointed me in the right direction). Happy Eclipse!

Here in South Carolina we will be in the path of a full eclipse on Monday, August 21st. Many schools in the state have pushed their start date for students to Tuesday, August 22nd, as the eclipse is due to occur at dismissal time for many of the schools and their is concern about walk/biking home in the dark as well as curious students looking directly at the sun. In our district students will be going back-to-school two days earlier (17th/18th) with the 21st off for teacher PD. Our district science coordinator has arranged for free solar eclipse classes to be given to all students K-12 and has put together resources for teachers to use during lesson planning. Just about every grade level will get a lesson on what an eclipse is and how it occurs, as well as general safety tips. With that said, I have been on the look out for science resources related to the eclipse as well. Today one from Mystery Science came up on my Twitter feed. Mystery Science is a subscription based s...

Our district just purchased a subscription to Flocabulary this school year. Flocabulary is a website that creates educational rap and material for teachers to use in the classroom across a variety of subject areas. I jumped on the Ambassador band wagon this year and signed up to be an Ambassador with Flocabulary (along with Discovery Education ,  ClassFlow and Seesaw ...all sites and companies I use and love in the classroom). This is me sporting my Flocabulary Ambassador shirt :) I love Flocabulary...and so do our students...it's rap...what's not to love! Sadly it is subscription based and I try not to promote anything too subscription based on my blog because I know most of my readers have no control over budgets. However, I feel there is a slight loop hole. As an Ambassador we are given a 45 day free trial code we can share with teachers at conferences when presenting. I asked if I could share with blog readers and I was given the thumbs up.  The 45 d...

I have been working as a ClassFlow Ambassador over the past year and I have really enjoyed how much it has pushed me to find ways to incorporate ClassFlow in the classroom in different ways. We have so many teachers using it now and it has quickly become my "go to" resource for delivering interactive content to students. One of my requirements as an Ambassador is to write a monthly blog post for their ClassFlow Blog  (they have a bunch of teacher Ambassadors from across grade levels and disciplines who also write articles...and I find them super helpful). In this month's blog post I wrote about ways you can survive testing season. I tried to put in some useful tips, tricks, and links that I used in the classroom when I hit testing season (for us in SC we have five days spread over two weeks). To make it fun I used the words in R.E.L.A.X and C.H.I.L.L to highlight ten ideas worth considering. How do you relax and chill during testing season?