Cherry Creek Bright Spot- Make History Come Alive Using Google Maps

As a district Technology and Learning Coach, teachers often ask me what great tool they should be using.  While there are tons of great technology tools out there that I can share, I always ask teachers to tell me what they want their students to learn, and then, if appropriate, we can find a tool to enhance the learning around that objective or goal.  

Taylor Whitley, a 5th grade teacher at Indian Ridge Elementary, uses a lot of technology in her class, but she always makes it a point to focus on the learning before the tool.  

I chose her class for a Bright Spot because she found a way to use Interactive Google Maps to help her students learn about explorers in a creative and collaborative way. Check out the Bright Spot video below to hear from Ms. Whitley and some of her students...

For more information on using Google Maps in your class to enhance learning, go to https://www.google.com/help/maps/education/, where you'll find ideas from Google. 

If you would like to learn more about integrating math with technology at your school, please contact your Technology and Learning Coaches by filling out our form. 

If you or a teacher you know are using technology in an innovative way to transform learning, and you want to be highlighted in a Cherry Creek Bright Spot, please email Kris Edwards at kedwards25@cherrycreekschools.org. 

Cherry Creek Bright Spot: Technology at Liberty Middle School

As a district Technology and Learning Coach, I often have teachers ask me how technology fits in with math instruction, beyond just allowing kids to play math games on the Internet during free time. Don't get me wrong, there are definitely a variety of good websites for math instruction and reinforcement, but how do you make technology an integral and seamless part of your math classroom?  

Jasmine Solano, a math teacher at Liberty Middle School, recently invited me to observe her math classes. In doing so, I was able to see how easy and effective it could be to make technology a regular part of her classes, and how much the students are learning and growing from this practice. Check out the Bright Spot video below to hear from Mrs. Solano and some of her students...

If you would like to learn more about integrating math with technology at your school, please contact your Technology and Learning Coaches by filling out our form. 

Bright Spot: 3rd Graders at INR Learn About Personal Financial Literacy in a Unique Way

All 3rd Graders in Colorado learn about Personal Financial Literacy. To be more exact, the standard covered is stated below:

E2 Describe how to meet short term financial goals (PFL) (3rd)

A. Identify sources of income including gifts, allowances, and earnings  

B. Recognize that there are costs and benefits associated with borrowing to meet a short term financial goal 

C. Identify jobs children can do to earn money for personal, philanthropic or entrepreneurial goals 

D. Create a plan for a short term financial goal 

E. Describe various steps necessary to reach short term financial goals

 At Indian Ridge Elementary, students learn about Personal Financial Literacy in an authentic, ongoing way that helps them truly internalize what it means to meet short term financial goals.  Check out the video below to see how they accomplish this: 

For more information about creating a dynamic Personal Financial Literacy Project at your school for 3rd grade or any other grade level, go to myclassroomeconomy.org or contact one of the teachers at Indian Ridge featured in the video: Paige Baumgart, Julie Getchell, Mary Koudelka, Brittany Seidel, or Dane Swanson. 

Tuesday Tech Tip: Using Nearpod in the Classroom

Many teachers use a digital presentation in their classroom to help them keep students engaged, to keep themselves on track, and to incorporate technology into their instruction. While presentations can be a great way to share information with students they are mostly a one way tool; students don’t really interact with the presentation, and often times it is merely projected at the front of the room. Nearpod is a presentation tool that allows teachers to create a presentation and bring it to life by pushing it out to students and guiding their activity in real time. It involves the student in the presentation by having them interact with and submit responses on any device. The teacher can monitor and measure student results, which is something that can be difficult to keep track of when students are only participating verbally or sporadically in class.

The process is simple. Log in to Nearpod, go to your library, select the presentation you wish to share with students and launch a live session. A pin/access code will pop up and you’ll share it with your students. Once students join the session, you will advance the slides and take them through the presentation with you and give them the opportunity to interact with the embedded activities. Hooray!

To start with Nearpod, create your free account. (While Nearpod has other paid options, this post will only focus on the features included in the free version.) You can use the web app from any device, or download the app for iOS, Android, Windows, Nook, or Chrome. Once you’ve signed up, you have several options.

 My Library will take you to any presentations you have created and saved, once you have them of course.

• Explore allows you to see other presentations that have been created and save them to your library, use them, or modify them.
• Join directs you to enter a code to join a live presentation.
• Create brings you to the presentation creation menu.
• Reports give you access to session reports. They show aggregated data and student details. This can also be downloaded as a PDF to review offline.

Teachers have numerous options when it comes to creating a Nearpod presentation. When you start a presentation in create mode, it automatically provides you with a welcome slide and a thank you slide (both of which can be deleted). Adding content to your new presentation is fairly simple. You can create a slide from scratch, add a video, or import a slideshow, images or other content you've already created by pulling it from your drive, Dropbox, or access it on your computer.

The activities that teachers can add to their Nearpod presentation are shown left.

• Open ended questions require students to type a response, which can also be shared with the whole class by the teacher.
• A poll allows you to ask a question and give students several options to choose from. Teachers get immediate data as students select their answer.
• Quizzes also give you immediate information about their performance. Images can be embedded in the question as can math functions. The only question type available at this time is multiple choice.
• Draw it gives students the chance to draw a concept or an idea, or write a response. Drawings can also be shared with the rest of the class by the teacher.

Nearpod is an easy to use, free tool to help keep students engaged, track data/responses, and share information with students. Give it a try in your class, or in your next PLC/PLT meeting and let us know what you think!

Tuesday Tech Tip: 10 Great Ways to Use Schoology’s Media Albums With Your Class(es) or School

We love the media albums feature in Schoology.  Media albums are simple to create and use, but can be so powerful. Did you know that you can crop pictures in the album, rotate and re-order the pictures, and tag people in them? You can also decide if you want to enable comments, and if you want your students to be able post pictures and videos in the album. 

Remember, Schoology is password protected, so you can enjoy posting pictures here without them being publicly shared. However, if your course or group is public, your media album can also be made public. To learn how to create a media album, see Schoology's video directions by clicking here.  

Here is a screen capture of what a media album looks like, including some pictures and video:

If you're ready for ideas on how to incorporate media albums with your class or school, find 10 great ones below.

1, Show and Tell: Kids love to show off things that are too big to bring to school, or alive, or that they ate for dinner last night. They also want to show everyone things they (or their cats) do at home. Have them post those pictures and videos to your Schoology Show and Tell Media Album.
2. Vacation Pictures: Create a vacation media album and have your students post pictures and captions of where they are - in front of the Eiffel Tower, perhaps? The Statue of Liberty? A battlefield from the Civil War? Pull your students' pictures into your lessons when your class learns about those locations in history or current events, or even science. Other ideas: Have the student be "Teacher for the Day," teaching other students about where they went or add everyone's pictures to Google’s My Maps to document places the class has been.
3. Science Experiments: Have groups of students document the phases of an experiment in media albums with captions.  They can also add predictions or results of the experiments using the comments feature.
4. Field Trips: Bring your students’ parents with you (virtually) on your next field trip. You and your students can take pictures and post them to the media album so parents can experience the trip while you do.
5. School Events: Take pictures during poetry slams, the science fair, Veteran’s Day events, etc. to document exciting things happening at your school or in your class.
6. Athletics and Activities: Capture dances, plays, musicals, and sporting events after school.
7. Virtual Art Gallery: Have students upload photos of their artwork into a media album for others to comment on or just peruse.
8. Vocabulary Sets: For primary students, try having students take pictures of items that start with a certain letter. For foreign language classes, have students take pictures and label them in the caption with the word (or phrase) in the language they are learning.
9. P.E. Class: Take photos or videos of students performing an exercise correctly (or incorrectly) and post them for others to see and learn from.
10. Silent Auction: Take photos of items offered in a Silent Auction and post them with description and opening bid as the caption.  Have people comment to bid on the items.

Each item in your media album can be customized. Below is a screen cap of the options (click the green star icons to learn more about the features available).

We hope you will now have some new ideas for using Schoology's media albums. How will you use them with your class(es) or school?

#CCSDTech: An Award-Winning School Year

The Cherry Creek School District's Department of Instructional Technology ended our year with a bang at Schoology's NEXT 2014 conference held here in Denver at The Curtis Hotel on June 24 and 25.  The conference was a fabulous way to reflect on the successes of this school year.  It was also a perfect way to get geared up for next school year at the same time.  From finally meeting the people at Schoology who we had connected with virtually during the year, to hearing AMAZING keynotes from Schoology's CEO and co-founder Jeremy Friedman, Alan November, and Jennie Magiera, to presenting, representing, and learning throughout the conference, and connecting with other Schoology users from throughout the world NEXT 2014 was a powerful experience to say the least.

And I haven't even mentioned the really good part yet.

Schoology gave some awards to a handful of select educators for their efforts in using and creating capacity with Schoology.  Our favorite learning management system also gave a District of the Year award.  That district was Cherry Creek Schools.

Photo courtesy of fellow CCSD Tech colleague, Sherri Clemens.

We were so excited, proud, and humbled to receive this honor from a learning management system that has 5,000,000+ current users and projects they'll have 9,000,000+ by the end of 2014.  We also recognized the amount of work and passion so many talented and passionate CCSD people put in to help make this happen as well.  From our school board (who approved the purchase of  18,000+ Chromebooks so CCSD students could access Schoology) to our network admins (who made sure our teachers and students had a network designed for seamless Internet access throughout each and every day) to our PowerSchool administrative team (who ensured the information gathered in Schoology goes directly to our student information system) to our teachers and district instructional leadership (who were willing to try out yet another way to make their learning environments more dynamic) to so many others.  This was a total team effort.  There is absolutely no doubt that we made this happen together.

So what's next?  More (4,000+) Chromebooks for our elementary schools, diving deeper into our current Schoology use, and much, much more.  The work is always far from "done."  

The 2013-2014 school year was a successful one.  We're looking to make the 2014-2015 even bigger and better than last year.  This is going to be a pretty large challenge, but we like challenges.  It's part of what we do.

Schoology highlighted their award winners in a blog post here.

Check out Schoology's Storify from the NEXT 2014 conference here. 

Follow our ongoing CCSD Tech journey via Google+ and Twitter on Tagboard here. 

This post is cross-posted in Jay's personal blog.  Click here to visit Jay's blog.

Technology in K-1

What can K-1 students do with technology? That's a question we get often. The answer is, A LOT! 

Students at Independence Elementary showed us that they love learning using Chromebooks and Dell laptops- or whatever devices they can get their hands on! 

Do they just play games? No way! These students created Google presentations using information they found on Encyclopedia Britannica. Check out the video below to see how the projects went and what the students learned! 

If you would like help implementing technology projects with your students next year, please contact your Technology and Learning Coaches by filling out this form.  We love co-planning and co-teaching and want to help you be successful with your students using technology!

MaKey MaKey Inspires Creativity at Walnut Hills Elementary

"Nothing is Impossible" is the message that students from Walnut Hills conveyed when asked what they learned after completing MaKey MaKey projects under the guidance of their technology teacher, Dustin Vick. 

What is a MaKey MaKey?  A MaKey MaKey is an invention kit. Using MaKey MaKey, students can turn everyday objects into something that can control a computer. For instance, one student created Play-Doh keys for typing out a document.  Another created a homemade video game controller using cardboard and tin foil. Playing musical notes by touching bananas is also a popular project shown in demonstration videos by the inventors of MaKey MaKey. 

Check out the video below to see how it all worked at Walnut Hills.  Maybe next year you'll want to use MaKey MaKeys at your school to inspire creativity within your students! 

Tuesday Tech Tip: Embedding Quizlet into Schoology

Embedding Quizlet into Schoology

Quizlet offers you the ability to create simple tools to study content and vocabulary. You can easily create vocabulary sets that can then be embedded into your Schoology courses so that your students can review and study the vocabulary that they need to be successful. You can even sign in using your Google account!

Creating your Quizlet Sets: Once you log in to your account, you can start creating your Quizlet sets. Click on "Create a set" to get started.  You will need a title and description, and then you will need to decide how your want to set your visibility and if you want someone else to be able to edit the set.  Choose the language that you want for your terms and definitions and enter all of the terms that you want in the set.

Embedding your sets into your Schoology Course: 
Once your set is complete, you can grab the embed code to put it into Schoology.  Go up to "More Tools" in the top right corner of your Quizlet set and click on "Embed."  You can then copy the code for the Flashcards.  Once the code is copied, you can go to your Schoology course to embed that code.

In the Materials section of your Schoology course, go to "Add Materials" and select "Add Page/Text Block." Switch to HTML and paste in the code that you copied from Quizlet. If you select "Display Inline within Folder" then the Quizlet set will display directly in your Schoology folder without students having to click on it.  Once the Quizlet set is embedded, students will have the ability to change their study mode in the bottom right corner of the screen.  They can view the Quizlet set as different studying games, flashcards and tests.

As some of our classes are wrapping up the year with finals and tests, Quizlet could be great option for practicing vocabulary and terms.

Cherry Creek's Hour of Code

http://life-long-learners.com/hour-of-code-for-those-who-are-6-to-106/

Warning: Students will become critical thinkers, problems solvers, and gain confidence through…. coding! 

Last December, Jon Pierce from the Office of Instructional Technology challenged Cherry Creek teachers to participate in The Hour of Code, an introduction to computer programming sponsored by Code.org. It was designed to show that anyone can learn to code. By the end of Computer Science Education Week, 11,780 Cherry Creek students ranging from K-12 had tried their hand in coding!

Initially founded by by Ali and Hadi Partovi, Code.org is a non-profit organization working to expand computer science participation by making it available in more schools, especially in urban and rural neighborhoods. 

The goal for next year is to double the number of students in Cherry Creek Schools who participate in The Hour of Code. Why? Because students become more well-rounded through coding. There are high-paying jobs out there for people who can code, and not enough qualified candidates to fill the positions. Check out our video below and Code.org for more information. We hope to see you and your students coding with us next year during The Hour of Code!

Cynthia Liggins and her Techsperts Shine at Sunrise Elementary

How do building techs manage to keep our schools running?  Many are charged with fixing computers, printers, projectors, and document cameras, MAP testing students, getting computers imaged and ready for use, and keeping carts organized and working. The list goes on and on. 

So how does Cynthia Liggins manage to accomplish everything she's assigned to do plus assist with the robotics club, tackle the yearbook, and deliver daily video announcements, all with a sunny attitude?  

She enlists her Techsperts to help! Techsperts are a group of students at Sunrise Elementary in grades 3-5 who help out with technology, take pictures for the yearbook, and deliver the daily video announcements. They learn the skills to do this from their building tech, Cynthia Liggins. Check out the video below to learn more about how students can help make the technology at a school run smoother, and learn a lot about technology, pride and leadership in the process...

http://youtu.be/ZqAzTcoilNg

STEM at Red Hawk Ridge Elementary School

Ryan Remien, the STEM teacher at Red Hawk Ridge Elementary School, explains how students at the elementary level thrive on learning- especially with his STEM curriculum. In observing and talking to Ryan, I was able to see first hand what it can look like to have kids so engaged in learning, they don't want to go to recess! Students from K-5 are able to use science, technology, engineering, and math skills in authentic ways to learn about the world around them. 

http://youtu.be/fmLBJalEhZk