Post#16 - • Evernote • EMaze

App of the Week - Evernote  - Your students should be using Evernote

Evernote is the modern workspace that helps you be your most productive self. You’re on the path to something big — Evernote is where you do the work to achieve it.

- Write notes of all types, from short lists to lengthy research, and access them on any device.
- Collect web articles, handwritten notes, and photos to keep all the details in one place. 
- Find your work quickly with Evernote’s powerful search.
- Present your work as it takes shape for better collaboration in meetings. 

Move projects forward with Evernote:

- Take notes: write in a clean, distraction-free workspace.
- Get organized: create notebooks and add tags to wrangle projects.
- Access anywhere: keep your work in sync across devices.
- Find anything fast: text in notes, photos, and PDFs is searchable.
- Share ideas and resources: create a workspace for collaboration with shared notebooks.
- Keep up with to-do’s: make to-do lists and check items off as you go.
- Harness creativity: capture ideas while they’re fresh, wherever you are.
- Prepare for meetings: draft agendas and to-do’s for next time.
- Manage expenses: organize receipts, bills, and invoices to keep expense reports in check.
- Plan business travel: save reservations and tickets for simple trip planning.
- Make connections: turn business cards into rich digital contacts. 

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Web Resource of the Week - EMaze (Powerful presentation software that includes 3D ability)
Emaze is a Free on-line presentation tool with 1,000's of templates.  It is the next generation of online presentation software. Simply select any of our professionally designed free presentation templates to easily create an amazing visual experience for your audience. emaze features a proprietary state of the art HTML5 presentation maker that will create the slideshows, video presentations and even 3D presentations that you always dreamed of.
http://www.emaze.com/?emazehome

Post #14 Happy Holidays!!! • News O Matic • Blubr • Quozio

Happy Holidays!  Here are 3 "huge" recommendations for your holiday leisure time that you can subscribe to and brush up on so you will be ready to go in January.  

App of the week:  Newsomatic - Grade levels 1-2, 3-4, 5 & more.  

• Remember Newsela - what a great web resource for grades 4 & up.  Great non-fictional current media articles that are lexile rated and have assessments associated with them.  Well here's another great way to reach kids with a different twist.  

News-O-Matic is the daily newspaper for kids on iOs and Android, an exciting and engaging nonfiction experience, and a fantastic modern educational tool. It gives young readers a window into the world — and a reason to love reading news for kids. Whether the stories are about India’s election, the World Cup, or the moons of Saturn, they provide students opportunities to make connections in meaningful ways and inspire children every day.
Students can react to the news, either by writing or drawing; their words and art may reach their peers around the world.

• Kids vote for their favorite articles.
• Students talk to astronauts, athletes, congressmen, and artists: They are the ones who come up with questions during interviews! 
• Interactive maps that locate the story relative to the student – with integrated geography and math facts
• In-app audio playback of complete articles via a Read-to-Me function
• Definitions and pronunciation support for difficult words
• Games that relate to the news of the day
• Translations to Spanish – with Spanish language audio – at the tap of a button
• Classrooms can pick the news and design a News-O-Matic edition through the Junior Editor-In-Chief program!
• Daily Teacher’s Guide available, with lesson plans and additional resources for the classroom

Web Resource#1 - Blubbr
Blubbr - A interactive assessment tool that allows you to create multiple choice questions based on short video clips.
Using Blubbr you can create interactive quizzes that are based on YouTube clips. Your quizzes can be about anything of your choosing. The structure of the quizzes has a viewer watch a short clip then answer a multiple choice question about the clip. Viewers know right away if they chose the correct answer or not.

Web Resource#2
Quozio - Allows you to make your own quotes.

What is Quozio?

Quozio turns meaningful words into beautiful images in seconds. Then share 'em on Facebook, Pinterest, email and more!

How do I use Quozio?

Just visit quozio.com and fill in your quote. Or, even faster, get the bookmarklet which lets you instantly create an image out of any text you highlight on a web page.

After you provide your quote, scroll through the various styles and find the one that best matches it. Then the best part - share with your friends!

Here's a sample:

Post #13 Adobe Voice • Buzz Monster • Factual Research "All About Explorers"

Adobe Voice in Action!
I was privileged this week to see seniors in Cloudcroft this week using Adobe Voice deliver amazing presentations from their iPads thru the Apple TV using adobe voice regarding the Judicial Branch of government.  Congratulations Mrs. Kelly Goss for your innovative work with technology in our schools.

10 Seniors & Mrs. Goss displaying their Adobe Voice presentations on their ipads

App of the week - Buzz Monster

Are you a teacher looking to promote good fun academic competition in your classroom? Now you can create your own Jeopardy style games and share them from 1-to-many iPads with Buzz Monster, an outrageously fun quiz game for 2-3 players.

Buzz Monster is a multiplayer game that allows up to 3 students to learn with a single iPad. When a game begins players take it turn picking questions from the various categories available. After the question is shown, the first player to “Buzz in” has the opportunity to answer the question. Points are awarded for correct answers, and if a player gets 4-in-a-row on the game board they can earn bonus points.

Play continues until all tiles on the board have been attempted and at the end of the game the player with the most points is declared as the winner.

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Here is a Web Resource You should be using.

All about Explorers

Since this site was developed as a teaching tool for educating students about how to search better on the Internet (see About This Site for more details), we have published on this page a list of the lessons, handouts, and other tools that we have used with our own students.

We encourage you to send us your own ideas. If you have created other lessons using our site, or you have suggestions or comments to make about the plans and materials included here, we would love to hear from you. Write to us atteachers@allaboutexplorers.com.

One note about the Treasure Hunts we have included here. On the main page you will see a list of links to the individual hunt pages. These are differentiated so that you may assign different hunts to students with different ability levels. Next to each is a colored dot which indicates the level of challenge:

	Basic level	These hunts contain fact-oriented questions. The answers are relatively easy to locate on the page.
	Moderate level	These hunts contain fact-oriented questions which will take some additional searching or deeper reading to answer.
	Advanced level	Advanced hunts are more challenging and may require students to use inference and logic to determine answers.

Post #12 • Kahoot • Ed Tech Understanding Trends in Technology

Have you ever had a Kahoot?
This weeks "app" is Kahoot 
Its really not an "app".  Its a Free Student Assessment tool that you should try.  It is web based, quick and easy to setup and use.  Go to https://getkahoot.com/ set up your free account.  compatible with any mobile device or computer with web access it allows you a ton of flexibility.

Create, manage and share questions

• Using our simple and speedy ‘drag n drop’ creation tool, create and manage ‘Kahoots’ in the form of quizzes, surveys or polls related to specific topics; either asking quick questions ‘on the go’ to get feedback or opinion, or more in depth questions for formative assessment. Content can be shared with educators, learners or colleagues globally.

• Answer questions through a powerful classroom engagement tool

  
  
  Launch Kahoots on the screen at the front of the room, and learners join through their personal devices. In real-time and with gaming elements to increase engagement and motivation, learners answer questions through their personal devices. Educators get an overview of the current knowledge levels of everyone in the room for formative assessment, and can adapt their teaching accordingly.

• Educators challenge learners to ask their own questions

  
  
  Either collaboratively or individually, and motivated to gain a deeper knowledge of specific topics, learners are challenged to create their own Kahoots in the form of quizzes. Through their personal device, learners think up and answer their own questions through thorough research and the collation and/or self creation of imagery and video. Their learning is reinforced by thinking up potential wrong answers to questions, as well as the right ones.

• Learners become leaders by asking their questions back

  
  
  Learners share their new found knowledge by playing their Kahoot back to other learners. Educators assess the quality of questions they are asking, whilst the other learners answer the questions through the powerful classroom engagement tool.

Web Resource this week is a cheat sheet of terminology & definitions that you may be hearing in your profession.

• Cheat Sheet

Post #11 Happy Veterans Day! • Re-Visit Adobe Voice • Digital Citizenship

I had the good fortune to be in Capitan today and attended the Veterans Day celebration the school put on for Veterans.  We were treated to a great "Capitan Tigers" Band, an equally as great "Capitan Choir" - High School, Middle School and Elementary School as well.  Later during the day I was in several classrooms and saw continued learning occurring, students still exploring Veterans Day issues.  This is a picture showing a whole school of support.

This weeks App of the week is one we featured before but they have added new features and it's worth a second look.  If you haven't tried it, now is the time!  Hurry while it's still free.

Adobe Voice

Back in May Adobe launched a free iPad app calledAdobe Voice. Adobe Voice allows you to record your voice, import pictures, and write text to create a short video. The latest update to the app allows you to customize the background colors in your story’s theme. In addition to background colors you can also customize font colors and the colors of stock icons in the app.

To create a story with Adobe Voice you start by select a story template (you can change templates at any time). After choosing a template you construct your story by recording your narration for a frame then adding an image or text to the frame. You can import your own image, take a picture, or select one of the stock images provided by Adobe Voice. To find a stock image or icon you simply enter a search word and then select from the search results. In that regard it is similar to Haiku Deck’s image search tool. If you decide to add text to a frame, the text will automatically resize as you type. Music is automatically added to the background of your narrated Adobe Voice story. You can change the music by tapping the edit option and selecting a different track.

Web Site of the week - Also ties back into your mobile device to allow digital reading.  This is from Commonsense Media.  It is a free book by grade level for digital citizenship.  You could easily add this into your daily routine and create a semester long training with your students on appropriate use with technology.

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/educators/blog/announcing-our-free-ibooks-textbooks

I'd love to hear about your technology use in your classroom, just comment to the blog and we'll figure out a nice way to share your experience with others.

Post #10 • Tiny PDF • Socrative

After a 2 week break we're back with more good technology stuff.  During the break,  I was very impressed with a lot of classroom activity from Corona to Cloudcroft and schools in-between.  I see one of the blog apps "newsela" being used in multiple grade levels.  My respect to those of you that have adopted that technology and are using it.

I've had a few inquiries about using iPads to cut down on the paper materials that are being generated and wanting to know if I knew of an App or a way to to take a scanned image that is a PDF file and distribute that to students, then allow them to interact with the file.  Mark it up, type on it, draw on it, then allow students to turn around and share that back to the teacher.

App of the Week:
This week is a FREE --  APP  called :   TinyPDF
Connects to google drive (yay!)
Connects to Dropbox (yay!)

1. Take any document you'd like to share with your students and scan it to a pdf file.
2. Up-load that file to a google drive account - or drop box / Google Drive is your easiest option.
3. Share that file with your students through Google Drive or your Google Classroom and give your students the ability to edit that document.
4. Associate TinyPDF to the google drive account you shared the document with.
5. Give students instructions to markup and type on the document as you want.
6. There is a signature option that you can have your students apply so they can sign their work.

If you'd like more information on how to get started implementing please let me know.  You can reply by commenting on the blog or send me an email.

Web resource of the week:  http://socrative.com/
Socrative is another FREE - teacher web resource -- One of those, ???HUH,, you're not using this! Its a technological way of assessing your students that will have them asking you for more.
Quick.. go sign up now! get your classes started.
Socrative lets teachers engage and assess their students with educational activities on tablets, laptops and smartphones. Through the use of real time questioning, instant result aggregation and visualization, teachers can gauge the whole class’ current level of understanding. Socrative saves teachers time so the class can further collaborate, discuss, extend and grow as a community of learners.

Post #9 STARS • Common Core • Word Salad

I had the pleasure this last week to work with 4 great school assets that work with 4 of our Region IX Schools as STARS Coordinators!  They invited me to come work with them to share some technology tips on working smarter.  We followed an outline based on saving at least 1,000 mouse clicks over the next year.  Topics included were:  using the application switcher on PC or Mac, using highlight duplicates in Excel, use of sorting & subtotaling and count functions in Excel, then we moved on to fun things in email like accessing themes, using signatures & right sided chat.

My utmost respect goes out to these ladies for the job they do for their schools with highly important task.

1. Karen Seely - Corona STARS Coordinator (1 of many hats she wears)
2. Teresa Woodard - Capitan STARS Coordinator (1 of many hats she wears)
3. Kathy Saenz - Hondo STARS Coordinator (1 of many hats she wears)
4. Kathy Weinman - Ruidoso STARS Coordinator (1 of many hats she wears)

This weeks app of the week is very timely with Common Core on everyones mind these days:
Common Core Quest currently contains activities for every middle school and high school Common Core math and language arts standard. Coverage of elementary school standards is being added (currently about half of the standards are included). A student can invite his or her teacher to view the progress that he or she is making toward each goal in Common Core Quest. Students can invite teacher either by email or by class code if the teacher has created a class account on OpenEd.io.

Web Site of the week is a follow up from last week and Word Salad.   I had a lot of inquiries about Word Salad last week and if I knew of a alternative for people that didn't have an iPad.  This is a good free web based alternative: Wordle which can be accessed at http://www.wordle.net/

Here's a simple word salad to get you motivated. 

Post your comments or share you ideas - I'd love to share them as we move forward.

Post #8 - Academic Language

NM Teach places emphasis in Domain 1 element B states: The sequence of learning experiences is aligned to NM adopted standards, instructional learning targets and is differentiated by scaffolding content and academic language for diverse learners.
and again in element 1E: Teacher demonstrates solid knowledge of students’ backgrounds, cultures, skills, academic language development, interests, and special needs.

So this weeks App of the week addresses the ability to scaffold academic language as well as academic language development through a fun engaging app called Word Salad.

App of the week:  Word Salad
Ideas for use in the classroom:

• Create a topic in google docs or even on the white board in the room - have your students brain storm the topic with discussion either in the classroom or online.
• Create your vocabulary lists here through student collaboration in small workgroups.
• Create academic vocabulary clouds through reading activities to promote comprehension
• Assign individual student activity to capture important ideas from a video or a discussion.
• Create a class wide word cloud to capture class reactions to a topic or question
• Build individual word clouds to capture student definitions of a vocabulary word.
• Capture a student survey and display as a word cloud.
• Have whole class or small groups create word clouds to show class expectations
• Have a fun activity and do a collaborative project by using students first names.

Click here for a web resource with 170 different ways to use word clouds in your classroom:  Subject specific ideas as well.

My web resource of the week is a library of Creative Commons Images.  This is a fantastic site that allows you to cite reference graphic images and use them for no charge.  What a great way to teach students about appropriate use as well as a nice resource for a library of graphics.  Tie a graphic into your word salad and create a writing project with your students that they can visualize by using a quality image.
Click Here to access the library

Engage those young minds & empower your users this week

Do you have students in grades K-12?  Here's a great app to get your students started with Coding and not have to know anything about Coding to be effective.   Sign up with a free teacher account by visiting their website: http://www.kodable.com/  App is available in the Itunes store for free.
Visit their blog at  for some interesting ideas on using their App and allowing technology into the classroom.


This weeks Web Resource is a great tool for school administrators or staff that are involved in developing the schools authorized user policy (AUP) on how to convert it into a "Empowered User Policy" - If you're considering updating the schools AUP this is definitely worth a look:  Click Here 

Week 1 September 2014

Web site of the week is a great game show style quiz called kahoot.

Set up your free account today and get your students started now.  https://getkahoot.com/

App of the week: elements 4D

This amazing App allows you to combine 2 elements together and see how they react including the catalyst, resulting compound and chemical equation.  

You simply install the app - follow the link to a page to print the blocks from Daqri.com and use your ipad to see it all happen.

Have a great week, your comments about the websites and apps are appreciated

Common Core Accommodations - "Are Ya Ready?"

This last week I participated in presenting a "technology" overview of the PARCC test Accommodations as they relate to technology.

One of the "take-aways" for me wasn't the actual accommodations but the realization of the stamina and focus our students will need to have to be successful in completing the test.  So I have a couple of recommendations for teachers to help their students prepare for the test.

Remember this year "All" 3rd through 11th grade students will be required to take the exam.

1. Schedule into your weekly lesson plans at least 1 (more is better) activity related to the PARCC test.  The more you can integrate the technology skills into your lesson the better prepared students will be.
• There are 3 skills that would help students be prepared - and more than using them would be to introduce the terminology and the concept so when they read it on the test they already know what it means.
1. Drag & Drop - this is a heavily used function on the test.
2. Keyboarding - students are going to be required to type text into boxes to express their answers
3. Research - students will be required to find information in a lengthy text to justify their answer. - so the ability to find key text.
2. Utilize the PARCC website and their sample tests for your grade level
• Use this link http://practice.parcc.testnav.com/# to access either the ELA or the Mathematics sample test for your grade level.
• You can take the sample exams and get a foundational knowledge of what will be expected which will "inform" your lesson plans.
• You can have all students take a practice exam, so they will have an idea of what will be expected.  I would spread these practice session out over the next few months so the actual exam will be "old hat" when the actual exam time comes.
3. Learn the accessibility features that "all" students have, ie:
• Answer Masking • Audio Amplification • Eliminate Answer Choices • Flag Items for Review • Highlight Tool  --- etc... in Table 1 accessibility for all students
• Take a class and explore these prior to having the students take a practice exam.
4. Learn the accessibility accommodations that are required to be identified in advance for students that will require them.
• this has to be identified in advance and loaded into a students Personal Needs Profile (PNP)
• Work with your schools test coordinator to ensure your students PNP's are accurate and loaded correctly - trying to do so the day of the test will not work!
5. Learn the Accommodations required for students on an IEP a 504 plan or that are ELL.
• These need to be documented in their plans as well as in their PNP prior to testing in order to be allowed.
6. Here are a couple of valuable links to use as teacher resources
1. Teacher resources:  http://www.parcconline.org/for-educators
2. Accommodations Manual:  http://www.parcconline.org/parcc-accessibility-features-and-accommodations-manual

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Bryan's Technology App of the week

• 11-12.W.6    Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products in response to ongoing feedback,including new arguments or information.
• Use your imagination and create a lesson using google docs for a collaborative writing assignment among small groups using 5 words for each group member in the writing assignment from the Quizzitive APP.

Quizzitive: Great App for students preparing for the SAT. Increase your vocabulary by using 4 different activities.

Web Resource of the week - Newsela.com - Newsela is still in "free beta" so go sign up now and use it with your classes.  Grade level is more for upper grades maybe 8th thru 12th grade.  Incredible source for current events non fictional text about current events in the world.  Articles are current and broken out by content area - students read the article then take an assessment afterwards at a grade level specified by you.

You can supplement the tool by creating a writing assignment from the content. - Use google apps to have students share their writing back to you electronically.

Cloudcroft Schools New Administrative Team is back to School

Cloudcroft Schools New Administrative Team

Tana Daugherty, Robyn Cook, Travis Dempsey

Cloudcroft is back in session for 2014-2015 and off to a great start.  New Lenovo Laptops are being deployed across the district with great expectations for enhanced student learning with technology.  This year at Cloudcroft Schools the technology department will be adding some additional support through their membership with Region IX Education Cooperative.  Bryan Dooley & Robert Miller will be coming to help Joel Ferguson on a weekly basis.  In addition the Region IX staff will be working with Cloudcroft teachers to provide technology / curriculum integration.  Joel Ferguson, Cloudcroft's technology coordinator is already implementing changes to increase communications and streamline support issues.

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Bryan's Technology App of the week

• CCSS Technology Standard Addressed - 7.RL.7    Compare and contrast a written story, drama, or poem to its audio, filmed, staged, or multimedia version, analyzing the effects of techniques unique to each medium (e.g., lighting, sound, color, or camera focus and angles in a film).
• Use your imagination and create a series of multiple choice questions that are based on compare and contrast. The students will use their response cards to answer and see results immediately.

Plickers - Change up the question & answer process by having fun with this great electronic response app.  Find out more at https://www.plickers.com

• It's fun, easy to use, and free.
• It requires No Electronic Devices in students' hands – no laptops, tablets, remotes, cellphones, smartphones, or payphones.
• No batteries to lose or replace, no expensive equipment to buy, no BYOD, and no one left out.

1. How it works:
   1. Each student gets a unique barcode – a paper clicker.
   2. Students answer questions by showing their barcodes to the teacher's smartphone.
   3. The teacher gets a real-time bar graph and the data is stored individually by student.
    

Web Resource of the week - Challenge your students to take their writing to a higher level.

• 22 Rules of Storytelling by Pixar http://www.advicetowriters.com/home/2014/3/11/22-rules-of-storytelling-from-pixar.html

• heres a sample from rule#9: When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.

Roberts Tech Corner - Tips & Tricks

• How to calibrate your Smartboard - Press both buttons on your Smartboard tray at the same time and hold them down until the screen pops up that has little press points on it.

• Grab one of your pens and place it on each of the press points right in the center until you have done all of them. Your board is now calibrated. You rock.

Corona Schools just about ready to roll for the 14.15 School Year & Celebrate having one of the Best!

Corona Schools Business Manager Barbara Sultemeier was honored this year twice for Business Manager of the Year!  Once at NMASBO, and again at the NMCEL.  Congratulations Barbara. 

Many Business Managers across the state have benefited from Barbara's knowledge of school finance and Visions accounting software.  Thanks Barbara for your willingness to always help.

Corona is excited to start the new school year and will enjoy some great new technology.  New iPads in the Elementary, a new large interactive touch screen that can function like a combination of a interactive white board and a infocus and New Lenovo laptops for the Elementary Teachers.  Corona students will also be taking advantage of a great new digital book resource that provides non-ficitional books that are CCSS aligned and also has activities for writing as well.  Check out  https://load.biguniverse.com/

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Bryan's Technology App of the week

• CCSS Technology Standard Addressed - X.SL.5 - Use a fun storytelling app that allows students, teachers and anyone with creativity to easily create stories or presentations based on photos, images or slides using a smartphone or tablet..

30 Hands Story Telling App - This is another excellent App for use with students to easily create presentations either as individual projects or working in small groups. This easy to use App also allows students to incorporate video into their presentations which they can create from the mobile device itself or embed from another source.  30 Hands has a free version that works really well, with paid version that gives you more options for publishing and sharing.

New this week is a added web resource:

• http://www.edudemic.com/why-tablets-are-great-for-classrooms/

Capitan Schools Technology Preparation

Capitan Schools Technology Preparation for 2014-2015

It takes teamwork to get a schools technology ready for a new school year.  At Capitan Schools folks of all ages have pitched in this year to help.  

Special thanks to: Frank Dooley, Emilee, Breinna, Aubree & Bronston

Capitan will be enjoying great new technology this year including:

• 30 new iPads in a rolling cart in the Elementary & Apple TV's which will allow students to display their iPad work to the class wirelessly.
• 80 new Lenovo laptop computers distributed in rolling carts in the High School, Middle School & Elementary.
• A new computer lab in the Middle School where students will have access to the latest technology.
• Projectors with Smartboards are now available in almost all classrooms - See Shane & Robert proudly working in the Middle School computer lab.

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Bryan's Technology App of the week

• CCSS Technology Standard Addressed - X.W.8 - Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, using search terms effectively; assess the credibility and accuracy of each source; and quote or paraphrase the data and conclusions of others while avoiding plagiarism and following a standard format for citation.

Adobe Voice for iPads - Want a simple to use, Free, App that allows you to create stunning presentations with graphics custom backgrounds and music.  This App would be great for small group work, use with any subject, any grade level, to do a research project using pictures or screenshots and adding narration of each participant.  You can even choose from built in music files to enhance your presentations.

Add an Apple TV to allow your small groups to present out to the entire class.

 

5th and 6th Graders Create Phenomenal Research Presentations

After weeks of research and hard work 5th and 6th grade Region IX students completed stellar, 100% paperless research projects, with the assistance of Region IX's IT Support Teacher and Google Drive. To further accelerate these projects the class used a free online program called "Prezi" to present the information they had discovered through their research. Using Prezi students were able to move their research information from Google Drive into their presentation with ease. To make presentations more dynamic Prezi allows for quick video and image embedding. Students are able to search Google for images within their prezi editor and then simply drag and drop the image where they want on their presentation. While Prezi is very simple to use and acts similarly to Powerpoint, you will see below that it tends to be more engaging. Check out some of the magnificent work these 5th and 6th graders completed.

As always if you have any questions regarding these presentation contact us at info@regionix.org.

Billy the Kid Field Trip a Success! - Lincoln, NM

Friend or Enemy?
Jana Shafer works with 75 students from 4 Region IX Member Districts April 30th, 2014.  Using iPads, Apple TV,  and some borrowed wifi in Lincoln students listened individually on iPads to a Song about Billy the Kid. Typing their responses on the iPads, they then responded to pre-developed questions relating to the singer/songwriter being a friend or an enemy of Billy.  After writing their responses and finding evidence to support those responses students were able to orally defend their choice to their peers.  A typical comment from chaperons, parents and teachers went something like this:  "What a nice field trip, the kids were much more engaged and it really became meaningful to them."

For more information regarding technology curriculum integration from Region IX contact info@regionix.org

PARCC Sample Questions

PARCC has released a few "Sample Items" on it's webpage. Within these sample items you are able to see the types of questions that may appear on the PARCC exam as well as some of the skills your students may need to practice up on.

Some features to take note of:

• In the top right corner of your page you can find some accommodations including background colors, magnifiers, line readers and Answer Masking. You can find these options by clicking on the profile icon.                                                                                   
• Some questions have multiple pieces of text that can be accessed using different tabs above the text.  
  

• Students can "Flag" answers, which will prompt them at the end of a section to return to and answer the question(s) they flagged.                                                                
• Some math tools are provided for students on their screen. 
• Students need to be aware that when they see text in "blue" most likely it is a link that can provide them with more options. Also arrows like these below are a sign of more options being available. 
  

We'd recommend that if you haven't already, check out these example questions yourself. They can be found by clicking here, then navigating to the "Sample Items" tab. If you are interested in incorporating some of these PARCC Skills into your classroom contact Jana at Region IX jana.shafer@regionix.org. 

TEACHER SPOTLIGHT: Corona High School

In our last post we told you about the Wireless HDMI Cable that allows you to project what is on your laptop or android device from anywhere in your room. Our very own Trish Cox from Corona Schools is using this technology in her classroom on a daily basis. Trish is the High School Math teacher in Corona and commonly uses technology to drive instruction and help students to grasp a better understanding of math topics.

We talked with Trish about her experience with the HDMI adapter, she said "I love it! I love the flexibility of being able to float around the room to observe student work while still being able to control what I am projecting." The math curriculum Trish is teaching with also includes "Launch Videos", with the HDMI adapter Trish can play these videos, pause them to discuss or help solve a problem from anywhere in the room allowing her to observe student learning.

What an exciting use of technology being integrated in curriculum. Thanks Trish for your continued technology use and participation in our blog!

TRY IT!!

While exploring uses of the HDMI Adapter Region IX recently found an online tool called "A Web Whiteboard" or "AWW" for short.

Using this free tool along with the HDMI adapter and a windows or android mobile device, a teacher has the ability to model problems on the whiteboard from anywhere in the room. (This tool can also be used with an iPad and AppleTV) The tool is FREE and can be accessed from any device with internet capabilities. Check it out and see if you can find a fun and interactive way to integrate it into your classroom!

January Issue

Looking Ahead ... New Technologies and

 Initiatives Coming Your Way.

Wireless HDMI

Wireless HDMI is a small device that plugs into a Projector or TV that you can connect your laptop or Android device to wirelessly and display what's on your screen, including audio.  If you are familiar with using an iPad with the Apply TV it is very similar.  No more cable to mess with or worrying about making sure your computer is close enough to the projector.  Your device connects directly to it wirelessly so there is no need for any other equipment!  The devices are relatively inexpensive, priced around $50.  One unit has been piloted with success.  The next Blog issue will contain a more indepth report on this sucess.

Welcome

Welcome to Region IX Education Cooperative's very own Technology Blog! With this blog we hope to discuss the use of technology to meet requirements in the Common Core State Standards, uncover the newest technology in education and share creative ways to use this technology in your school. Also, we are excited to feature some of our Regions' innovative teachers and students who are excelling in their use of technology.

We have a few contributors to this blog from a wide variety of backgrounds. We have finance, marketing and grant writing skills. Some of us are techies who work daily with everything from supporting users to coding programs and maintaing servers. Educators with experience across all subject areas and a continued interest in Educational Learning Technologies. This eclectic group of people are looking to help provide the best school experience possible for students and teachers. Hopefully, through the information we will be sharing we can make this possible.

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